AORP?

[Fellfrosch]

I said no mechanics, just the form for the character sheet. It would still be a pain, but not as big of a pain.

[Tage]

Making forms for character sheets would still be very limiting, IMO. And writing up the forms for each type of sheet is annoying. Still, if Brian is willing to do that, I'm sure it's possible.

[Fellfrosch]

We could still keep the blank field, since I think it's a good idea. That way there's a sheet available for those who want one, and an open field for those who prefer more options (or are running a weird game we don't have a sheet for).

[Brian]

The fields and stats wouldn't "mean" anything to the program, but at least the resulting character sheet would look better. We could make a bunch of templates for the major game systems, and then when a GM starts a game he can choose which character sheet to use. This would require a lot of work to create and code--maybe that's something Brian could help with?

Yeah, I think this is the best way to handle it. Here's how I would probably do it: I'd create one complete MySQL table for each character sheet type (i.e. one for D&D 3e, one for Palladium, etc). Each individual character sheet is stored on a single row in the table, with one column of the table relating back to the Primary ID in the Character Profile column (which would store the Bio, character portrait, and other non-system-specific info). One benefit of separating the Character Profile from the character sheet is that it is very easy to transfer a character from one system to another. From a technical standpoint, it separates dynamic data from static data, which isn't 100% necessary but is highly preferable in my mind.

Its a pain to create a separate table for each system, but I really think thats the way to go. I'll certainly do what I can, although I have almost no experience with any system other than D&D 3e.

Edit: Of course, if someone wanted to send me free books, I'd happily make the effort.

[Tage]

So here's a question: Within a character profile, what should the player be allowed to edit? If the player has access to everything, would we be worried about new feats popping up every now and then, or other such things?

[Fellfrosch]

Let the player create his character and then submit it into an approval queue for the GM. If the character gets messed with again, it goes back into the queue so the GM knows he needs to look at it again. Or just lock it, so that the character can't edit it until the GM says (when levelling, for example).

[Spriggan]

I agree with Fell but would add have everything but say equipment and such locked.  Then just have that be a text field.

[Brian]

In AORP, Saint Ehlers takes full responsibility for levelling characters and so forth. But he also offers the option to players who want to level their own characters.

I'd suggest letting the GM have full access to the sheets of any character in the game, and letting him lock or unlock the character sheets for their owners at will.

Though as Spriggan said, I'd leave the inventory up to the player. Inventory is going to change frequently anyway, and it would be a pain for the GM to have to update that all the time.

If you wanted to get really fancy, though, one thing that might be kind of cool is for players to have to specify where/when their char got a particular item. You could use a separate table just for inventory, which would have four columns: Owner Character ID, Item, Justification (Why the player has this item), and Equipped (Yes/No). Optionally you could also include item weight. Since inventory/equipment is pretty universal, I dont think it needs to be associated with a particular system at all. If this is unclear feel free to ask for clarification.

A text box for equipment would be just fine too, of course. But theres always the possibility that players might feel inclined to be sneaky and add inventory items. Then again, the GM is likely to remember that the player did not recently acquire a particular magic item.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I'd be more worried about players screwing everything up if they have access to editing everything rather than power-cheating.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Hard  to keep up with Jeffe and Saints posts? Well we are the most prolific talkers in our groups so it figures that we're the most prolific writers too....


I dont like limits, but thats just me....

I personally wouldn't play in tons of games anyway but some people can do it....

[Brian]

On the subject of Tage's PbP forum, I wanted to quickly comment on the format of Game templates for character sheets. (Er, that was kind of a funky run-on-ish sentence, but I'm too lazy to sort out what was wrong with it.)

I've been toying with a database design for the D&D 3rd Edition template, and I've realized that there's no acceptable way to fit all the necessary data in one table. We'll actually need multiple tables -- for instance, spells would all be in one table, feats in another table, skills in another, and so on, with one primary table holding the actual character data.

Thats probably going to be the case in all of the game systems that are prepared for the forum, depending on complexity (I suspect that a single table would be sufficient for TWERPS for instance).

[Fellfrosch]

Why does it have to be that complex? We're not talking about a system that needs to interpret the data in any way, just show it. A few text fields would be fine.

[Brian]

A valid question, but trust me -- anytime you have to show the same data in multiple records (such as when you have 6 characters with ranks in the same skill, for instance) its much easier to just enter the data once and store it in a separate table, than to re-enter it for every character. I understand how what I'm proposing could seem more complex, but really splitting the tables is a matter of convenience as well as efficiency.

It all comes down to something called database normalization, which is a standardized method of -- well, of making things more convenient and efficient.

I dont think having multiple tables will really make things more complicated -- it should actually make things much easier overall. I just needed to let Tage know that this would be the case, because he may need to take that into account in developing the character sheet interface.

Of course, this is still subject to Tage's personal preference. I'm just explaining how I would (greatly) prefer to develop the template.

[Spriggan]

Also Brians way would make for more customablity later on if we wanted it.  Like in displays and such.

[Tage]

As it is, those're great ideas Brian, but right now I'm much more worried about starting on the BB than worrying about player sheets. I'm probably going to simply have the player sheet be a text field until the more important pieces are done.

Also, I've mostly convinced myself to use phpBB as a framework for it. It's got a mod for layered threads that could be very helpful, and I like the overall feel of it. I'm going to see if building off that will be faster than trying to write from scratch.