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Achtung! Cthulhu datafile

I'll add it to the list of things to look for if I get some time, which it just seems this is the wrong time of year for. I haven't been able to be too much help here lately beyond something I might remember. At any rate, maybe it is possible, if a bit convoluted. Presumably you could set a tag if the condition of Dementia => Sanity is met, but have the tag be the first thing it checks for. So if the tag is set (<> 0) then you would check if Dementia => Sanity, but if the tag is not set you would only check for if Dementia < Sanity, in which case you would unset the tag. Thus you wouldn't be setting something every time Dementia hit the mark, only the first time it did it.

I think that might do it for you. Don't ask me why I didn't think of it earlier.

Sorry, I wasn't clear there. When I said that you could have your sanity modified multiple times by the Dementia => Sanity thing I meant this is what should happen, not what may happen by accident. I think the general idea may work though, I'll have a play with it tonight and see if I can work out some logic that just uses the tags for the permanent sanity adjustments rather than adding additional wounds. My only concern with that approach would be how to undo sanity adjustments if someone starts playing with the character... hmmm something to think on.

On a different note, so far I cannot find anything in the wiki discussing the Permanent Adjustments option and how to create new ones. I suspect that it may be a black box built into the core SW system, unless Caped Crusader can offer any tips on using it differently.
 
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Yeah, it is core rules thing, but that's the part of the Wiki where you would need to look to find it, the stuff on how they created the SW rules. Just because it's there doesn't mean it can't also be done to add something extra within a .user file, though. If I get some time I'll try to look as well, although finding that time isn't looking too good right now, I'm sorry to say. :(
 
Ok, so on Friday night I had a trawl through the wiki and found how to create new Permanent Adjustments with the scroller. To go with this I've created a new Trait (trACDmnt) that shows up on all the tabs with the other trait details that shows what the current Dementia level is. This value is changed using the new Adjustment

Code:
<thing
  id="adjACDmnt"
  name="Manage Dementia levels"
  compset="Adjustment"
  description="Modify the user's Dementia score"
  uniqueness="useronce">
  <usesource source="sepActCth"/>
  <tag group="AdjustShow" tag="Increment"/>
  <tag group="Helper" tag="UserAdjust"/>
  <tag group="InPlay" tag="PermOK"/>
  <eval phase="PreTraits" priority="5000"><![CDATA[
      var ACDmnt as number
      ACDmnt = field[adjUser].value
      perform #traitadjust[trACDmnt,+,ACDmnt,"Dementia update"]     
      ]]>
      <before name="Calc trtFinal"/>
  </eval>
</thing>

This can be added as a permanent adjustment and updates trACDmnt perfectly. There are, however, two interesting bits left to do before Sanity is finished and I can move onto the next pain that will be Magic.

1) If I try to bootstrap this Adjustment to the character, it does not appear on any of the tabs. I know the Adjustment does get bootstrapped because I set an additional test Eval statement that added 20 to the Sanity score. I'm sure I saw somewhere in the wiki how to tell an item which tab to appear on, but I can't for the life of me find it at the moment.

2) I still need to work out the best place to do the calculations on when to add the sanity loss. At the moment I'm tempted to leave it as a manually added injury, but it would be nice to automate it at some point.
 
One thing I forgot to mention was that there is a way to show a dropdown of known skills in the Permanent Adjustments section that allows you to modify a skill of your choice. This is an example

Code:
<thing
  id="adjACattrD"
  name="_A!C Skill test"
  compset="Adjustment"
  description="Select this adjustment a!c to...">
  <fieldval field="adjUsePick" value="1"/>
  <fieldval field="adjCandid" value="component.Skill"/>
  <tag group="AdjustShow" tag="Increment"/>
  <tag group="AdjustShow" tag="Menu"/>
  <tag group="Helper" tag="UserAdjust"/>
  <tag group="InPlay" tag="PermOK"/>
  <tag group="InPlay" tag="TempOK"/>
  <eval phase="Setup" priority="8000">
    <before name="Calc trtFinal"/><![CDATA[
    if (tagis[Helper.Activated] <> 0) then
      field[adjChosen].chosen.field[trtInPlay].value += field[adjUser].value
      endif
    ]]></eval>
  </thing>


Fieldval field="adjCandid" value="component.Skill" populates a dropdown list created by tag group="AdjustShow" tag="Menu" with all your known skills and allows you to modify them (either positively or negatively).

I can't remember, but I think you can change component.Skill to component.Trait or component.Edge. I'll check this tonight and update this.
 
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Some more notes on the Permanent Adjustments

It's possible to set the upper and lower bounds for the incremental counter using

Code:
    <fieldval field="adjMinimum" value="0"/>
    <fieldval field="adjMaximum" value="10"/>

I've been experimenting with the dropdown list content options for the Perm Adjustments too.

For example:
Code:
  <fieldval field="adjCandid" value="component.Skill"/>

These values are useful to pull back for adjustment. Be aware though that if you change the dropdown, the incremented value switches to the new choice.
List attributes - component.Attribute
List assigned skills - component.Skill
List derived values (e.g. Charisma, Toughness, pace) - component.Derived
List all traits (attributes, derived values and a few others) - component.Trait

These ones less so as there is nothing to increment.
List abilities* - component.Ability
List Powers* - component.Power
List all Edges* - component.Edge

Some other component. values that I've found, but not tried yet are .Equipment, .Defense, .Shield, .WeaponBase and .WeapRange. I'm sure there are plenty of others.

Still not found the wiki page that explains how to force something to display on a screen yet, but hey. More info is more info, right?
 
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My brain has had enough of the Tracker issue for the morning, so I"m switching over to the new problem area of joy. Magic

The first area that I'm dealing with are the tomes of mythos knowledge and the age old problem of add/increase a skill after creation.

In the Acthung! Cthulhu setting, the only way to gain Knowledge(Mythos) is to successfully translate one of these Tomes. Each tome has a different number of tests that need to succeed in order to successfully read it. No advancement points are needed to gain this knowledge skill. If they already have the skill, then we need to increment it by 1.

So, with those important points set, I decided the best way to track these translation elements is to use a Permanent Adjustment so the player can try reading the book over time, even if they do not carry the book with them all the time. Once the PA hits the maximum value, it should (in theory) then carry out the skill check and adjust/create it as needed.

Code:
<thing
  id="adjACtTM"
  name="Translation (True Majick)"
  compset="Adjustment"
  description="Language - English (-1)"
  uniqueness="useronce">
    <fieldval field="adjMinimum" value="0"/>
    <fieldval field="adjMaximum" value="4"/>
  <usesource source="sepActCth"/>
  <tag group="AdjustShow" tag="Increment"/>
  <tag group="Helper" tag="UserAdjust"/>
  <tag group="InPlay" tag="PermOK"/>    

<!-- check counter. If counter is equal to adjMaximum then
check to see if Knowledge(Mythos) is already a skill
If not, apply at d4
otherwise increase by 1
-->

    <eval phase="Setup" priority="8000">
      <before name="Calc trtFinal"/><![CDATA[
      if (field[adjUser].value = field[adjMaximum].value) then
    	foreach pick in hero where "thingid.skKnow"
	 		if (compare(lowercase(eachpick.field[domDomain].text),"mythos") = 0) then
				perform eachpick.field[trtBonus].modify[+,1,"mythos"]
			else
~ At this point I need to be able to add the Knowledge skill if it doesn't already exist.
	 		endif
   		nexteach
      endif
      ]]></eval>
</thing>

The other issue I have with this is that if I then try to add Knowledge (Mythos) in any way, it starts at D6 instead of D4 because the first part of the IF statement picks it up.

I thought about creating it as it's own skill, bootstrapping it to everyone and trying to hide it if they havn't translated something yet, but wasn't quite sure how to go about hiding a skill until certain criteria are met. That seems to be what is being discussed over in the Conditional Bootstrapping thread, but as no-one has worked that out yet... ;)
 
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Any updates?

I've been searching around the forums to see if anybody was working on Achtung! Cthulhu data files for Hero Labs and I found this thread. Has there been any recent updates now that the core books are out?
 
Sorry, work and moving house have killed all my spare time over the last few months unforunately. I really must get back to it...

The areas that still need to be finished are:

- Getting the Sanity tracker working under all cases. I'm still working on the permanent adjustment when Dementia goe above a certain value (though this could be done manually by the GM I guess... just seems a copout)
- Magic. The whole magic thing is causing me mental logic problems trying to work around the Arcane Background limitations and the sanity functionality
- Clean up the skills to automatically adjust some of the attributes.

I've just had a look through the datafile to see what else I needed to do. I'd forgotten the Mac/Windows wobbly... something in my mac datafile was erroring on my new windows machine, so I was in the process of ripping the file apart to track down the error.
 
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I am beginning to run an AC game soon, tonight, in fact. I'm very interested to see the product of your labor, Endtransmission.

Keep up the good work!

Oh and first post!
 
Sanity tracking.

How do you handle the Knowledge (Mythos)? Isn't Sanity (2 + 1/2Sprit - Mythos)?

I was implementing Knowledge Mythos as it's own skill that is updated by reading one of the books (probably using a Permanent adjustment to enforce this)



--snip---

So. I'm back on the A!C case and am trying to sort out the Insanity bits that aren't covered in the Realms of Cthulhu dataset before returning to the horror that is the magic. This has me scratching my head... I've sorted all the calculations and if I pump in simple numbers to the Madness trait below, it works nicely... but as soon as I try to call values from another trait it all goes a bit Pete Tong.

---snip
 
Starting AC game in August

I've been modifying/creating new files for HL so I can get AC up and running for my players in August. So far so good. We ran a short adventure back in May to try it out within Savage Worlds and all players were content. It will make nice change from 3.5e and Pathfinder.

Where should I implement Dementia? On the Basics page or on the personal page? Just wondering...
 
Final phase 1000

foreach pick in hero where "thingid.skKnow"
if (compare(lowercase(eachpick.field[domDomain].text),"mythos") = 0) then
#trait[trSan] = eachpick.field[trtFinal].value - 1
endif
nexteach
 
*le sigh*

Has it really been so long? dayum! Thanks to a computer loss I had to start again from scratch. This is probably a really good thing as it is looking much better this time around.

Keeper's Guide skills/edges/traits/hindrances are done
Keeper's Guide injuries are done
Investigator Guide skills/edges/traits/hindrances are done
Sanity/Dementia is done
Equipment is all done

Even the magic tomes and spells have been worked out and a test one seems to be going well. It could be better, but keeping things simple for now seems to be a good plan. There didn't seem to be too much point in adding trackers for each and every spell in every book as it would fill up the character sheet.

At the moment I'm working through the various careers/occupations with their prerequisites and then I may be ready to test it with some other people. Only 2 years on and off!

There is a slowly growing list of little things I need to tweak and polish for some of the careers or spells, but nothing horrific yet. Once careers are done, the only thing left to do would be vehicles, monsters and npcs which can all be added later, once I know the character creation works properly.

Then it is on to the various supplements, which are mostly a few new edges/hindrances and lots of equipment... so they should be pretty quick to do. The Interface Zero and Godlike crossovers could be interesting. I don't really want to have to write those data files too... at least not just yet! One world at a time...
 
Well, you'd probably want to wait for the official SFC data file to come out first anyway before doing any kind of IZ crossover. At least if some of the tweaks I expect might be in it are there. Very cool to hear you've made so much progress!
 
I once worked on a datafile to share. It was for Agents of Oblivion and my computer was fried in October 2012.

My youngest, a little over a year old at the time, turned it on and off several times in rapid succession, killing my motherboard, RAM, possible CPU, and also C: drive (a solid state drive). I got a better computer but I have not had the time to plug in data to share.

In the meantime I can continue to come up with mods and way to make things work in HL for others to take advantage of.
 
Yea!!!! Good to see the file back on track.

Zalor do you know when I can get my grubby grubby little hands on the SFC?

SeeleyOne I still have your AoO file.
 
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