• Please note: In an effort to ensure that all of our users feel welcome on our forums, we’ve updated our forum rules. You can review the updated rules here: http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=5528.

    If a fellow Community member is not following the forum rules, please report the post by clicking the Report button (the red yield sign on the left) located on every post. This will notify the moderators directly. If you have any questions about these new rules, please contact support@wolflair.com.

    - The Lone Wolf Development Team

So you want to make a data file?

CapedCrusader said:
Paragon, I can relate - ever played a game system called "Hero" (Champions)? Hopeless even with all-digital initiative assistance. I know, I wrote several programs over the years to handle it.
Click to expand...

Heh. There's an argument I'm part of the origin of Champions.

I actually always found that with a grid format, I found Champions speed charts easily handleable (i.e. you put together a chart with each character, a list of their Dex, and then X marks in the appropriate phase marks.)

But one of the gigs with Hero initiative is that its static; you only have a few things that perturb the basic phasing and Dex order, and they don't come up often. With a randomized roll, even once a battle, you have to re-sort at the start of every combat, and if its every round, you have to do it at the start of each round or risk missing people. I realize there's some virtue to both some randomization in initiative and even re-randomizing each round, but I've always found it a little painful to manage without digital assistance.
 
CapedCrusader said:
Paragon, I can relate - ever played a game system called "Hero" (Champions)? Hopeless even with all-digital initiative assistance. I know, I wrote several programs over the years to handle it.
Click to expand...

Roughly a round 1990, I was introduced to MERP and by extension Rolemaster. I would never have considered running or even playing those on an ongoing basis back then(ie, a long term campaign). Now however, with proper support from computing devices, those systems would be far easier to deal with(if still a bit harsh... those critical hits can be crazy)
 
Oh, I loved the speed chart!! It's a great mechanic. The combat system itself is what's way too slow. One combat takes literally all day, even with all of the digital assistance.
 
There's actually ways to work around that; what I concluded after years of using it was that a big part of it is that it encourages decision paralysis; once I found a way to break that (which mostly involved a little modification of the Hold mechanic) it didn't play any slower than most somewhat crunchy systems (SW, say). After all, when you get down to it, the basic combat mechanic is: compare CVs, roll 3D6 for resolution, roll damage (which does take some practice to learn to read the damage dice, but not that hard), subtract defenses and apply. The only part of that which is significantly more complex than a lot of games is reading the damage dice.
The problem is that there's a lot of potential choices, and than can choke people up--but that's pretty much the price of having a lot of meaningful choice.

Only reason I say this is I ran a game of it not long ago--I'm in the process of playing through a bunch of different supers systems right now as a contrast-and-compare, and decided Hero 6th deserved a slot in there--and it wasn't as fast as some of the fastest ones like Supers!, it didn't really take longer than any of the crunchier end ones.
 
CapedCrusader said:
Oh, I loved the speed chart!! It's a great mechanic. The combat system itself is what's way too slow. One combat takes literally all day, even with all of the digital assistance.
Click to expand...


Well.. like I said, we did not get into it that heavy(3-4 sessions and done due to lack of players, GM attention, etc). I had to look that up, but I remember now that weapon used modified your initiative. Honestly I seem to think that there was some optional rules for D&D to do the same thing way back in the day, but my memory is crap, so I could be remembering wrong. I know a large number of computer RPG's carry that type of speed mechanic as an offset for higher weapon damage, so it makes plenty of sense from a game mechanic standpoint, but it sure does slow stuff down.

Like I said, I have not even thought more than a few musings about that game system in 25 years, but I did mention it recently to my gaming group this past weekend(we only get together once a month, if that). That day we were playing SotC with another GM in our group and after we wrapped(late), I was briefly explaining the niche SW fits into by saying on one end there is Rolemaster with tables for everything and combats that take hours and hours. On the other hand are more narrative systems like Amber and Fate/Fudge which is much more free form. Basically explaining that SW was more toward the middle with a slight nudge into the narrative side while D&D(what we have played for 2.5 decades in some form or another) is more on the right side with it's mechanics.

A few of the players are a bit apprehensive around SW due to the possibility(remote though it is) that a goblin with a normal sword could one hit an ancient dragon. Yes, that chances are extremely small, but it's possible and that's not something that D&D has(for the most part, aside from some of the stupider spells they have). Of course, they are a bit leary about their characters. They are not the type of players to run or avoid combat in MOST scenarios, so I will have to really bang into their heads that point of combat is only on means of resolving situations. We will see how well it goes. One good thing is that one of the players has known Sean Patrick Fannon(who since moved away from this area) for a few decades and has played Savage worlds a number of times, so he can help the others a bit in determining the GtFOoD factor. The sad thing is, I think his character is likely going to pick up the Arrogance Hindrance, so.. yea... that might be fun.
 
jfrazierjr said:
Well.. like I said, we did not get into it that heavy(3-4 sessions and done due to lack of players, GM attention, etc). I had to look that up, but I remember now that weapon used modified your initiative.
Click to expand...

Uhm. I think you've conflated two game systems. No incarnation of Hero I know of had either Speed or Dexterity modified by weapon; in a couple of versions a special ability might do that, but not a weapon.

A few of the players are a bit apprehensive around SW due to the possibility(remote though it is) that a goblin with a normal sword could one hit an ancient dragon. Yes, that chances are extremely small, but it's possible and that's not something that D&D has(for the most part, aside from some of the stupider spells they have). Of course, they are a bit leary about their characters. They are not the type of players to run or avoid combat in MOST scenarios, so I will have to really bang into their heads that point of combat is only on means of resolving situations. We will see how well it goes. One good thing is that one of the players has known Sean Patrick Fannon(who since moved away from this area) for a few decades and has played Savage worlds a number of times, so he can help the others a bit in determining the GtFOoD factor. The sad thing is, I think his character is likely going to pick up the Arrogance Hindrance, so.. yea... that might be fun.
Click to expand...

This is one advantage of having moved from D&D to RuneQuest in my early days; most of the people I game with are very aware that not all games are as resistant to potential one-shot kills as D&D.
 
You know, I just realized we just bloody well pulled Zarlor's perfectly nice data file making thread off onto massive side tangents. Argh.
 
Well, the side tangents do keep the thread bumped up near the top so a few more eyes might see it and maybe help figure out if it's decent enough or useful enough to get stickied, I suppose. The hard part is that the above makes sense to me, but is it clear and concise (I'm horrible with the latter) enough for someone new to data files to be able to at least get started with the non-coding parts without feeling too intimidated by it?

I would also add that the Hero system without electronic assistance just for dealing with character creation and advancement alone is downright unthinkable, in my book! My group likes crunchy rule systems (it was like pulling teeth to get them to play Savage Worlds until they realized it's actually a pretty crunchy system in a nicely done "simple rules" wrapper!) but the Hero system was just too much for most of us. One of the guys loves it, the rest of us won't even touch it unless the guy who loves it just HAS to run a game, and even then most of the guys just make him do all of the work.

Oddly breaking through on Savage Worlds has almost turned the group into the opposite direction. While SW is now the usual "go to" ruleset the group has pretty openly taken to really enjoying some of the lighter rules like Fate Core and some Apocalypse World spin-off systems. Go figure.
 
Its a truism that most of the complexity in the Hero System is front-loaded; though I'll also note even that is overstated in games that aren't power-centric (i.e. modern adventure or post-apocalyptic games), as the biggest part of the crunch is in power construction. When all you're buying is attributes, skills and talents there's really not that much to it, other than the fact there's what some people consider bloat in this area (but there's no resolving what's a good number in people's minds there; I sometimes find SW a little too stripped down in skills (not to mention a little inconsistent about how much it rolls things together).

As to how coherent your posts were--well, the problem is, of course, that most of us in this thread have been doing this for a while, so its probably hard for us to tell.

There are certainly things there that are good to know out the gate (the Preclude discussion can potentially save someone some real grief, and I'd have saved myself some time if I'd understood there was built in functionality to limit what Powers a new Arcane Background could access, and I'm not sure I even now understand fully the purpose of a .1st file)

And making sure people are aware of the common code thread is good. I almost wonder if somewhere it wouldn't be good to have a thread of "things you can't (or can't straightforwardly) do in HL for SW." The "D6 skill of choice" thing, for example, or the multiple Arcane Background issue. I spent a certain amount of time chasing around on both of those before finding out they were nonstarters.
 
For me the .1st file serves two primary purposes. First, it provides a consistent source. What I mean by that is if I go into the Editor and just add a source there by selecting -New Source- and typing one in, it seems to me its not completely consistent on saving that source. I feel it provides a nice, standardized method, but that's obviously not a huge thing.

The second things it does, however, is provide a format for grouping. That part is pretty huge, IMHO. Take a look at something that has a Companion book, for example. Say Deadlands Noir. If you just set something with the default of "User Setting" it gets lumped in with every other "User Setting" in a nice long list on your Character Configuration screen. Even that might be fine if you have "Deadlands Noir" and "Deadlands Noir Companion" since they'll still at least line up next to each other, so being able to have a separate section for those might be nice but not critical. However, take something like Deadlands Reloaded and a separate setting file for it like "Stone and a Hard Place". If you wanted to group those you have to rename Stone to something like "Deadlands: Stone and a Hard Place" and your names start getting longer and longer. The .1st file can take care of groupings like that for you.

Actually you can do even more than that with it, make some setting exclusive in a group as well, so you can set things so that maybe you could never use Deadlands Noir and Hell on Earth together because they are too crazily different or something. You may have grouped all of those settings under a Deadlands group but then made them exclusive from each other so only one of the main Deadlands settings could be selected out of all of them. Things like that.

If you get a chance I might suggest hitting up Dartnet and some of the other folks in the Settings thread just to grab any and all of the settings files you can. Some of those guys have gotten pretty creative with setting things up with .1st files. All of that is more advanced than would be needed for the main post here, mind you, but setting the groundwork for using .1st files more creatively by getting folks in the habit of setting it up even for a basic setting to begin with is, IMHO, a good thing. Then if you ever needed to build on it, the basics of what you need are already there.
 
On the d6 Skill of Choice bit...
You can also go the other direction with it with Edges. Give the players the extra points they need to pick up a Skill at d6. Then, the Edge that needs to know what Skill it was can have a menu added to it to display the Skills the character has, and the appropriate Skill can be chosen. It's then accessible to the background code. The Edge will display a menu that the user can choose the Skill from, and you could conceivably use the Edge just to store that choice.
 
Striking the ground with a charred staff, I shake my skull rattle and commit....THREAD NECROMANCY!

So as amusing as the tangents were to read, I have come seeking some guidance/education regarding the creation of a 1st file. I went digging in the examples of other 1st files to get some examples to compare against but there are a number of commands I'm running across that I want to either make sure I've deduced their use/meaning correctly, or get some clarification on. I apologize for the lengthy post, but since this was strongly suggested as a starting point, I need to get this project going asap.

using Deadlands Noir as a example, in the 1st file I see the following

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<!-- This file contains all specifications pertaining to the operational control of
the data files. This includes usage pools, sources, sortsets, and other related
mechanisms.
-->

<document signature="Hero Lab Structure">
<!-- RDS DLNoir This source enables the selection of Deadlands Noir -->
<source
id="sepDLNoir"
name="Deadlands Noir: Campaign Setting"
selectable="no"
parent="UserParent"
sortorder="0"
description="Deadlands Noir: Campaign Setting">
</source>
Click to expand...

Pls forgive me for the use of a picture, best way I could think of to make sure what I'm referring to is coming across clearly. Am I correct in thinking in regards to the red bolded text above, id= "sepDLNoir" is the unique Thing-ID that is greyed out text in the menu, and that it had to have a unique ID in order for it appear visually in the menu as a separate entry for the other 2 setting choices to fall below it?

Am I correct in thinking that this is done by setting selectable = "no"?
I assume that by making "SepDLNoir the parent file in the subsequent sources is why they show up as separate possible choices under Deadlands Noir: Campaign Setting header?
Also, am I correct in thinking in there is no need for a selectable = "yes" in order to create a selection box?

View attachment 6659


My questions are for the next set of red-bolded text below:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<!-- This file contains all specifications pertaining to the operational control of
the data files. This includes usage pools, sources, sortsets, and other related
mechanisms.
-->

<document signature="Hero Lab Structure">
<!-- RDS DLNoir This source enables the selection of Deadlands Noir -->
<source
id="sepDLNoir"
name="Deadlands Noir: Campaign Setting"
selectable="no"
parent="UserParent"
sortorder="0"
description="Deadlands Noir: Campaign Setting">
</source>

<source
id="DLNoir"
name="Deadlands Noir"
parent="sepDLNoir"
reportable="yes"
sortorder="0"
description="Each character utilizes the Savage Worlds Deadlands Noir material.">
</source>

<source
id="DLNoirC"
name="Deadlands Noir Companion"
parent="sepDLNoir"
reportable="yes"
sortorder="1"
description="Each character utilizes the Savage Worlds Deadlands Noir Companion material.">
</source>
</document>
Click to expand...

I'm assuming that "sortorder = X" is why DLNoir shows up before DLNoirC, but I'm confused why the sort order for sepDLNoir and DLNoir are both = to 0. I would've assumed if I wanted this to appear in the same manner visually as the picture above, that the sort order would be 0, 1, 2. Could you explain what I'm missing here?

In my 1st file, lets say I want to import material from the several companions, i.e. say Supers 2E, Fantasy and Horror for my Scion setting. Each of these has their own entry in the hero configuration menu one can check on their own under the section of "Companion Books".

My question is, based on looking at the DLNoir 1st, if I wanted those 3 companions to appear as possible choices under my custom setting entry, would the following example be the correct way to go about it?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<!-- This file contains all specifications pertaining to the operational control of
the data files. This includes usage pools, sources, sortsets, and other related
mechanisms.
-->

<document signature="Hero Lab Structure">
<!-- RCScion This source enables the selection of Scion Campaign Setting -->
<source
id="RCScion"
name="Scion: Campaign Setting"
selectable="no"
parent="UserParent"
sortorder="0"
description="Scion: Campaign Setting">
</source>

<source
id="Scion"
name="Scion"
parent="RCScion"
reportable="yes"
sortorder="0"
description="Each character utilizes the SW version of Scion 2E's material.">
This italicized text here wouldn't actually be present, putting it here to call attention to the distinction of the two files "RCScion" and "Scion".
  • [*] ID-RCScion = the greyed out header and the order of sources.
    [*] ID-Scion = would be the user file that has all the customized powers, edges, gear, etc transcribed from the Scion rules to SW.
</source>

<source
id="SuperPowr2"
name="Super Powers Companion, 2nd Edition"
parent="RCScion"
reportable="yes"
sortorder="1"
description="Each character utilizes the Savage Worlds Super Powers Companion, 2nd Edition material.">
</source>

<source
id="Fantasy"
name="Fantasy Companion"
parent="RCScion"
reportable="yes"
sortorder="2"
description="Each character utilizes the Savage Worlds Fantasy Companion material.">
</source>

<source
id="Horror"
name="Horror Companion"
parent="RCScion"
reportable="yes"
sortorder="3"
description="Each character utilizes the Savage Worlds Horror Companion material.">
</source>
</document>
Click to expand...

Also, I'm a little confused regarding the need for 1st files having read Tutorial #16 which addresses the Setting Adjust tab in the editor. Based on my understand of that tutorial, if I were to tick all these boxes in the picture below and make that my "Scion.user" file, then every time someone chooses the Scion box under the character configure menu, all these checked things are loaded automatically into HL to build a character with. That however, hasn't been my experience, it seems that unless I check all those same boxes in the configure hero menu, they won't show up. Would anyone care to guess at what I'm doing wrong there?

And finally, regarding the Setting Adjust tab, if i check all those choices for my Scion game, do I have to check the same boxes as sources every time I create a new customized addition to the .user file? I.E. Create a new Arcane Edge, better check ALL those boxes. Create 10 new Edges, better check ALL those boxes on all 10 edges, etc.

Thanks in advance to anyone who brings me some clarity on this :)

C5.JPG
 
Yes, each thing in Hero Lab has to have a unique ID.
Yes, selectable=yes is the default you only need to tell it when it's no.

They can both be zero because there's a parent-child relationship between the two. sepDLNoir is the parent of DLNoir.

As far as the 1st files, they are not required. Some Settings don't use them. They are usually used for those Settings that have multiple choices beyond just turning the Setting itself on.
 
CapedCrusader said:
Yes, each thing in Hero Lab has to have a unique ID.
Yes, selectable=yes is the default you only need to tell it when it's no.

They can both be zero because there's a parent-child relationship between the two. sepDLNoir is the parent of DLNoir.

As far as the 1st files, they are not required. Some Settings don't use them. They are usually used for those Settings that have multiple choices beyond just turning the Setting itself on.
Click to expand...

Thanks CC, that cleared a lot of doubt. I'm a bit of a dork when it comes to doing stuff with software when I don't know how to protect it from my bumbling :rolleyes:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top