Topic: Seeking Aid in a Proposed Online Character Database.

[Verchial]

That's all very well except that we will soon have three different major versions of Rolemaster, all with quite different processes. I tip my hat to the ambitious people currently working on projects right now with regard to full character creation/progression software. It's a huge undertaking and not one I would venture into. For example you mention talents, flaws, stats, etc... all handled differently (or not at all) in the various flavours of Rolemaster.

A best case scenario is that RMU is so good that everyone will want to switch to it, so that any software developer would only need to cater for the one rules set.

Plus there are almost infinite optional rule options and customized house rules.  Which is part of why I believe that in the case of RM, flexibility must necessarily take priority.  I am not sure that any One Set Of Rules to Rule Them All "Wizards of the Coast" style DB will satisfy enough RM players to be truly viable.

[Warl]

I personally am not concerned with making it an conform to one RM style.

RM2 and RMSS, once character creation is Finished... are Close enough to one another to not mater an Iota....
Post a Character from either system and it's SKILLS can be applied to Any RM game ... A Gm can make minor changes if he feels the need when pulling a Character for NPC foder.
The Character and it's "profile" of History demeanor and Attitude would be of more import to me.

I believe that in the end run Even RMU will be close enough to Both systems for the same easy USE of Skills once Character creation is settled.....

More and More I am thinking it should just be a Database of Uploaded Character sheet Images, Perhaps Not a Site for creating characters...

Ease of finding what a GM wants/Needs would be of greater Import... Classifying Characters By Profession and so forth.

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

As I mentioned, I don't think problems coming foremost from the systems being incompatible but rather due to the options with which their respective GMs play. Most of us GMed for decades and probably heavily modified the rules, so much and for so long that many probably don't know what the RAW are about some matters. Anyway, an example is better than an essay, so let's have a look to one of my NPCs. Now, you GMs out there should try and see how much changes you'd need in order to be able to use her in your games.
As far as I'm concerned, I see eight points. In no particular order:

• Units. All of us don't necessarily use Earth units, may it be for time (the most obvious since not every world in the universe should have years of 365.25 days; not to mention the presence of several moons, if one uses lunar calendars; or days of 24 hours; etc.), distance, weight, etc.
• Custom professions. Many of us probably have developed their own professions or TPs, with unique skill costs (not much problematic but...), unique abilities (more problematic) or even spell lists (now, that's a problem IMHO).
• Magic rules. Not everyone probably manages Magic the way RM does, going from slight to severe changes. Magic in my case is handled in a radically different way from any RM system, with a Realm of Magic being the source of magical energy and governing how one gets one's PPs and how powerful one may be for magical purposes, rather than RM's vision of a Realm of Magic being the finality of spells and governing what  kind of spells one may learn and cast.
• Languages. Whilst everyone on the forums is quite proficient in English, not everyone probably enjoys writing one's game's notes in English. For my part, I freely mix English, French, Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese in my character sheets, notes and all.
• Game languages. Probably less problematic than the other points, but people probably use their own custom game world languages.
• Levels. It may be just me but since I GM in the same world with different game systems, I use several ranking systems ("levels"; several because each "profession-type" uses its own) that are integrated to the world (the same martial arts rank their practitioners by belt, somes games do [such as mahjong using kyus and dans], sports do, education levels exist, etc.), thus independant from the game systems themselves. I won't enter the details (such as the actual ranking, the known ranking and the game ranking, since a character who is known as being a Red Belt [for instance] in the game world may actually be Black Belt [as his game's actual level], and some may have cheated to get a rank beyond their own...) but, well, it's just that some of us may not use the same progression scale ("levels") than in the RAW (not to mention those who use, even partially, a level-less system...)
• Skills. Some of us may not manage at least some skills the way the RAW does. In my case, the most obvious are the armour skills.
• Custom races. Same as for custom professions, in a way.

Now, don't get me wrong: I do think it's an interesting idea. I'm just not sure how useable it'd actually be to anyone...

[markc]

  I like others do think it is a good idea but I also see the same problems. IMHO you could try and keep it simple just like the NPC lists in some books, in that you have the stats, skills and little else of each system (RM2/C, RMSS/FRP). That way the NPC's would be/might be a little less powerful than the way GM's create PC's and prominate NPC's. If the table/chart had room for one NPC to be entered in both systems (with an view option/filter to view one or both systems) theoretically one NPC could help GM's in both systems.
  The big problem again is when you have played for a time and rules get changed.


 Now having said that I think that an PC/i\INPC/iNPC/NPC DB for RMU would be a good idea as it would drastically help out new players and GM's alike.
MDC


   

[MRStone@mindspring.com]

I've been working on something with MySQL and PHP.   It's not (much) out of the design stages, but I'm working on it.   I've compiled a list of all the skills from RM2 including all of the companions I had.  (over 300 skills if I remember right  )

In the initial version (limited functionality) I'm mainly going to have character storage.  But plan on making it multi-access where everyone with their own device can log in.  Send in-game private messages, etc.   And the GM will be able to access the characters, and coordinate battles first.

On the topic of battles, There are a $#!+ ton of different initiative options.  I loved the idea of Second by Second initiatives, but the on-the-fly acocunting was too slow... I was thinking of reintroducing it for the primary combat tracking (along with keeping track of equipment damage and degredation... {gotta have some reason to pick up armor and Equipment Repair skill})

In the meantime, here's an Excel worksheet that someone might enjoy.

[markc]

Welcome to the ICE Forums MRStone@mindspring.com.


 I wanted to welcome you before I slogged through your xls.
MDC

[markc]

 As to the skill note, yes I agree as I was asked to list the skills from RM2 and RMSS and SM:P (RM:Black OP's etc) in a spread sheet. I did not get a chance to go through the RM2 Comp's or secondary books but the total number of skills in RM2 vs RMSS were very close to one another.


MDC

[MRStone@mindspring.com]

Yeah, I know the feeling... There are a some skills stuck in here and there, and some mentioned briefly in the text of some of the books without being definitive.   It took me a while, but I've got 181 races, 130+ classes, 350+ skills.   Putting in the race on the dropdown menu, and the class will bring up the skill costs and level bonus for all the skills.   It took me a while to dig through and get all that in there.

I had planned on doing more to the sheet: with training and options, but decided to move to a web based interface.  I didn't have Space Master / Armored Assault / Star Strike in mind at the time, but once the framework for RM2 is in place, there should be little problem adding the rest.

 

[Warl]

MRstone, I though I would Chime in and see if there was any progress on your application?

[sulkow82]

For a character generator, I was thinking about writing something similar.  I don't know how much of a help mine would be.  I was planning on using a Apple //c emulator I have on my Mac.  (WOW!  That really dates me.)  While that is old tech, I really do have the skills to write it in BASIC.  The one I'm using is Virtual ][.

OTOH, if anyone is interested in it, I would be more than happy to upload it to the vault when I'm finished.  I think I could write in code that would import other data-files.

[Peter R]

If someone has the webspace and permissions to run php and mysql then the whole database of characters with previous levels etc would probably take about 30minutes to set up and have live.

Step one install wordpress. This gives you a framework you can style/theme and make look how you like, add supporting pages etc.
Step two install one of the wiki pluggins for wordpress.

Each character is then a wiki article about itself. You can attach documents to them if you wish for such things as scans of character sheets. The versioning allows for previous version of the character to be seen. If you tagged each character with the rules system they were created under then the wiki would be be searchable just for 'compatable' characters.

If you have a character generator spreadsheet for some or all systems then you can offer it as a download to the site users.