Topic: I made an NPC Assistant for Excel

[Gondor]

Well, about two months ago I got my hours cut back at my job.  Not good for money, but it did give me some time to do something I have been thinking about for years- Making an excel program to assist me in making NPCs for my games.  I wanted a way to show different possible spell lists and items.  I wanted a level 8 npc to have a better chance of equipment than a level 7, along with better skills.  I wanted a difference between a Wood Elf Warrior Mage and a Highman Warrior Mage.  I didn't want it to make it for me; I just wanted it to show me possibilities.

The first thing I needed to do was find out how excel worked, past making a simple spreadsheet, I knew nothing, so I went through a couple of hours of online tutorials, and got the basics.  Then I went to work, I thought it would take maybe 20 hours or so.  I was very wrong.  It took forever to get every item, every spell list, every class, herb, poison, weapon into the computer; then to figure out how to randomize it and bring it all together.  Almost a Meg in data.  In the end, a couple of months later, I got something that works pretty well.
Now I would like to share it, and see if people could improve upon it, but I have to find out how to submit it to the Vault.  I am sure someone knows how to do this.  Anyway.. Thanks for listening.

[munchy]

If you go to the vault there is a small clickable "upload" to be read in the upper right corner. Click it and you should be able to upload it.
You also maybe want to check with Tim to see whether ICE is fine with this lot of gaming data to be shared openly.

[Fenrhyl Wulfson]

Good idea, but it indeed may pose some issues with the material used.

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

Lists and names of things are quite fine. If it contains more detailed information, then it will need a closer review.

[Temujin]

I would definitely be interested to look it up.

[Gondor]

Could not upload because it is in xlsx format (excel 2007).  I tried to save it in an older format, but it looses its functonality.  Any Ideas

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

put it in a zip file -- and when you upload it, make sure to specify that it requires Excel 2007, as it is not going to be useful to anybody who does not have it (like me  ).

[Gondor]

Thanks,
   Worked great.  The file is uploaded.
   Since you cannot view it, I will try to describe it and include any copyright problems.

     The user chooses Level (1-20), Profession, Race and Relm; with an option to pick Elementalist type and Priest spells.  The program then generates aprox 25 skill/skill catagory, stats and up to 8 spell lists based on these choices.
     The stats are set based on profession and race, slightly lowered for levels <=6.
     The skills are set based on stats, adolescent developement and what I thought to be a good average ranks per level + profession bonuses.  These are calculated with combined skill progression, except for hits and power points which are figured as per core rules.
     The 8 spell lists are randomly chosen based on Profession and Relm.  The lists include name of spell, effect, duration, range and sometimes type, but have no descriptions (same format as the vault download from EquesNiger, my thanks to him for saving me some time).
     The user also chooses a catorgory of items.  These catagories are:  Random, Non-Magic General, Non-Magic Armor, Non-Magic Weapons, Non-Magic Shields, Herbs, Poisons, Runes, Single-Use, Daily-Constant-Charged, Magic General, Magic Armor, Magic Weapons and Magic Shields.  Six items are ramdomly generated based on this choice with the average potency increasing with the level of the NPC.  Depending on the type of item, different stats appear about that item, but no descriptions.  If a unique item appears, it says to see TC#.  The only exception to this is with herbs and poisons which have a short description similiar to the utility by Randy Severance.  The items are fairly complete in that they do not say daily item with a level 5 spell 2 times per day,  it specificaly tells you what that spell is.
     Finally there is an area in which you can manually call up a spell lists.
     I am open to anyone adding to, improving, or having ideas about this program.  I will be checking back in this forom for any questions.
    Thanks...Enjoy

[Gondor]

Has anybody had a chance to look at it?  Any ideas, problems, questions or opinions on how it works.  I just got married two weeks ago and haven't/will not have a chance to play for a while, so I can't really play test it.  Anyway I would appreciate any feedback you may have. 

Thanks again

[pastaav]

Has anybody had a chance to look at it? 

For myself the problem is that you have used Excel 2007...no way I pay that kind of money for Microsoft Office when there is Open Office.

I suppose there are a number of people on the forum that have payed Microsoft lots of money to be able to use Microsoft latest format, but quite many of us have not.

Try google for OOXML if you want to learn more about dirty business of Office formats.

[thiha]

Would this converter available at Microsoft be some help?
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&displaylang=en

After applying the converter, you can open MS Office 2007 format files on your MS Office 2003 softwares.

[pastaav]

Would this converter available at Microsoft be some help?
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&displaylang=en

After applying the converter, you can open MS Office 2007 format files on your MS Office 2003 softwares.

Provided that you spent money on MS Office 2003 in the first place...

[craggles]

...



I am speechless!!!!



What an amazing feat! The amount of work that's gone into the excel is amazing and it's a shame that it requires ecxel 2007. It works nicely in Excel 2008 for the Mac by the way. Which is great as I'm having problems with all the character sheets from the Vault and Excel 2008 - the macros aren't supported in this version and it's dropping them out. They load in Excel 2004 for the Mac but don't work still and that's the same that happens in OpenOffice too.

I was a Rolemaster 2 user in my youth and a couple of years ago I tried to get back into things and it was RMFRP at the time so I bought a lot of what I needed (little did I know that they'd be releasing Rolemaster Classic soon!) but things happened and nothing came of it but now I've been learning the rules again (and purchasing the odd source PDF that I didn't already have) with the plan of having some major campaigning going on with my kids over the xmas holiday!

The reason for the little background there was to paint the picture of where I'm at currently. I can admire the effort but can't judge the content until I've play tested it - and I will certainly get back to you on that.

I still have a smile on my face as I'm randomly generation NPCs with a click of a button!   Generating NPCs was a whole lot of work back in Rolemaster 2 but with all the new options in RMFRP, it was going to be a nightmare for me.

(Speaking of which, I've not even created the character sheets for my family's Characters ...I wonder if they'd notice random characters) 

The one thing I will mention though (as I'm a graphic designer, I can't help it), and that's the presentation. I'm all in favour of getting something that works and has been tested before going into the look and feel of it but I wanted to show you this (it's not a finished product as you'll see with some of the border lines but I hope you get what I mean): Image link

I can't wait to use lots of NPCs!!!

[Gondor]

I am very happy someone had a chance to a look at it.  It started off as a smaller project; there was always just one more thing I wanted to add, then another, then another?..  In the end it got kind of clustered.  I was so relieved when I couldn?t think of anything else to put into it, that presentation fell to the way side.  It could definitely be tidied up a bit.  I have always hoped it would be improved by others.  I would like to see what you come up with.

[craggles]

Image link

I had a link to an image in my message but here's a small version here...


I shall be editing it some more by the time I get all the PC created. That's causing a lot of hassle currently as the macros aren't working correctly on my Mac in Office 2008, Office 2004 or OpenOffice which means that the current RolemasteriComplete.xls doesn't give me the option of only printing a certain amount of skills or levelling up. The other character sheet doesn't allow me to set the training packages.
I'm going to be creating a new excel sheet and link to the certain skills in each of my PC's sheets and then I can format that to my heart's desire and have everyone's character in a different sheet of the workbook which will auto update as the individual sheets are amended - that's about the limit of my excel technical wizardry.

...yep, I don't even have a rank in that skill, just an adolescent rank in the skill category. My rolls are crap at using the character sheets and I'm getting spectacular failures in my Excel and Open Office static Maneuvers - and now I've got to wait until I add an extra rank in that skill to try again.  :S

[craggles]

The speed of my character creation leaves a lot to be desired so the campaign hasn't started yet but I've compared the PCs I've created next to the sample NPCs that the sheet created and they are very close!

I have no doubts at all that this little beauty will come in VERY handy!!!

Thank you VERY much (again)!!!

[craggles]

Hi jdenboer

We've started the campaign now and I've purchased the Great City unban adventures (made by 0one games). I was going to wait until ICE officially converted all the D&D 3.5 NPCs into ICE stats but on reading through the adventure scenarios, there's a whole lot of D&D 'type' NPCs there. There are trolls, orcs, goblins, bugbears, warewolves etc as residence of the city which is a little 'off' from my game world (which is mostly LOTR type stuff in that orcs and trolls are bad, humans, elves, dwarfs and halflings are good) so I'm using your utility to create these NPCs and changing their races to be inline with my world.

There's one thing that I didn't take into account when I used the utility previously and that is the armour type. After creating the PCs, the totals for MMs, especially swimming, were in the minuses because of the armour penalties as well as the skill in the armour.

In your NPC generator, this doesn?t seem to be dynamic. There's a space to input the AT but it doesn?t effect the skill bonuses. I am using Excel 2008 (for the Mac) and there are things in other Excel character sheets that don't work for me so this maybe one such time.

I just wanted to ask whether it was just the Mac version of Excel that's to blame.
(I'll be guessing at the penalties in the meantime) 

[jeff]

how do you reopen it if you don't have 2007?

[craggles]

Hi Jeff - Was that question directed to me or was it for the creator?

The mechanics of the character sheet requires Excel 2007 (or higher) in order to generate the NPCs. The code doesn't work in anything lower than Excel 2007 or any of the open source office apps (like Open Office & Neo Office) at all.

I can open it as I'm using Excel 2008 which is for the Mac (and the reason it's a different year to the PC's 2007 version)

The Open Source Office versions are great - but unfortunately, they don't have 100% of Microsoft Office's features.

[jeff]

yah I use a mac to and have office 2004. Oh well thanks