Visions of Aestia

Some of the tasks I want to accomplish with RDF, in no particular order.

Keep track of the relationships between characters in a novel, movie, or role-playing game. (FOAF?) Maybe I will finally figure out who shot Mr. Burns.

Create or query for NPCs with some stated constraints, such as “a level 4 character with the Quick Draw feat and at least 5 ranks in the Tumble skill.” (OWL or SPARQL) A good random character generator. No, really.

Represent the semantics of a snippet of Python code with OWL. Generate Python code from an OWL Full description (since both Python and OWL Full allow classes to be treated as instances). Because I am a geek.

Generate human-readable RPG rules from RDF. I can now find and eliminate contradictions in the rule sets before publication.

Write a reasoner that can play a card game like Rokugan, with each card and its rules represented in RDF. No longer do I have convince my wife to play.

Encode enough semantic meaning into a screenplay that I can change any detail about a character and have all dialogue and descriptions reflect this. This will of course displace the standard Hollywood script writer, especially when the program is smart enough to handle replacing a human character with a talking dog.

Animal Planet is going to be airing a segment on dragons. On the one hand, as an avid role-player, I certainly applaud any documentary that approaches one of my favorite creatures.

http://animal.discovery.com/convergence/dragons/dragons.html

On the other hand, I can’t help but worry about the general state of science programming on television. This feels very much like all those pseudo-documentaries about mummies and UFOs that get constant air time. No real substantial debate, mostly speculation, and constant repetition of key themes with little or no rigourous review of challenge.

In other words, pseudo-science instead of real science. Sure, “Scientific American Presents” and “Nova” present real science, but you’ll notice they get little traction against the huge volumes of rubbish being pumped out. Not a good trend at all.

EN World - Morrus’ D&D / d20 News & Reviews Site - Scenario Writers Needed

Reminder to myself to start keeping track of our B5 campaign in writing. 30,000 words by March?

Here’s the revamped step 3 screen, selecting a class. This one shows the traits and description both expanded.

I’m unsure of the best way to present the description, preqs, and class features in a manner consistent with the HIG. One idea I’m toying with is to just show the traits from the current class level and have an “Information” button that brings up a simple, read-only popup window (either a rich text or HTML widget) with a close button.

You’ll note the warning icon next to the giant racial level; this is how any class with unmet prequisites would be displayed. There will be a configuration option to simply not list unavailable classes, but many (most?) people like to plan ahead for prestige classes and will want to examine the features and preqs.

D20 Shakespeare

Damn and double damn! I was working on this! Well, maybe I can see about doing one of the other plays for them. Midsummer’s Night Dream, perhaps?

Here we go with the second screen from the character generator; this is the revised “select race” step.

This has an effect on the ability scores, which is currently not shown. The “Description” area collapses down in the same fashion as the “Racial Traits” area, under the assumption that anyone who has been through this screen before will largely ignore it.

The clan/bloodline combo box, currently disabled, would be for selecting a clan, bloodline, or subrace as appropriate for a given race and campaign setting.

Essays 1743: font by John Stracke

This is a realy nice role-playing font. I might want to play with using it as the body font for the Aestia book.

Always put your dice away after a game if you have little children.

If you don’t, you’ll have to miss a day of work because the little one has been taken down to ER.

Here is the first screenshot from the character generator. This is the screen for rolling and assigning ability scores.

This is currently set to the standard 4d6, drop 1 method of rolling. The dropped die is shown here grayed out. The combo boxes can be used to quickly swap scores around.

The plan is that you hit “Roll” until you have some nice scores, then use the combo boxes to put scores where you like. One or two swaps should be fine for most people.

Of course, the DM will be able to restrict the rolling methods, number of rolls, and range of scores. By range, I mean that the DM will be able to set minimum and maximum point buy equivalents so that players will not get excessively high or low combinations.

Last night’s work eliminated 200 lines of buggy code, replacing it with 20 lines of far nicer code.

In addition, I made significant progress towards GNOME HIG 2.0 compliance. The abilities screen has been overhauled, and the ‘add equipment’ created.

I also made the decision to turn the “new character” process into a wizard. It really fits best as we have a standard, step-by-step process for character creation, but for some reason it…irks me. No concrete reason.

It’s always nice to see participation up in a shared initiative like the wiki. Hopefully the trend will continue.

I’ve decided to prepare a one-off Babylon 5 adventure for tomorrow’s game. I really need to get familiar with the starship combat rules if I’m ever going to run a campaign, and a one-off seems the obvious way to playtest the rules.

Of course, we have the option of just rolling up characters for a ’stand-by’ campaign, which will probably be a B5 series of arcs.

I wanted to write this down while I was thinking about it.

FOAF is supposed to capture relationships between people as RDF. You could easily use it to capture relationships between characters in a campaign setting.

Imagine if a character generator created FOAF entries as your campaign evolved? What a great DM tool!

A few weeks ago I had an epiphany regarding character generators.

See, the problem with serializing rules as XML is that RPG rules are rather loosely defined. Lots and lots of rules are written by reference to other rules (the same as lesser dominate, with a longer duration) or as an exception to the usual rules. Many rules create new stats or categories.

What’s more, lists of rules that fit certain categories often gain new members when a book is published, such as the list of bonus fighter feats that just gets longer and longer with every feat book.

So attempting to define a solid XML schema seems more and more a pipe dream the more books you own. What we really need is a way to extend rule definitions in a haphazard, reasonable way.

Enter RDF. With RDF, I’m just making short, disconnected assertions about a rule.

• “Cleave is a feat.”
• “Cleave is a fighter bonus feat.”
• “Cleave is a prerequiste for Improved Cleave.”
• “Cleave requires Power Attack".

These sentences don’t have to be in the same book and some of these relationships can be inferred. This is really cool when you start thinking about all those wonky rule definitions.

• “Sea elves are elves.”
• “Sea elves have the racial trait water breathing.”
• “Sea elves are not proficient in bows.”
• “Subrace traits override standard racial traits.”

A character generator powered by RDF can automatically infer all the usual rules about elves, then add the two new rules. The last statement is necessary to resolve the contradiction (elves are proficient in bows, but sea elves are not).

Thinking about rules like this suddenly makes a lot of sense. And I think it’s key to doing things right in the long term.

I think one of the hallmarks of a good DM is the ability to wing it gracefully. Reading the ENWorld boards has got me thinking I’m getting good at it.

The +/-2 rule for modifiers is one of the best rules of thumb I ever came across. When in doubt, just add a bonus or penalty of +2 or -2 to account for oddball situations.

As I continue to move spells from wiki 1 to wiki 2, I’m struck by how many of them have “hidden” material costs. The Arcana Unearthed design meant that it was the caster rather than the spell that dictated which components were necessary to cast a spell; however it appears that many spells mention costly components in their descriptions.

I’m tempted to rectify that, but in many cases I’m sure the designer was trying to balance things. Maybe I’ll just tamp down the power of a few of them as I remove the component cost.

It’s amazing the sheer number of spells I’ve already typed in.
Currently, I’ve moved about 60 spells from the old wiki to the new one, and I’m not even done with the letter C. How many spells, really, do you need?

Maybe I should start looking at alternate spell systems, like Elements of Magic. On the other hand, the system right now is fairly nuanced. Too nuanced? Hard to say.