TRPG General Chat

Grubermensch

2:06 AM

First draft of my 5E Character Spreadsheet. Go forth and suss out all my bugs! docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/…

Oxinabox

2:24 AM

When it is done: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/37806/…

"Show off your Character Sheet Designs"

write up about its features and any special techniques you used and add it to the community show off thread.

There is (surpisingly) not a single spreedsheet sheet in the collection.
THere is one in MS-Access and one in PHP, and one in Google Draw, but no spreedsheets

Grubermensch

I do all my sheets in spreadsheets now, because it's so easy to tweak things if I hit an edge case in the rules.

Oxinabox

I don't, because I find the too unpretty,
also i generally dislike computers at the table,

Grubermensch

I have been playing over the interwebs of late, so it's not an issue.

Oxinabox

(Though I do allow people to have laptops so we can search for rules)

Grubermensch

I actually prefer physical books for rules, as I find them easier to navigate.

wax eagle

2:30 AM

@Grubermensch I'm hoping wizards has something close the the 4e compendium online by the time we get into next year and I'm running a regular group. It's made life so easy

Oxinabox

I really like havign both

Grubermensch

@waxeagle I've never used an actual rules database. So my experience is limited to PDF rules, which frequently suck.

Oxinabox

the physical books are great for most thing,
but then you hit something weird, like Mage the Ascention, the Magical Tools section is in a really wired place, so being able to do Ctrl+F is handy

Or when answering this question: http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/41462/does-blood-and-smoke-invalidate-previous-vampire-books/41470#41470
I checked it all, by doing Ctrl+F for the word "book"

Grubermensch

As a UX developer, working with PDF rulebooks often frustrates me.

Oxinabox

WRT your character sheets I really like your use of colour and having the attributes on the left and right, that is nice

Grubermensch

2:36 AM

Because I sit there and say, "gosh, I could make a system that would make this much much better" and then copyright rears it's ugly head and I become disappointed

@Oxinabox Thanks. So many character sheets neglect proper usage of color, probably in deference to legions of gamers printing them in black and white. With spreadsheets, this is not an issue.

Oxinabox

WRT UX (pdfs cold be so much better): A friend of mine is pressuring me to join (/co-found) a software and RPG publishing company to do exactly that.

Grubermensch

PDF is a terrifying monster

Oxinabox

indeed.

Grubermensch

Adobe has an unfortunate problem of making things that are so tasty from the outside, and then you look inside and Cthulhu rips your brains out through your fingertips.

Oxinabox

yes.

VERY TRUE.

I emember the days when Acrobat Reader was < 50 Mbs.
now it is over 200

PDF is a super awkard format. because of the multiple ways things can be represented. Parsing it is such a pain.
It would have been nice if microsofts XAML based format had taken off.

wax eagle

2:41 AM

@Grubermensch vomit. I've written two bits of functionality that use PDF and they both suck

Grubermensch

@Oxinabox I started working with SVG this summer and it's so nice to be able to poke at things in a text editor when Inkscape goes down the crazy train.

wax eagle

(one is just an implementation of a 3rd party HTML to PDF converter that munges our HTML and spits out PDFs...it works ok unless you have 100 or so images, and then it wets itself. The other is a GhostScript wrapper that converts PDF pages to JPEGs and its...well...mediocre, but does the job)

Oxinabox

I had the strange realiseation that the only thing I *ever* use perl for is drawing vector images.
Including SVG.

Really cool thing in inkscape is that is supports SVG features that it can't create.
Like multiple reference to the same base object.

Grubermensch

I worked on adding hyperlinks into PDF exports from 3d modeling software. Using an outdated 3rd party PDF library. It was an adventure.

wax eagle

(I actually took a pass at writing my own HTML 2 PDF conversion tool a while ago, it works OK for nicely formed HTML...but if you know anything about HTML....)

Grubermensch

2:45 AM

@Oxinabox THIS WAS THE HELLSCAPE I WAS ON TWO WEEKS AGO

Oxinabox

Inkscape or svg?

Grubermensch

But then I just opened the file and did it manually and the heavens parted and angels sang out. Then I discovered a five-year old bug in WebKit rendering and was sad again. But it was good for a time.

@Oxinabox <symbol> elements in Inkscape

Oxinabox

mm. it is a really nice svg feature.

Displaying SVGs is unfortuanly still akward.
it is better thasn it used to be, but still not very conveient
and becasue people have to support legacy things end up getting rasterised oin the webserver...

Grubermensch

But confoundingly not supported by Inkscape. They have the significant part of it already, they just need to push the <symbol> into definitions.

I'd do it myself but open-source code is frequently terrifying.

Oxinabox

Ok, back to work,
and then to learning about london.

London is one of the most amazing WoD settings.

for 2 reasons:
- even new things are is over 100 years old, often over 150.

- It is one of the most tunnelable cities in the world, because ot he london clay.

doppelgreener

2:53 AM

... does D&D 5e acknowledge a sense of smell?

Oxinabox

I am really surpised it has not been published in any wod book

Grubermensch

@JonathanHobbs Major Image specifies that it creates smells.

doppelgreener

does it have the spot/listen thing going on, or a general Perception?

Grubermensch

The word "smell" or "smells" shows up about 6 times in the rules.

@JonathanHobbs Investigation actually

"If a creature discerns the illusion for what it is, the creature can see through the image, and its other sensory qualities become faint to the creature."

Perception "lets you spot, hear, or otherwise detect the presence of something," which leaves it open to interpretation.

doppelgreener

huh, okay :D

those sound good and useful

wax eagle

3:11 AM

Anyone looked at the new 5e sleep spell (not sure if it changed from last playtest doc). Odd little guy

@JonathanHobbs was going to say...indirectly...there are references to it, but no mechanical effects of it far as I can tel

Grubermensch

@waxeagle Minor changes from the last playtest version. Does seem very jarring to the flow of combat to have to work out all of those numbers though.

wax eagle

@Grubermensch yeah... will be interesting to see it in play (does the starter wizzy have it?)

Grubermensch

AND THEN I SAW IT. Spell has no saving throw

wax eagle

ooh he does. Yeah no save.

(and not party friendly)

Grubermensch

I suppose technically speaking you could use it on yourself too.

Elves have immunity. Could be a nasty tactic for a band of elvish wizard-thieves.

wax eagle

3:21 AM

@Grubermensch could be.

One of the things I'm going to look closely at is, is it ever a good idea to cast low level spells at higher spell levels, or is that a waste...

But so far I've only selected half of my L1 spells :|

Grubermensch

Well the healing spells are designed to be used that way, there's not much of an option around it.

Even if you would in absolute terms heal more casting at L1 repeatedly, the opportunity cost of spending more time at it probably outweighs the cost of burning a higher slot.

Technically speaking, you might also be able to use a higher level spell slot with Light to overcome magical darkness, the way the spell is worded.

In fact with the spell list in Basic, that's pretty much your only option to overcome Darkness.

Not a bar, but plays one on TV

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