Using the char generator a lot! It is great!

Wondered Azrapse if C7 would give you a heads up re: Lake men culture for you to include it for the release of the Laketown book?

Thank you Azrapse! I'll do what you say and keep those points to manually add the weapon skill.

It would be nice, indeed.
So far I'm not aware if there will be some character sheet or creation procedure changes that will require me to update the generator. I guess I will need to wait an see, as everyone else...

After having listened to the interviews with Jon and Francesco, will be a new culture with their own virtues/rewards

Azrapse - I run a game using your Character Generator and online play tools. I noticed you said you host it yourself - do you want some money for hosting fees? Is there a donation button? Maybe you answered this upthread, so sorry if I'm rehashing old ground.

Having just moved across the USA, this app has let me keep in touch with friends and play a game that resonates with all of us. The tool has everything we need right there, and allows us to play via Voice Chat. It's remarkably easy, and is one of the reasons one of the guys who was adamantly against online play now admits he's wrong.

It's good stuff!

Hehe.
My main motivation to make this application was that I was moving across Europe from my home country to Finland and I was leaving behind my rpg group of friends. So I'm happy that it is as useful for you as it is for myself!

Regarding donations, I can't say that it wouldn't be cute to recieve such a token of appreciation. Thanks for the intention!
However, the application uses content from the game (skill descriptions and concepts) and I'm not sure if it would be frown upon if I start getting any amount of money out of it... If there is any overmind reading this, I would appreciate an answer to that, if only to satisfy my curiosity...

Nice catch Daedel. I never noticed it lacked the option to add a different weapon skill.

In Load Character from Code, it looks like the Gear section assumes that a character will have something in each position. Otherwise it moves the data up a line.

Create a character without headgear - but with armor and shield. Save to Code. Load from Code. The shield is displayed in the (non-existant) headgear space.

It doesn't break any functionality, it's just in the wrong place. An easy, but only temporary fix, is to delete the item and add it back in the correct spot. On reload the problem appears again though.

Thanks for the report, Garn.
I'll try to fix it as soon as I get some time.

Hi.
Later today I will upload the fixes for the last two bugs reported: being unable to pick up new weapon skills on creation, and gear slots sliding up to the "named" special gear slots after loading.

Encouraged by FunkBGR's post, I was playing with the possibility of adding a Donate button into the page. I don't plan to charge for the use of this application ever, it would be totally voluntary, to help with the hosting costs of the site (Actually, it's the only thing I have running on the site. I'm not getting any profit at all of it).
But before doing so, I'd like to know your opinions about it. If you think it would be wrong or it breaks any rule, I won't put the button.

Hell, in my opinion you can put up ten donate buttons on the site. It's worth it.

I'll be one of the first to send you a few dollars, and I urge anyone using the builder to do the same.

I'd certainly make a donation - the builder has been extremely helpful to me and my players

I don't see why you cannot ask for a donation. Many of the people who play have understood the character creation process better after playing around with your website.

This.

I'd donate.

There could be legal issues if lawyers considered the website as commercial because of the donation button. I doubt it would happen unless you made big money with it, but you'd probably better not ask for an official authorization.

And of course I would donate too. If money is too problematic maybe we can donate beer or pizza

You can stop the sentence there. Basically, if lawyers become aware of/consider the website at all, there will probably be a cease & desist while they "consider" it.

And then it would remain down indefinitely.

I'm pretty sure it's the "PDFs are electronic, therefore a game PDF must be an electronic game and thus in violation of someone's license" lawyer-think that is keeping C7 from even distributing free game content via PDF.

You can only imagine the field-day the same lawyers will have this. "Oh! You can make game character ON THE COMPUTER!"

Come to think of it, how hard would it be to make an offline version? I tried saving out the page and files, but it's a little wonky.

You know, just in case?

Long time since las update. I think it was February?

August 28th, 2012

• Now you can spend the initial points during character generation to acquire weapon skills not included in the initial package.
• Bugfix: Gear slots won't anymore slide up to occupy named gear slots during character load.
• Bugfix: When selecting a cultural weapon group skill during creation, it will not generate a blank row in the Weapon Gear table.
• Added a Donate button to the main menu.

After the suggestions to add more cultures or backgrounds, or to support more languages, I have been thinking on giving the generator a big revamp.
It would consist on making it easily moddable, in a Wiki style.
People could apport new data chunks (for cultures, weapons, backgrounds, etc), or localization chunks for translations into other languages.
It would be totally free editing, like Wikipedia, so that everyone could add their own stuff and share it with others. Or maybe something like Steam Workshop, where everyone can create something and others can "suscribe" to it if they like it, but only the owner can edit it.
There would not be any fancy user interface for modding. Just editing some JSON code and post it into your mod collection window, so it becomes more feasible for me.

What do you think? Would it be worth the work? Would you see yourself using anything of that?

Okay. There is a lot of effort put on that application and I'm not sure if it is worth the trouble if I'm going to have a legion of lawyers knocking down my site because of some donation button...

I put it there following a suggestion, I remove it following other.




Totally unrelated to the Lord of the Rings, The One Ring, Middle-Earth Enterprises, or Tolkien at all... I give virtual hugs and accept donations in exchange. *wink* *wink* Do you feel for a virtual hug from a web developer? PM me now!

An offline version is possible, but it is not trivial to do. The application makes use of a lot of AJAX requests that require the page to be running from a server. How much interest there is on an offline version?

If you do that, it would be great if you could have a way to separate what's 'official' (ex : the people from Laketown in the GM screen) from what's 'fan-made'.

If the offline version could be run on an iPad - lots! The conventions I've gone to (both local, and GenCon) don't have WiFi in the gaming areas.

Just want to thank the creator of this very helpful program.
It really helps the gaming group!

Hopefully you think about adding Men of the Lake and other cultures like Rangers of the North and Elves of Rivendell as they become available.

Thank you for your nice words.

As soon as I have access to that information, I will add it to the application.

Holy mackerel. I just tinkered around with the builder and related tools. Terrific work, Azrapse!

Azrapse,

One way to get past the Donation legal issue is the have the donation button on a separate page. Thus it's not actually a donation directly because of the product from a legal standpoint. A lot of people who make Youtube content with copyrighted games and such do this for the same reason.

You're making a donation to the person to support them, not to "use" the product.

So, having tinkered around a bit more, there are two things I'd love to see:
* The ability to customize everything (relevant for those of us with lots of house rules, including new Cultures and whatnot)
* A second option for exporting to a forum in Textile (http://redcloth.org/hobix.com/textile) or, at least compatible to Textile (for Obsidian Portal users)

In any case, awesome asset. Thanks for building this!

Something got broken with the forum? I wasn't notified of the last two messages.
Sorry for the lack of answers, Tensen01 and Mordagnir.

About the donation, I don't know... Considering that the IP holder has a history of really being quite 4$$h0l35 with even simple mods for games and stuff, nowadays I have the impression that if my page has not yet knocked down by their lawyers is because none of them has yet heard about it.
I'm not quite sure of my legal rights in this respect. If me having this webpage about their IP could be considered just fair use, or if by simply mentioning a trademark name anywhere in Internet they could ram there and set everything on fire. If anyone knows better, let me know.
So far, this whole thing (including the unbelievable removal of the PDFs from the official site in the age of e-documents) has put me a little bit off investing too much (time, also the hosting money) into all of this (not only the game, also the whole IP). I have stopped my TOR campaign as a side-effect too.
Maybe the upcoming supplement will revive the flame in me. I hope so.
I guess, Tensen01, that I can put just a personal page in the root of my domain with the button there, and no links from the character page to it. Maybe I do that.

Mordagnir,
Both your request could fit on the mod library I planned for the future.
I could add more and more stuff as people request for it in the forum, but much of that would be unwanted by some, unneeded for others, or plainly ignored. For example, while I understand that you can have a good use for a Textile exporter, I have not actually found a forum that uses that syntax, and it would be tricky for me to create an exporter without being able to test it.
It looks totally fit for a mod that you could enable from the library and have it available in the main menu.

House rules, new cultures, new weapons, etc have the same characteristics. There could be hundreds of different houserules or cultures and I imagine it's clear to everyone that I couln't possible write the code for all of them.
With the addition of the new culture in the new supplement, I will have the perfect excuse to retinker the tool and make it more easily moddable.

Take a look at http://www.obsidianportal.com.

I'm actually pretty irritated that Obsidian Portal doesn't support basic HTML. It leaves me with a nagging suspicion that the site is maintained by the government. Only a large bureaucracy elects to use a format and standard preferred only by a small minority of the population.

So, I know I'm not the only one thinking this . . .

Azrapse, when do you think you will be able to update the online builder with Men of the Lake?

As soon as I get the new stuff? I pre-ordered the new supplement but I have not got it yet, and I have not got any PDF either to use as a source for the new culture...

If there is any place online I can go to get this info from, please tell me.

I wish it were different!
Guess we'll just have to wait until you get the new supplement.

Hopefully Azrapse will find the time to update the Character Builder with the Lakemen culture.
I must say that i really enjoyed to fiddle with this very helpful tool.

As it seems the "Donate" idea is dead, i would like to throw another suggestion in the ring.
How about "donating" the next book to Azrapse for his wonderful, and for players very helpful tool?

The information will be added in like... 30 seconds after the book arrives to my hands.
The problem is that it has not yet arrived. I got the mail like one week ago that my book would be delivered by airmail. It seems that it takes much longer than I expected for a parcel to arrive to Finland... It would be faster for me to take a plane to UK, buy the book from a bookstore and fly back here.

It's a shame that we aren't getting the PDFs anymore. Or it would have been done in no time.

On the donation subject...
Oh, stop it, you!


However, I have added a donate button to my main home page, that I use as a hub for my different projects (azrapse.es). If anyone wishes to donate something to me as a developer to help me pay for the hosting fees or to be able to draw more time from other projects that I have to do for a living to have more time to spend in these "fun" projects, I will be really really thankful.

Done

Thanks you, SaFe! I will put you in the credits with next update, if you don't mind.
Happy coincidence, I got the book today, so expect the new Culture and stuff to be added to the web page soon!

Update at last!

Added the new "Men of the lake" culture from the "Loremaster's Screen and Lake-Town Sourcebook" supplement! At last!
Sorry for the delay, but I got the book just today from the mail.

Please, tell me if you find any mistake!

Thanks Azrapse!

Will you add the descriptions/backgrounds to them, when you get some more time?

I don't get what you mean, Blubbo.
The Men of the Lake are added along with all descriptions to backgrounds, cultural rewards, cultural virtues, the new Minstrelsy trait, etc.
I wonder if you are getting a cached version of the page. Try pressing CTRL+F5 for refreshing the page ignoring the cache.

If that wasn't what you meant, please, tell me again what you think is missing.

Thanks Azrapse - that did it!
I thought there was a chance things weren't loading correctly. I refreshed the page/ignoring the cache and it worked.

:-) Great work!