Author Topic: ERA - Thoughts from a new user  (Read 1924 times)

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Offline Sirius24

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ERA - Thoughts from a new user
« on: February 07, 2016, 11:06:56 PM »
Greetings,

First of all I want to stay thank you for a great piece of software. I've read through most of the threads here, tried out the free version and a day later decided to simplify my XML-writing life by buying the RMFRP electronic books for ERA.

This type of client-server setup for a roleplaying game assistant software, that can be used on phones, is a step in a great direction for tabletop roleplaying. It helps concentrate on the game, and (especially with rolemaster) is invaluable if you don't want to spend half your gaming time looking up rules and/or tables!

With that said, here are my thoughts and comments so far:

1. The customizability is awesome. I am a software developer so I know my way around XML and configs. Our campaign is a customized Eberron setting ported to RM. Therefore all our races and cultures are custom, and I can easily add them and add their racial talents into the talents list, even. I've added a couple so far, as well as professions from an unavailable sourcebook, and simply copying from the template xml I've been able to do mostly everything.

2. I am a bit sad not to be able to add custom skill categories because they are not defined in the professions, which I can't edit because I've bought the package. I have a lot of custom content to enter and reentering all the professions which I already have feels a bit pointless, and like paying for a package has lowered the level of customizability. I will be using the workaround of adding them to another category and editing costs, but since that has to be done on 10+ skills on every character created, it's a bit of a chore.

3. I would like to be able to customize stat bonus progression. Our DM uses a -15 to +15 curve that is nonstandard (as far as I know). For now, I intend to have everyone work around that with the "special bonus" column to patch the difference, but that will have to be re-done every level because of stat progression.

4. We use the variable 3rd stat for skills, in an optional way. We are allowed to use either the category's 3rd stat or the skill's 3rd stat, whichever is better, per skill. I don't suppose there is a way to make it work that way. Currently, I intend to add doubles of every skill that uses a different stat, and use rank bindings to tie them together. The binding will have to be done for every used skill on every character though. Any way I can specify bindings in the XML ? Or other ideas to accomplish this?

5. Ability to configure and use training packages would be great. I often get 2 or 3 per character, and we make a lot of characters (they die, and followers are made more, and die more too!), so that would be pretty nice. Lots less manual tweaking.

6. Customizing DPs at a given level would be something I would use as well. We use more custom rules here, which is the 5-stat average formula + 15 per level. Also an extra 30 at 1st level. Currently, I plan to use training packages for that, by using negative DP costs, such as "Level 1 bonus;-30" (Please, don't fix that!) However should you actually implement my #5, I won't be able to do that any more ;)

That's all I can think of right now.

Thanks again for making this great tool!

Regards,

Sirius

Offline Sirius24

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Re: ERA - Thoughts from a new user
« Reply #1 on: February 08, 2016, 10:35:26 PM »
Hi again,

More questions/comments:

7. I am trying to associate starting languages (as in "Common 8 ranks to written, 4 to spoken") to races instead of cultures. From the template XMLs, there doesn't seem to be a way to do that. Is there an undocumented way?

8. If I can't do #7, I may make separate copies of each cultures for every given race, and change the starting languages therein. This way, the cultures "Goblin-Rural" And "Goblin-highlands" would both have the goblin language set, while "Elf-rural" would not. Is there a way to link cultures and races to filter the choosing screen?

9. We also use subcultures. There seems to be some kind of support for this as there is a "subcultures" folder, some templates in it and there is a data file from the Character Law as well. However the templates seem only to have some kind of link from a category to a group, which are already defined (to my knowledge) in Categories.XML. Also, I tried adding a second subculture to a race, but was never offered a choice of subculture during character creation. What is supported for subcultures so far?

Thank you in advance for your help!

Cheers,

Sirius

Offline Voriig Kye

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Re: ERA - Thoughts from a new user
« Reply #2 on: February 11, 2016, 07:10:38 AM »
It's good to know the product is appreciated. Thanks for your kind words.
Let's see about those questions:

1. I'm glad the format is easy enough to use.

2. It seems that there is a real need for "profession expanders", so I might consider adding them. This would probably imply additional XMLs where you can add or overwrite parts of an existing profession, so that this kind of tricks can be achieved with ease for advanced users. I have A LOT of features pending, so I'm not promising anything in the short term, but I'll keep it in the To Do list.

3. A custom stat bonus progression could be added. The thing is, I don't know how many people would use it. Stuff like the profession expander in (2) seems to be more of a priority since it would allow more to be done with the system. I might do a poll with the different pending features and see what generates the most interest.

4. The bindings are defined per character, so those are the only XMLs that you can edit to ease the process. Maybe you can do this:
a. Duplicate all skills in the Skills.XML
b. Create the first character and manually bind the skills.
c. Save it and open the XML file.
d. Find the <rankBindings> section in the character file, and copy it to all the other characters.
e. Done. Now all the characters have the same bindings.

5. I've never been able to convince my players to get into TPs. It is totally possible to add a more complex version with skill ranks gained, stat gains to roll, etc. But as I said before, there are so many features I could add to ERA, it is difficult to decide which to tackle next.
Reading about posts like yours, which allow me to know which features are requested the most, is really helpful in helping me decide.

6. Custom DP formula stands with custom bonus progression. I know how I would go about programming it, but there are sooo many other features waiting, that I can't promise it in the short term. You can add negative TPs???? Damn, I thought that had been fixed long ago. Ok, let's leave it there as a "feature" for now...

7. The concept of ranks gained is related specifically to cultures. This allows you to create a human raised in an elven community that knows how to meditate and speak elvish.

8. This is the same that happens by default with RMFRP. Races are given ranks in languages, but to be compatible with other RM books (Races and Cultures and RMU for example) you must see it as a culture that is normally associated with a specific race. See how it is done for Humans in RMFRP: you can choose common man or mixed man, but then you can choose mariner, woodmen, etc. For Dwarves, you would normally choose the same race and culture.

9. Subcultures are a concept from the Races and Cultures book. It changes the skills available to choose from when assigning hobby ranks. I use that book in my group, but it has not been officially offered as an ERA package so far, so RMC and RMFRP rulesets do not allow you to choose it. If your subcultures change the ranks provided for free to the character, the correct way to go about it is to create additional cultures, and name them differently (Goblin-Town, Goblin-Raider, and so on).

Offline Sirius24

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Re: ERA - Thoughts from a new user
« Reply #3 on: February 11, 2016, 12:13:55 PM »
Hi again and thank you for your reply.

I've been able to set up mostly everything I needed. I cleared the standard races and added 4 (so far) custom races, and for each race I added copies of the cultures it has access to. (We use the 12 cultures from races & cultures, with each race having access to few or many of them, as described by the DM's setting). I had to add default subcultures for each culture which is why I was asking about the subculture support, but as those are mostly identical files, that wasn't too much of a problem. We use the actual subcultures from the book, so restricting hobby choices automatically would be nice, but is not hard to just do manually.

I'm having to enter Flaws manually though, and I've wondered why they weren't part of the Core/Character Law package with the Talents.

I've added my custom skills to existing categories (after discussing with my DM) and those that should have different costs are seldom used, so editing it per character won't be too much of a problem. I could also use your idea of editing characters' XML automatically after creation (I will keep a regex replace somewhere) to solve that problem.

I've cut back each skill category to the 2 first stats, and added the 3rd stat individually to the skills, which allows me to create duplicates of the skills with the alternate 3rd stat.

Your idea of copying rank bindings directly into the characters' XML will save me a ton of time and allow me to save other players' time as well by copying probably 30 or 40 duplicate skills' binding.

Training packages, they would be a plus, but since you only need to enter them upon character creation, it's not much of a problem. The negative TPs really help me though (to offset the custom DP bonus per level) or I wouldn't be able to use the level up system and that would be a major thorn, because we have half the team that are players who are not interested in the complexity of RM. The knowledgeable players currently level their characters for them, but with ERA I can have them level up by themselves, which will be awesome for their interest in the game.

If I had to rate my desire for new features, it would be

1-Customizable stat bonus progression through configuration
2-Support for Training Packages
3-Support for new skill categories without redefining professions.

Next part is a new question:

I've been fiddling with the adventure module and with spells, and how to link spell lists, spells and attack tables.

With weapons, it is pretty simple as every character adds their weapon-skills, and those are directly bound to an attack table and easily chosen in the adventure module during combat.

With spells, I am not too sure. There is a single Directed Spell attack skill, and it is bound (only in the XML) to the "Shock Bolt" attack table.

In the adventure module, casting a spell (instantaneous or not) seems to result in a choice of spell and a spellcasting maneuver, but not in a resistance roll or attack (UI allows to enter attack result though).

Using a basic spell attack will make the resistance roll, but no attack roll.

Then, using a standard attack, I can use the Directed Spell skill, however that will necessarily use the shock bolt table.

So, I can add new directed spell attacks through the XML and bind them to different tables.

1. Is that the only way to do it? The UI will allow to bind a weapon skill to the Fire Bolt attack table for example, but then that attack is stuck in the weapon category instead of Directed Spells.

2. How do you generally work with spells in the adventuring module with your group? Opening up the 3 UIs manually one after the other seems a bit clumsy. I really like the initiative track and clicking the faces one after the other to resolve actions, having players roll their dice and inputting them so we have the result without looking up tables.

Again, I thank you very much for your help!

Offline Voriig Kye

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Re: ERA - Thoughts from a new user
« Reply #4 on: February 13, 2016, 07:53:59 AM »
Oh, so you use Races and Cultures. Sometime in the future, I will end up offering custom character creation steps, so that you can activate the "choose subculture" step for your group. But that requires a lot of work to avoid invalid combinations, so it is still a work in progress. Once ERA for RMU is released, it might get a priority boost in my ToDo list.

You're the second one to claim the Flaws in the Talents package. It used to be that since there was no way of filtering the list, adding flaws seemed too much of a bloat on that step of the character creation. Since some versions ago, I've added search by text and category filters, so it might be doable now. I will keep it in mind. Once it's done, it would obviously be included in a free update of the Character Law package.

Directed spells ARE weapon skills. You just need to add a new skill to the Directed Spells category, then click on the edit button on the left of the new skill, next on the options button (cog icon), make sure it is listed as an offensive bonus, and choose the attack table (you need to purchase Spell Law to have the other directed spell tables).
The example with shock bolt is just that, an example. (Note to self: I need to prepare a tutorial video for this part.)

During the adventure, casting a spell through the initiative bar will always open up the advanced spell casting dialog. After casting the spell you would resolve its effect. If it is not an attack spell (Wall, Buff, Healing) you just choose the targets, effect and duration (you can put r for rounds, m for minutes, h for hours). If it involves a target defending, you have to manually open the corresponding attack dialog (Attack or Basic spell attack). In the basic spell attack dialog you have a numeric field on the upper right where you can input the BAR roll, then enter the targets RR roll on the lower right.

At this moment of the adventure tutorial video you can see the BAR in effect. Sadly this is based on an older version of ERA.

Let me know if the explanation was clear, if not I might have to start with the tutorial videos for those features.

Thanks for your questions!

Offline Sirius24

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Re: ERA - Thoughts from a new user
« Reply #5 on: February 16, 2016, 03:59:00 PM »
Ahh yes of course, adding a new skill directly to Directed Spells and editing. For some reason I didn't think about that! I've added most of them to the skills list anyhow. With all the double skills for 3rd stats, language custom skills and all, our list is growing quite large, but the filters in the character screen make it all easily manageable.

As for spells, I was just wondering if I was missing something. Shouldn't be much of a problem to open up each UI case by case. We haven't played an actual game using ERA yet, but I am looking forward to our next game!

I just saw your posts on future features and packages, will reply when I find a bit of time.

Thank you for the follow-up on my questions!

Cheers,

Sirius