Character Repository

[Simon]

OK...the time has come to get started on the Great Character Repository™

So...what do you want it to track? How do you want to be able to search for characters?

Ideally, everything that you can search on will be something that is automatically determined from the character file.....but there may be other criteria (which you would enter manually during upload).

Here's a few or the fields that I've got so far:
<ul><li>Character Name</li>
<li>Player/Creator Name</li>
<li>Template used (Heroic, Superheroic, etc.)</li>
<li>Base Points</li>
<li>Disad Points</li>
<li>Total Points</li>
<li>Max Active Points in an Attack Power</li>
<li>Max Active Points in a Defense Power</li>
<li>Max Active Points</li>
<li>Points spent on Skills|Perks|Talents, etc</li>
</ul>

Anything else that you'd like to see?

[Bill_CCHKK]

Originally posted by Simon
Anything else that you'd like to see?

For superheroic characters, the archetype would be useful. I guess that's true for heroic characters as well. Just the general categories like in the Champions book.

Search by specific powers (I need a villain with Strength drain)?

[Spideyguy]

How about the ability to sort by special FX (fire, ice, sound, etc.) if characters have chosen those fields on their powers? Is that too microscopic to search by?

[Simon]

The way I'm going to be handling this is to have the character "read in" during upload, indexing all of the searchable fields at this point.

I can see indexing the SFX of all Powers....might be useful and shouldn't be that exhaustive of a list on a given character (I'd only track unique SFX).

Searching by specific Powers would be a bit to fine-grained for this mini-app, however.

[SirViss]

You might want to include "Campaign" or "Campaign Type"...

[zornwil]

Is this for the "generic" one online? Or for a player's own custom one at home?

If the former, I like the archetype idea, and SFX are nice if you want to do it but because it will be so broad (unless you implement rules - which I'd support) and subject to mistyping that I feel it would be of very limited value.

If the latter, the above still applies, but I would like a custom classifiable field or (better) 2 of them so one can create a couple of their own classificatinos and search on those. For example, I might want to have 1 field that is the primary PC the villain is linked to, just as a top-of-head thought. More definitely, I'd want to classify according to their "villain type", a composite indicator of their lethality and the circles they run in. (I don't use this right now as there's no searchable engine, but I would if there were).

[RPMiller]

Genre would be a good one so that you could filter by type of characters. Supers, Fantasy etc.

[keithcurtis]

Originally posted by RPMiller
Genre would be a good one so that you could filter by type of characters. Supers, Fantasy etc.

Second for that, but the genre field doesn't have a drop-down, so people have probably enered in any number of variations on genre names. We would need a master list of genres with an option to "write-in" a custom genre.

Keith "Any ideas?" Curtis

[Trailblazer]

If this is for home repositories, Campaign Name would be really useful. If for online, it might still be quite relevant.

[Simon]

It's going to be online only.

[Killer Shrike]

I think the upload screen should require the setting of the following items:

Posters LoginName & Password (Im assuming that you will inherit the security from this website so all the users & passwords will be available already), unless they are already logged in.

Genre from a drop down (I know that there is a box for this in HD, but for better searching I wouldnt recommend using a type in)

Character Archetype(s) from a multi-select checkbox grid

Keywords (Optional)

A brief Character Summary (Optional -- defaults to "Campaign Use" if not filled in) -- this should be a quick blurb tagging the character for browsers, no more than 255 characters or so.


Picked up from the chararacter file directly as searchable/sortable:

Name, Base Points, Disad Points, Total Points, Total Points in each broad category (Skills + Perks + Talent, Powers + Martial arts), SFX

And some deterministic boolean catch flags like "hasNCM", "hasStandardTemplate", "hasCampaignRules", "hasEquipment", "hasPicture" and anything else that would make a useful criteria for filtering characters.

Also, one that I think would be useful would be "hasPointBalance" or somthing along those lines, indicating TRUE if a caracters Base + Dis + Exp = Total Points available or less. In other words, whatever condition causes HD to turn Total Points Spent RED in the app when a character is overpointed. Thus you could filter out characters that are "not ready for play as is" in the search criteria.

Version of HD the character was made with

The characters last save date.

The date the character was loaded into the Repository (useful for filtering/displaying "NEW" characters based upon the LastLoginDate of the logged in user)

Number of times Character Downloaded

Rating of character by all users (see below)
------

Also, in the interface, it should be possible for the poster of a character to upload a newer version, with a check box to overwrite the old one or create a newer version of the character -- thus a person could load up several "versions" of the same character, or templates and determine whether each version is useful and should be considered distinct or whether each version should be the definitive & only version available.

There should be a way for other users to rate characters; the 5 star system works fine, though I prefer a more granular 10 star system.

The number of times the HDC file is downloaded should be logged and displayed, preferably distinctly by IP.

A nice feature would be the ability to indicate to the Logged in user if a character they had previously downloaded has been changed/updated/a newer additional version is available.


Gotta run, maybe more later if they occur to me....

[lemming]

From Killer Shrike's, I just commenting on ones I feel compelled to comment on.

Posters LoginName & Password For upload, yes. Download I don't think should be nessasary
Keywords (Optional) Good one
"hasPointBalance" I don't think this one is useful since I tend to throw experience or whatever onto a character anyway, but that doesn't mean much, IMO.
Rating of character by all users Excellent.


Perhaps a forum for Character reviews? I think feedback would be a good thing and having them in one general area would be nice.

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by lemming
From Killer Shrike's, I just commenting on ones I feel compelled to comment on.

Posters LoginName & Password For upload, yes. Download I don't think should be nessasary
Thats what I meant ;)


Originally posted by lemming
"hasPointBalance" I don't think this one is useful since I tend to throw experience or whatever onto a character anyway, but that doesn't mean much, IMO.
It would only flag false if they didnt have enough EXP to cover their costs over BASE + DIS. If they had unspent EXP they would be ok.

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by Killer Shrike

There should be a way for other users to rate characters; the 5 star system works fine, though I prefer a more granular 10 star system.

[zornwil]

D'OH!

That' s what I get for not being attentive as I skim through.

(that other post deleted - sorry Killer Shrike!)

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by zornwil
D'OH!

That' s what I get for not being attentive as I skim through.

(that other post deleted - sorry Killer Shrike!) No worries; its all in the pursuit of the greater good.

[Killer Shrike]

"BUMP"

[Edsel]

My two cents. Catching up with the list so I've tried to list everything I've scene, other than Dan's original proposal of fields, which I like. I'm just talking about what I'd like to see since I don't know how difficult it would be to implement any of this. The only thing I know about xml is that those three letters are not in alphebetic order.

Archetype (Comment: Good idea, I'd like to be able to search for Bricks, or Mentalists, etc. depending on what I need.)
Special FX (Comment:By the character generally, this is good for a supers campaign, but I've scene characters with several different types of SFX for different powers. Perhaps that type could be called (I]Mixed[/I] or Unclassified. Also, for a non-supers game, it might serve much purpose.)
Campaign Type or Campaign (Comment:this is good if you find a character you like you can then see what others came from that campaign.)
Genre (Comment: Good idea. I guess you'd base this on the genre book its most closely related to.)
Keywords (Comment: Indifferent.)
Posters LoginName & Password (Comment: I'll simply echo a previous responce by lemming, For upload, yes. Download I don't think should be nessasary.)
Updates (Comment: Yes, you should be able to update a character that you posted.)
Last Save Date (Comment: If updates are allowed this is a must. I hope they'll be a way to make sure only the original poster can update the character.)
Ratings (Comment:Yes let the user rate the characters. I thing a 1 to 10 scale would be good.)
Number of Downloads ([B]Comment: A good way to rate popularity of the designer. Sounds good.)

A lot of people use house rules. My group certainly does. We make firearms more deadly and, in street-level campaigns, armor twice the cost. You might want to:[list=A] Have a way to indicate if the character was built strictly by the rules or has been built with house rules. Only allow characters that are built using only by-the-book rules.[/list=A]

[zornwil]

More 2 cents on each, just for feedabck to HERO:

Archetype - Agreed.

Special FX - Seems like it will be hard to maintain/use consistently. I'm pessimistic on how useful it will be.

Campaign Type or Campaign - Not sure, I see the same issue as Special FX, but depends on how we intepret this.

Genre - Needs to be from a standardized list, but very useful if so.

Keywords - I'd rather see Special FX and Campaign Type upt into a Keywords field than in their own fields, I think.

Posters LoginName & Password - As stated before, pw for upload. LoginName should be shown for all submissions.

Updates - Would be cool if we saw the revs individually.

Last Save Date - Necessary.

Ratings - I think as stated this would be very useful. Should be a vote-basis.

Number of Downloads - I'd rather go with Ratings and Number of Votes, personally.

I think characters should not be built with house rules but if those factored in, I think comments fields should be used to indicate what influenced the build.