Tesunden Isles

[Nolgroth]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

Like the backstory 'wolf. Need to take a closer look at Rook and the final write-up for Arial himself.

[Starwolf]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

Thanks. The campaign seems to be developing into a sort of mix between Norse and Northern European style backdrop. So, I did some research on Norse magic (turns out most Norse dieties had some control over the magic realm. I could not locate an actual historical reference to a Norse God/Goddess of magic, but Odin was reputed to be the most called upon by any of the Norsemen that needed magical aid or power).

 

I also did some research on Corvids (Ravens and Crows), they are omnivores, and will eat small nuts, berries, and seed, however, they also eat meat. Usually carrion but sometimes small animals (field mice type) and insects. They were believed by peoples on both sides of the atlantic to have been either avatars of the gods, or messengers/servants of the gods. Some Norsemen believed that while the Valkyrie collected the souls of those that died in battle and were deserving to enter Valhalla, ravens collected the rest and ushered them to Hel. Odin also had two Ravens Huginn and Muninn (thought and memory).

 

I am working up some basic spell macros, but I will do away with them as you replace them with "official" ones. I am looking forward to Thursday with some anticipation. I am curious to see if our late night guest turns out to be friend or foe

[Nolgroth]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

Huginn and Muginn were the names of my backup drives for a while. Some years back, there was a video game called Midgard announced. It turned out to be vaporware, but the concept art is where I draw a lot of my inspiration from. And the Northern Pantheon is primarily drawn from Norse mythology with other stuff thrown in. For example, the dwarfs worship three deities; Mountain, Forge and Sky. Those are pretty simplistic terms because each of the deities takes on multiple roles. Forge also has aspects of a hearth deity for example. Also, dwarf deities are not given genders and personae. They are more concept and philosophy than anthropological.

 

There has been a recent trend among the dwarfs to actually worship more tradition personalities. Father Thunder, as listed on Dwinden's sheet in my blog, is one example of this. This is considered heretical amongst the dwarf population as a whole and these cults are often suppressed.

 

Elves have their own pantheon that exists separately from either the Northern Pantheon or the Southern Pantheon. It is probably the most "Christian-like" as it venerates a Creator god and his angelic servitors. That pantheon has inspired a similar faith amongst some humans in the Southern Realms.

 

The Southern Pantheon is a vast list of gods, spirits, demons, ghosts and other entities picked from thousands of civilizations that have risen and fallen over the millennia. There is much overlap between deities and to the Northerners, completely confusing.*

 

* This basically gives an "out" to the players coming from the Southern Realms. Any fantastic or mythological deity is fair game.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

And regarding "Official" macros. Um yeah. I just kicked on the server and will start working on those. I may define anything that does damage as a "weapon" for purpose of macros. At least until I hash out the new code. I think I have a solid base. Just need to work a little more at it. And test it. Maybe tomorrow before work. I'll get some of the basic stuff done for now.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

Oh and 'wolf, can you send me the version of Celedron that Terrie is using? I think I updated it (removed Martial Arts and changed some other stuff) on my end. I would like to make sure I have the right one.

[Starwolf]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

Oh and 'wolf' date=' can you send me the version of Celedron that Terrie is using? I think I updated it (removed Martial Arts and changed some other stuff) on my end. I would like to make sure I have the right one.[/quote']

 

Sure thing.

[Starwolf]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

K... i need help/advice. I tried loading/running your Heal Spell macro, and your init macro in the posted campaign file and I keep getting an error saying I don't have enough permissions to run the macro. I am running as GM while I try to do this coding, so i am not sure what I am doing wrong or what I need to change so that I can run them. My initial thought was to use that macro as a base a modify it for other spells. Having said that, I have a much more simplistic power/spell macro working, but it doesn't do a lot of the automated things our current attack macro does so it wold require more manual damage calculations, and book keeping, as it just shows the total damage/effect rolled and doesn't consider target defenses. Also I don;t have them setup for a list as that would require some sort of token property modification... and I don;t want to muck about with your token properties without your permission. SO... shoud I create a single macro for each spell (I know it's my lokout to track them)? Or should I wait for you to create the spell stuff? Or can I create a spell property string similar to what we have for weapons, and store them in a token property (for this I would need to either work on your server in GM mode or we would need to collaborate on the properties needed so that I can add them locally. Let me know how you want me to proceed. Thanks oh mighty one

[Nolgroth]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

Not sure why it is throwing an error message. Working just fine on my end.

 

I am almost ready to test the attack powers macro. I just need to do a bit more coding on it. That will not solve the issue with things like Self-Only powers, Darkness and other things that do not have a direct Dice of Damage/Effect, but it will handle those. I hope. So much has to be put in first and I have not had all of the individual macros coded yet. I'll try to finish that up tonight.

 

As to most things that are self only, a Skill Roll block, a text output of what the power does, and maybe even a getProperty/setProperty command are all that is strictly needed. I'll get to cracking on those.

 

Still not sure why it is giving you permissions errors. Do you have Lib:Combat on the same map. That has been known to cause me problems in the past.

 

EDIT: I am going to start up the server while I work on this code. It would make things go much easier if I can get the powers stuff done before next week. Failing that, we can roll each element separately and apply it to the individual token using the Heal/Damage macros. Just in case, I am going to go ahead and create an Aid macro that simply adds to the currentValue of a given characteristic. That will be a little rough, but at least it is an interim solution while I work on building and testing the power set.

[Starwolf]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

Ok, I couldn't find your server, so I started working on spell macros on my local copy of the campaign. I am concentrating on the non-damage type macros, for now. I figured I would let you tackle them unless you want me to. In the meantime, here is where I am at. I have figured out your target selection, and range logic, and your END expenditure logic. I have successfully created a Darkness to sight gourp macro. It asks for variables, has you select the target, rolls the RSR, rolls the hit roll taking range penalties into consideration, checks for success or failure, outputs the effect if there is success, and then automatically expends the END for the spell. I am basically trying to follow your formula listed in paragraph 3 fo your last post.

 

I figured that on some spells, like Darkness there might be a need to expend END on subsequent phases to maintain an effect (this could also apply to my Asherons Wall (Barrier) spell). So I created an Expend END macro that asks for END input and expends it (updates currentEND).

 

While working on Asheron's Wall (Barrier) I got to thinking about defenses. Should I have the macro set the current defense properties, and then maybe create a second macro to "recover" or basically deactivate the defenses set? Another question for this "power", the reason I bought barrier instead of trying to create a force field type of thing, is so that as I ivest XP into it, it can represnt a larger "force wall" which brings into question area effect defenses... I suppose for now we can just use the characteristic input macro for each token protected to modify thier defenses. Let me know your thoughts.

[Starwolf]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

K... I got my detect magic macro done. I rolls my RSR and if successful rolls a PER roll to the GM...

[Nolgroth]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

Sorry about the server not being up. Had a really tense day/night. Sort of retreated into blowing stuff up so I shut down the server to run Oblivion for a while. Then I wasn't thinking and forgot to set it up again when I went to sleep. Up now.

 

I actually have a method for Constant END use, but your method is probably better. Mine has the macro set a flag constantEndCost. If it is set to 1, then automatically subtracts END. I think I am going to withdraw from the auto-calculation methods. I keep thinking of Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park. "Sometimes I get so caught up in what I can do that I don't stop to think if it is something I should do." (paraphrase)

 

Barrier only needs Constant END expenditure if you buy it with Costs END to Maintain.

 

Was thinking about Barriers, Darkness and other AoE stuff yesterday. I'm thinking that we might just drag (or have the macro create if we figure that out) a new token image to represent. In the case of a Barrier, it would have Defenses and Body. To attack anything behind that, you need to "kill" the Barrier first.

 

More thoughts later. Have to go get food. Hungry.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

Very Slight Update: Okay, so far I have gotten the Power Attack macro to do the familiar Target List Call-up, Pull up the selected power, Calculate the skill roll and, pay end cost (including Stun Damage if the End Cost of the power exceeds currentEND), and based on the success of the skill, output either the variable values or a message that the skill roll has failed. Now this doesn't do anything yet, but it means that the data is being shifted around successfully without errors. I am about to test Charges and then End + Charges.

 

Now the way this works is that each power has an Active Point Cost and a Point Per Damage Class (PPDC) value. It simply divides the APC by the PPDC (dropping any fractions) to get the number of d6 rolled. For example, a 60 Point Blast will divide into a 12d6 attack. Now it does not handle Advantages within the code (I dropped that for simplicity), but you could change the PPDC to reflect the presence of Advantages. That way, as we go forth, Aid, Drain, Succor and Suppress will all change how many dice the attack has. I'll just have to figure out how to tie Fade/Recovery rate to Post-12 recoveries. May just manually apply those like we currently do Healing and Damage.

 

We are nearly there. I can taste it.

[Starwolf]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

A slight update is progress

 

Confucious say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step...

 

Solron got a hold of me and said you cleared him to join the game. I will help him get a character together, and submitted.

 

We are indeed nearly there... and I hope that is success you are tasting, the alternative is, well unpleasant

[Nolgroth]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

General Update (and reply):

 

Macros for Powers: I am having a heck of a time getting these to work in the same way as we use for weapons. For now, I am "regressing" back to single macros for each spell. It will work, it is simple. The only drawback is that each token and it is accompanying macros will require a fair bit of customization. I can deal with that for now. Rewriting the foundation code for that should take about 30 minutes and about the same for each of the macros. Sucks but there you go.

 

Campaign: I have added a new player. ghost-angel will remember him from Gemini Ascendant. This new mysterious figure is none other than Solron. I have not received a character submission yet, but as soon as I do I will start to integrate him into the storyline. Sorry Solron, but this might take a game or two to do successfully.

 

Reply to Starwolf: Success maybe but it is going to be via a different route until I can edumacate myself a little more on MapTool's Scripting Language. As far as what I am tasting, I think I need an antacid for that.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

I should have listened to myself with the whole "less is more" idea. If I had been "less" concerned with packing as many features into the macros as possible I might have gotten "more" macros done.

 

The good news is that, while tracking END in terms of whether or not you have enough and applying Stun damage is out, I think I might have found an easy way to do martial arts special maneuvers. You see it all started with a spell. This particular spell (of Celedron's) adds damage to an existing bladed weapon attack. The way I have it operate is to call the original attack macro for the blade and then a separate macro to add the extra damage. Taking that concept, I should be able to move the Martial Arts maneuvers from the token properties and into a separate macro or macros. I think it would be feasible and easy to just use an input window to select the maneuver from a list. Then that macro calls a special damage (Disarm, Trip, whatever) macro to implement the actual effect. Don't have time to experiment with that today, but it is the closest I have come to actually having a clue how to implement that.

 

And back to the extra damage macro, it is perfect for adding damage like Poison. Right now it looks for a defense. Should be somewhat easy to add Immunity_Poison as a defense and go from there. I think everybody knows what I think of that method, so we could define a Poison defense as well. In either case, our options are starting to add up.

 

I need to sleep for a while. I might be able to get the basic Warrior Mien spell ready for Celedron. From what I saw earlier, looks like you might have Arial's spells up and running.

 

Stupid week. Looking forward to today's game. Lots of potentially interesting twists and turns. Just got to get some sleep and try to break out of this funk I'm in. I'll chat with you all later.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

@Solron and Starwolf: Sent Starwolf a reply with some character edits. Please read and heed that e-mail. Thanks.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

Blog updated with last night's session.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

Update 9/13/10:

 

Well I have been a busy little bee, working on the mechanical aspects of the game. I finished up the basic macro scripting. I want to build a few of the spell macros, but I am taking that sort of thing easy this week. All of the NPC/monsters are presently written up and macro ready within MapTool so there should not be too many problems with prep work.

 

I modified the map a little bit. Added some furnishings to use as obstacles, weapons or just something to use as a springboard for whatever fancy maneuver you have planned. I also added something else.

 

I learned a little bit about Fog of War by reading the RPTools forums. I think I have a solution that allows me to still use FoW to obscure the unexplored portions of the map and still have it useful. Essentially, instead of using the tokens to reveal portions of the map, I will manually reveal them room by room. With the Vision Blocking Layer in place and this new technique, I think we will have a nice median solution. I also set it up so that Normal vision has a slight radius of darkvision to it so that everybody should be able to see their token in the dark.

 

Quick Tutorial: If You Cannot See Your Token on the Map

Sometimes we have a hard time finding the tokens. Whether this is due to not being centered on the tokens or that little problem with Fog of War we had last week. Well there is a solution that is readily available.

1. Click on the Window Menu and select Map Explorer. A window should pop up and you will see a list of things like Tokens, Players, Objects, etc.
   
2. Click on the little + sign next to players. A menu will expand that shows you the list of players.
   
3. From here you can either double-click on your character's name. This will center your view on your token. You can also right-click the name in the list and it is the same as right-clicking the token itself. This will allow you to run macros, change light sources, or even Edit the token itself. Say to change the Has Sight field to represent switching to Nightvision or Low Light Vision.
   

On a the more story-related elements, I have determined some more of the backstory that led to the dwarf exodus from Tesunde. This led to even further story development to the island itself.

 

Aside from some metastory (perhaps even metaplot) I had several ideas for different adventures. I plan on turning the Tesunden Islands into a very busy place. So far I have ideas for (titles in my head):

 

• The Old Holds (part of which is covered in this particular adventure)
  
• Sunken Dreams
  
• The Alley Wars
  
• Nodianne's Wrath (Nodianne is the Goddess of the Sea in this setting)
  
• To Break a Deadly Spell
  

And those are just the general titles so far. Each one has sub-parts (as in the Old Holds having at least 4-6 different ruins to explore and the Alley Wars having several permutations). Some of these concepts are very linear in nature (each of the Old Holds is probably a dungeon crawl) and some are more fluid (Nodianne's Wrath and the Alley Wars will probably be ongoing stories that take place in bursts). All in all, I can am excited about running this campaign.

 

Now to just have your characters not become Orc Chow next session. Hmmmm.

 

I have also tentatively invited another player to the game. I am hereby closing the recruitment status as that puts us at six.

[Starwolf]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

One quick note to add to the informaton about how to find your token. The token type has to be set to PC to see your token when it is not selected. That is what was causing my problems last week, I had somehow set my token type to NPC so whenever I clicked anywhere else on the map, my token lost focus and became invisible to me. Once I changed the type to PC my problems went away.

 

Nol, are you saying you got the basic spell/power macro coding done and now we just need to add the character specific spells to the tokens? If so, I would be glad to jump on the server and download the campaign file, and work on the grunt work of loading data for the macros. Especially since most of the spell macros are on my token anyway. If that is not what you are saying, let me just throw out that I have completed some functional spell macros for all of my spells.

 

I plan on tyring to get with Solron tomorrow night if he is available and work through how to use his macros. I'll let you know how it goes.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

I suppose what I am saying is that I do not have a generic purpose Powers macro yet....and for the time being I am suspending working on that functionality until I get to the point where I am having fun coding again. All Powers (spells, cyberware, etc) will have to be individually coded. What I was thinking as a nice middle ground is to code the individual macros for spells and place them on a token called lib:Grimoire. From there we can create a simple Input window with a list of spells, Switch, and MACRO call for each spell in the list. I am also going to create an Aid and Drain macro (works much like the Healing and Damage macro I already have) to cover that functionality. Most non-attack powers (Invisibility, changing Senses, etc) are just a matter of setting States or Token Properties. Barrier would just create something that we can either draw or, given that I know the size and appropriate Special FX, whip up in GIMP ahead of time. Whenever the barrier is cast, you simply drag the token over and place it.

 

In other words, build a few prototypes and modify those base ones for each individual power.

 

P.S. And you may want to check the Skill Roll name you have rolling. Stygian Bonds seems to be a common thread amongst your macros.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

Blog Update: Session overview for 9/16/10.

[Starwolf]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

OK... Here is my suggested work around for our Autofire issue. According to 6E2 page 42, AF works like this... State your attack intention including target(s) and number of shots fired.

 

If the AF is fired at a single target there are no OCV penalties. Roll a single to hit roll. Compare the DCV Hit rolled to the Targets DCV. For every 2 DCV higher you rolled another round hits up to number of shots fired. So if my roll hits DCV 8 and my target is DCV 4 he gets hit three times, once for DCV 4, once for DCV 6 and Once for DCV 8. You then roll damage and hit location seperately for each shot that hit. For our purposes your existing attack macro works fine. Click attack, select the target and enter the number of shots fired, and click ok. In the chat window read only the first hit roll to determine how many shots hit the target, then read the damage from those hits ignoring the extra hit rolls. So if your example attack scored the three hits just read the HITs DCV 8 from the first attack, and then read the damage ONLY from shots 1, 2, and 3, with any additional shots fired missing.

 

If firing at multiple targets the attacker states his intention, the number of shots fired and the line of fire with at least one round going into each 2m section of the line, even if that section is empty. The attacker suffers a -1 OCV penalty for each 2m in the target line. So an AF 5 can at most affect a 10m line for example. The attacker rolls separate attacks against each target in the target line, with the OCV penalty applied to all targets. So with an AF 5 attack the attacker suffers a -5 OCV penalty for each target in the target line and must expend 5 shots once declared. An attacker can choose to declare fewer shots at the start of the attack. Each target hit has damage rolled separately. If the attacker misses one target he can still make the hit and damage rolls against the remaining targets. Again our existing attack macro will work nicely, just state the intended attack, the number of shots, and target line to compute the AF Penalty. Then use the Attack Macro normally selecting each target from the drop down and entering the computed penalty, then click OK. And repeat for each Shot/Target until all the stated shots are expended.

 

I know this got wordy but there seemed to be some confusion on how AF was supposed to work, and whether we needed an AF macro. I think our existing macro will work just fine, as I mentioned above.

 

Now I need some information concerning the Weapon Builder macro. I know it is GM only, but when you fire it and enter the data, does it only add information to that specific character toekn, or does it add anyinformation to a lib type token or table?

[Nolgroth]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

All of that can be done with the Quick OCV and Quick Damage macro as well. It would be nice to have an additional macro, but I have not been much for coding lately. I know that will turn around soon and then I can fix it.

 

The weapon builder macro modifies the Weapon1 - Weapon10 (I think there are 10, maybe 15) token properties to list the properties of the weapon (DC, OCV bonus, whether it uses END, etc). This interacts with the Draw Weapon macro, which calls up the list of weapons on your token and places one of them into either the Primary hand or the Off hand. That, in turn, interacts with the Attack macro, which calls up the stats for whichever hand you are using and uses those stats. There is an off-hand penalty figured and an Ambidexterity entry to offset that. All in all, except for the Autofire mechanism (which I did have figured for the Gemini games ironically enough) the attack thing works really well. I'll look for some of my older campaign files to see if I can extract the Gemini code and plug it in to the current build. I hope I still have them.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

Update 09/23/10:

 

Lots of stuff going on today. I reviewed all of the tokens and brought them in line with what I can from the Hero Designer files. Combat Maneuvers are still very experimental so some of those are not fully added in yet. Working on it.

 

Highlights:

 

• Fixed Patch's defenses. Added values from Armor. Added Damage Negation. Note that this one is going to be hard to do if she is attacked by ranged attacks. Currently working on a solution.
  
• Fixed Haakon's defenses. Added Combat Luck, removed Hardened Resistant Defenses, added values from Armor.
  
• Fixed Damon's defenses. Removed Damage Negation (somehow I must have added either Patch's or the Ogre Magus values to Damon). Added values from Armor. Added Combat Luck. Removed Hardened Resistant Defenses.
  
• Fixed Celedron's defenses. Added Combat Luck. Added values from Armor. Removed Hardened, Resistant Defenses.
  

I also changed one of the functions that was giving me a headache last week. In the initiative call macro, it was set to "getVisibileTokenNames". Changed that to "getTokenNames". Now I can select any token that is on the map, even if it is not visible on the window. Will save me headaches.

 

Removed all the "dead" tokens. Hope that improves performance.

 

Created and tested the Autofire macro. Basically what it does is add a flag to the selection window for Autofire attacks. If that flag is set (box is checked) it calls a different macro that calculates the DCV for each one of the attacks set in the Multiple Attack box. It then calculates Hit Location and Damage for each individual attack. As before, the macro does not determine "Hit" or "Miss" status, it only displays the maximum DCV hit for each attack.

 

Edited the Quick OCV macro to include Autofire.

 

None of the macros currently allow for the selection of multiple targets. That is something I plan on working on for the next (or possibly the one after) game. Really it is only a matter of copying the code for the selection window and pasting it four more times. Then a little bit of flagging code (a check box) to check whether there is one or more targets for the output. I am limited multiple attacks (autofire, sweep or rapid attack) to a maximum of 5 targets. Anyway, not today.

 

Received Merovign's character. Unfortunately it was in 5th Edition format so I had to do some conversion and tweaking. I think it is done now. Whether the player can join us this session or not is still up in the air but he should be in by next week at the latest.

 

Server is up. See you when you get there.

[Starwolf]

Re: Tesunden Isles

 

Hmmm... No server