Discussion - New Wiki site

BenBrown · Apr 25, 2010

It only needs to be an abbreviated summary on the CS. Doesn't have to have anything really other than the stuff needed for the character table.

weldon · Apr 25, 2010

ScorpiusRisk said:
Your understanding is incorrect. While all characters need a wiki page, people are not required to keep a summary there. That's why Rhole and another (not looking at it now) are not pulling the all the information.

If we can add more entries to the new table, I think that would be good. That way people could choose to use it, instead of filling out an entire new summary (Theres already a summary for them to use on their spreadsheet).

OK. I see what you are saying. Reading back through the spreadsheet proposal and the discussion, I don't think the exact usage was clarified. We may want to revisit this so that we have clear instructions on what is *required* on the wiki page and what is optional (like math, etc.).

As for expanding the status template to hold the other info...

It would be a bit problematic to duplicate existing template tags and design the DPL query to look in both places and add logic to decide which one to use. It's not hard, but it's an increase on CPU load to run the if statements against each character page. A simpler solution would be to use the character template and only fill in the "required" fields.

We can make it easier for those that only want to include a short summary by providing a cut-and-paste section that only has the template tags needed for the "short form" character sheet.

renau1g said:
I'm thinking we should require it...the excel doc is only supposed to be for the math, it's not a replacement for the CS.

I tend to lean this way too. I think I would prefer to see more standard character pages with the summary, fluff, xp tracking, etc. on the wiki page. The math section could just have a link to the spreadsheet.

BenBrown said:
It only needs to be an abbreviated summary on the CS. Doesn't have to have anything really other than the stuff needed for the character table.

I could get behind the idea of a "short form" character summary, although the existing summary isn't too long itself. We can use the existing character template and just leave stuff blank. We can make it easier for people to cut and paste the "required" fields by providing an example of the short form on the template page in addition to the full template.

It may also be possible to take the data from the spreadsheet and generate the wiki code so that a player could cut and paste from a sheet on the google spreadsheet or a web page that pulls the data from it into their wiki page. That's probably a few hours of work for someone to create. Iterating through the powers would probably be the hard part. Creating the piece of the summary before the powers looks straightforward.

weldon · Apr 25, 2010

I was excited to see that 4 or 5 brave souls have already added the status template to their character sheets. Before we go much further, does anyone have any feedback?

Is the Character Table useful? Does it have the right information in it?

One idea I've been mulling over is that maybe we should think about integrating these extra fields into the character template itself rather than creating a new status template. I didn't want to do it at first because I didn't want to mess with the chracter template while I was experimenting. But now that I see it works and other people have picked it up, I want to make sure we make this change in a considered way.

Thoughts?

weldon · Apr 25, 2010

It occurs to me that I could give the Adventure Index the same treatment (if we had a wiki page for each adventure and a standard template to hold the info for the table).

Fragsie · Apr 25, 2010

That's a good idea. The template could be put on the adventure summary pages.
Adventure Summarys

ScorpiusRisk · Apr 25, 2010

I think an adventure template might be useful anyway. I have been having a hard time finding the motivation to finish my adventure pages, useful as I think they are.

I am very much against requiring people who use the google sheets to make a full summary. There was no such language in my proposal for good reason. The google sheets includes everything on the wiki sheets besides judge comments (and more in some places). Even judge comments could be added if it didn't seem redundant to the emails. There's even a separate summary page fore people looking for quick information.

I think a simplified summary would be a good compromise. I think it should very simplified however.

The google sheets were designed to be a replacement to the wiki.

weldon · Apr 30, 2010

Fragsie said:
That's a good idea. The template could be put on the adventure summary pages.
Adventure Summarys

ScorpiusRisk said:
I think an adventure template might be useful anyway. I have been having a hard time finding the motivation to finish my adventure pages, useful as I think they are.

I'll take a crack at this. I think I can come up with something that at least has the info on the summary page above.

ScorpiusRisk said:
I am very much against requiring people who use the google sheets to make a full summary.

I think a simplified summary would be a good compromise. I think it should very simplified however.

The google sheets were designed to be a replacement to the wiki.

The google sheets are very cool. Not perfect and missing some functionality of the wiki, but still cool.

The big disadvantage for my purposes is that all the sheets are separate copies. On the L4W wiki, they are tied together by categories, namespaces, templates, hyperlinks, etc. I can invest some time and make improvements to the character template that will be seen on every character page. I can do some things like the Character Table that pull from the pages automatically.

I assume that since the sheets are all separate copies, making changes (even cosmetic changes) would mean that someone has to touch each sheet. You can't just apply new formatting to a template that would show up everywhere it's used like it does on the wiki, right? On the wiki, if I make an improvement to the character template, everyone will see it on their page automatically without doing anything.

But as for a minimum entry on the wiki page for your character...

I would like to see the summary info (even if simplified) on each character in the wiki so that I can do more with the character table and reporting. A stat block with the status info would be a nice start. It might be possible to rejigger the character sheet so that it is comprised of two parts: the stat block & the detailed powers.

As a bonus, we could then use that stat block as a <onlyinclude> section that would work well for transclusion on other pages.

ScorpiusRisk · Apr 30, 2010

You are correct, each sheet is separate.

Neurotic · May 7, 2010

A rules question:
Utility power 2 for fighters Snagging Grip states in it's trigger:
An enemy adjacent to you forces you to move or knocks you prone.

What happens if someone knocks a dwarf prone, but he resists? Does he still get to knock the attacker prone as if he got knocked prone? Other races would be automatically knocked down, but dwarf gets the save. Does it still count?

H.M.Gimlord · May 7, 2010

My guess would be no. The power specifically says that it triggers when you are knocked prone or forced to move by an enemy. If you resist successfully, you are not moved/knocked prone. Therefore the power doesn't trigger. Bummer for frequency of use, but I imagine it would still allow you to make the most out of a bad save roll or a large forced move.