D&D 4E Completely Unofficial 4e Dataset Xml Schema and Discussion (Updated 7/02)

I had been previously working on a similar project for 3.5, tho I stopped when 4e was announced. Since getting the books, I have been slowly building a similar project. I figure there is no better way to learn the rules than to codify them yourself.

This is not yet complete, consider it version 0.5.
I have made several fields optional, such as description and image tags and large chunks of text, in the spirit of respecting copyright. Several areas are still under development, but you can get a good idea of where I am going with things.

I have designed this with databases and computer applications in mind. The XSD schema is designed to relatively easily add homebrew material and even create entire homebrew datasets or partial datasets. The XML file and schema enforce referential consistency so that new datasets or derived dataset fragments can operate independently while still containing all the data they need. (In otherwords, if you reference something in one place, you need to have the referred item somewhere else in the document).

The format I use for referential consistency via ID and IDRef is ID_UUID. When creating datasets or fragments, please use the same format. This, combined with the dataset version number, will allow universal importing and managing of data to applications and databases.

The format for the dataset version is YYYY.MM.DD.hhmm. Please use this when building your own or extracting fragment datasets.

I will be updating these files regularly, as well as creating an computer app to easily maintain and create datasources, as well as a central repository of homebrew datasets.

I welcome any sugestions, comments, and polite and constructive criticism.

4eD20 XSD Schema Beta v0.5.10 (Change Log)
4eD20 XML Core Set Beta v0.5.07 (Change Log)
4eD20 XML Source Materials
4eD20 XML Campaign Settings

4eD20 XML GreatScissors (example weapon)
4eD20 XML theJesterMonsterConversion (example monster, level 6 Tarantella)
4eD20 XML That Demon Prince of the Undead Guy (another more complex example monster, Level 33, you know who he is)

Update 08/06/27:
I broke CampaignSettings and Source Materials out into their own files to serve as master references.

Update 08/06/30
Monsterous update for monsters. RAWR!

Update 08/07/02
Slight fixes for monsters, added That Demon Prince of the Undead Guy as a more complete sample test.
-Jim

Moved Change logs to hosted files.

I am absolutely loathing trying to represent powers. So many convoluted layout rules. I've finished racial powers, trying to not shoot blood from my eyes with class feature powers.

Here's a sample of a homebrew dataset for my Greatscissors (I still have to add the power). As you can see, you would need to derive any features you implement from the Core xml, but the dataset is much MUCH smaller.

Greatscissors Dataset 2008.06.20.1700

Original post of Greatscissors

Once I get enough powers loaded, I will upload a sample character, a Dragonborn Paladin 1...

-Jim

Keep up the good work man. This'll be awesome when you get it done. People can post their stuff in a canonical way and apply fancy XSLTs, etc. to display their characters. Plus with one way to represent everything, it'll be easy to create programs to print out power cards, play online. You are really doing something good here, even if a lot of people don't see it yet. Keep going.

BooleanFlag said:

Keep up the good work man. This'll be awesome when you get it done. People can post their stuff in a canonical way and apply fancy XSLTs, etc. to display their characters. Plus with one way to represent everything, it'll be easy to create programs to print out power cards, play online. You are really doing something good here, even if a lot of people don't see it yet. Keep going.

Click to expand...

Took the weekend off to play some shadowfell and wife bought me some metal gear 4 and all the hardware i'd need to play it for Bday.

I did get a brief chance friday to fix some more stuff on powers (i really hate powers) and make a couple minor changes for feat prerequisites (which i'm still populating.) Specifically, adding in optional support for deity requirements for feats, seperate from requiring channel divinity. So for say, bahamut's armor, you'd have 2 feat prerequisites. First would be a ClassFeaturePrerequisite (Channel Divinity) and it's RefID from the class features section of the core XML. Secondly you'd have a DeityPrerequisite and the deity's RefID from the Deities section of the core xml. These can technically be exclusive of each other, so you can create feats that are open only to say, worshippers of Pelor, but yet do not require the Channel Divinity class feature. You can also mix in attribute score requirements and such, pretty much being able to mix any prerequisite i can think of for a feat.

I'm planning at a future date to add an optional Source and Page tag to just about everything in order to allow page references.

I'm also mulling over adding an optional Campaign tag to everything so that things can be easily weeded out, mixed, or included from different campaign settings (with the core material having a default campaign of None, except for the deities and deity related stuff using the POL campaign and it's RefID) depending on however anyone who writes software around this decides to work that. I'll definately have that ability in my software.

I haven't uploaded the feat changes yet, i'm trying to finish off the feat prereqs first to make sure everything works the way I expect it to.

-J

Ok, everything is now SourceInfo tagged and DefaultCampaign tagged. I think this was a very useful, if not time consuming, thing to implement.

Everything is in campaign setting 'None', except religious stuff, which is in 'Points of Light' setting.

I broke out source materials and campaign settings out into their own files to act as master references for those. The datasets can now reference them as ReferencedExtrnalDataSets so that IDRef types for source info can match up.

I moved skill uses to their own areas.

Added some more stuff for feat requirements.

Feat requirement population is up to H now.

I need to go back and finish off the class feature powers before i can continue with feats.

I stubbed out an area for level advancement changes in feats that grow with you. Haven't done anything with that yet to see if I like it.

I'll be rather happy when feats are done.

I'm hoping to get some sample characters built once I have the feats finished and at least the level 1 powers. After that, I think i'll get paragons and destinies finished (should be quick) and go back to finishing powers.

I'm looking at adding into the schema stuff for adventures. Advice on adventure formats to model would be of great help. One of the things i'm taking into consideration for adventures, and possibly a spin off of it's own, is skill challenges, specifically adding support for the stalker0 skill system if enough ppl want it. I'm not familiar with it, as I haven't dug through that thread yet.

-J

ok, after finishing the class feature powers, i'm looking at the schema and just scratching my head. It works, but is a very VERY ugly way of describing them. If anyone else can come up with a good robust alternative for powers, I'd much appreciate. Until then, I'm going to finish feat requirements.

-J

I've got heroic feats down to shield push finished. I need to start looking at monsters and how i want to model them. Maybe i'll do that this weekend and try out some of The Jester's level 1 monsters in addition to a few kobolds.

The Core set is getting huge
almost 9,000 lines at 427KB

I'm debating if I want to write my test app in java or CSharp. I think i'll go Java with swing so more ppl can use it. I'm thinking of using XMLBean (apache) for handling xml in java. I haven't looked, is there something akin to an embedded sql db for java? I guess something like SQL Lite. I should look into that...

-J

Hey!

A few days ago I was talking with someone about how cool it would be if there were an XML format for monsters, and yesterday Micco commented on my blog about your work here.

I'm kind of in a rush at the moment, so really this comment is more to subscribe to the thread than anything else.