Random Treasure Generator (Version 2 now available)

[Asmor]

bazaar.zip contains an HTML table of all the items from the Bazaar of the Bizarre article. Unfortunately, the way I structured my tables and the way you've structured your XML files are very different, so it would be a non-trivial amount of work to write some queries and code to format the results in order to get them to be compatible.

I've attached a dump of the magic items table and its supporting tables (magic item levels and sources) so that, if you so desire, you can load the table and do queries against them yourself. Or, alternatively, if you want to provide me with a template I'll be happy to run it.

 

[Appleseeth]

Update

First off, the program is finished, hurray! Well, more like the initial data is finished, but you get the idea.

Secondly, thank you for the dataset Asmor, but I'm having a bit of trouble with it, since my DBMS is SQL Server. You're right about the dumb too, it looks like I may as well just put in the items myself.

Thirdly, now that its done, what can I do to improve it? I'll be adding that Bazaar soon, but I need some rest. Otherwise I'll get working on the shop inventory program.

Lastly, since I know you looked though the XML Asmor, what did you think of my design? I based it off the SQL Server database I was using before. Would you consider it user friendly?

That's all for now, enjoy.

 

[Asmor]

I honestly have no idea about XML design. It seemed relatively self-explanatory to me, though.

The one issue that I thought you might want to look at changing was the way you've got items which can appear at multiple levels. You've got an entry for each level of the item, meaning if you have to correct it you have to correct several different entries.

 

[Appleseeth]

update bump: added new items to the generator, see first post

 

[Asmor]

Appleseeth, would you mind if I linked to your program? I've had a few people ask me if I was planning on making a random treasure generator, so there's a definite interest there.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Thanks for the work..thats a nice little program.

Is there a plan to add the function for dumping a set of 'X' treasure packets for easy adventure design / cut-n-paste?

 

[Guyanthalas]

I think the program is absolutly outstanding, and will take away many hours of tedium in designing parcels.

As far as improvments go, it would be kind of a nice touch if you could select what kind of items you are looking for. For instance, if noone in the party favors a Mace, it would be rather swank to eliminate that from the random generation via a check box. I took a glance at the XML files, and I don't understand them completly, so I don't know how you could impliment this code quickly. But either way I thought I would pitch to you the idea.

Otherwise, Excellent job! Certainly a very useful tool.

 

[Lojaan]

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome.

 

[Appleseeth]

Wow, some good responses this time. Lets see what I can do about them: Asmor: Feel free to link to it. My traffic limit, if I have any, is sorely underused, so go ahead. Primitive Screwhead: I'm not sure what you mean by "dumping". If you just want bucketloads of treasure packets, you can just copy them out of the textbox and paste them to some text file. If its something else, I'll need some more detail. Guyanthalas: There is an "easy" way to acheive that functionality. All you would need to do is remove the weapons you don't want to see from the Weapons.xml file. I'll see if there's anything I can do otherwise that works within the XML schema. I've got a proper job now, so implementing any big changes may take a while for me to get out there. I had a whole unemployed week to get it to this point. Also, I am planning on getting both the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide and the Adventurer's Vault, so those datasets should be coming, just please don't expect them right when the book is released. Thanks for all the feedback though.

 

[erf_beto]

I love the program, but have a "small" request (not sure how easily you could implement this though): an option to select sourcebooks you want items from (checkboxes, perhaps?). I had no idea that Bazaar was actually a Dragon article (just checked), and there are a lot more of those coming with splatbooks, magazines, DDI, etc... not every DM will have all of those available.