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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamisBuck" data-source="post: 342293" data-attributes="member: 12">Luke, thanks for clarifying.  I completely understand the need for setting boundaries on a project.  But I think I haven't been clear enough myself on my goal.Ultimately, I hope what we do here can result in a character generator.  But mostly I want to look at the theory behind a character generator.  What are the concepts involved?  In fact, I don't even want to focus on a character generator.  I believe the concepts involved in a character generator can apply to larger set of problems.  One of my current "to-do" tasks that I've set myself is to identify similarities between random 'entity' generation (towns, characters, dungeons, kingdoms, etc--there really isn't much difference) and other "real world" problems, such as grade processing at a university, or resource allocation on a project.  Obviously, the problems of grade processing at a university and resource allocation on a project have been solved (in many different ways)---my questions are, first, can the paradigms they used to envision those problems apply to character generation, and second, can the solutions that have been devised for solving those problems be applied to character generation?Now, this "theoretical" approach may not be what most people on this list want to involve themselves in.  It really is an academic exercise, and I think many people on this board are looking for solutions now, to very specific problems (random character generation).  In fact, if nothing comes of it here on this list, I may consider tackling it as my Master's thesis when I start grad school in January.  But an academic understanding of the problem can make a HUGE difference in how random generators are implemented.  Consider: if no one had taken the time to study grammar (not specific grammars mind you, but the general linguistic theory of grammar) and to find out how grammar theory can be applied in Computer Science, where would all our compilers and parsers be right now?To continue the example of compilers and language theory, I want to point out that I don't hope to invent something completely new.  I hope to find some other discipline (workflows, for instance, as jmettraux suggested) which has a (possibly unexpected) bearing on the problem at hand.Again, character (and 'entity') generation is just a byproduct of the research I've been doing.  The boundaries everyone has been recommending (such as limiting the scope to the D20 system, etc) are excellent suggestions, but not very applicable to what I'm trying to (and which I hope I have explained somewhat lucidly above).Also, it should be pointed out that when I say "character generation", I am no longer merely referring to "random" generation.  Whether the character is "generated" by hand, with a user explicitly setting values for each attribute of a character, or whether the character is purely random, or whether the character was generated by some intermediate method, it is all the same to me.  The means of representing the character and the data involved will all be the same.  In this regard, I consider PCGen a "character generator", even though there is (currently) no support for random generation.I know I keep bouncing back and forth between "keep in generic" and "talk about a character generator", but the fact is, right now a character generator really is the best defined "problem" of the sort I want to tackle.  I am going to continue to look for other problems that at least intersect this set; but for now, working on defining a character generator may give us insights into this larger set.I'm tired, and I'm afraid I'm still not making sense.  I'm going to see if I can work on a draft of the project goals, which I will post online.  I admit I should have done this before posting on the board...ah, the value of hindsight... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />- Jamis</blockquote>

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