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<blockquote data-quote="JBowtie" data-source="post: 40456" data-attributes="member: 1810">I'm pretty much a new DM and I have been absorbing the huge amount of d20 information out there.&nbsp; I've pretty much decided that there is a LOT more good, useful, and interesting material than I can hope to keep track of on my own.One thing that is absolutely essential for me is a variety of software tools that keep track of various information.&nbsp; Unfortunately, none of these rolls really talk to one another.&nbsp; Luckily for me, as a developer I'm in a position to do something about it.&nbsp; I've been designing what I think is a pretty flexible and useful XML representation of the various d20 rules and trying to use it in my own, home-grown character generator.So far, I can throw information from the core books, FR, Rokugan, Ravenloft, and Dragonstar at it and have it stand up pretty well.&nbsp; What I think is important and interesting about this is that it's really easy to define classes, skills, and feats using XML without resorting to recoding my tool everytime a new mechanic or prerequisite is introduced.&nbsp; More importantly, I hope, the publishers could produce XML equivalents of their rules while the tools people could concentrate on interpreting those rules.I have a little work to do to formalize the schema and show some examples of expressing some of the difficult prerequisites and effects associated with the rules.&nbsp; It will probably be a week or so before I have this information written and uploaded to my site.&nbsp; In the meantime, I would really like to know if developers and publishers would welcome such standardization, how they feel about working with XML, and what sorts of things are likely to pose challenges.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="JBowtie, post: 40456, member: 1810"] I'm pretty much a new DM and I have been absorbing the huge amount of d20 information out there. I've pretty much decided that there is a LOT more good, useful, and interesting material than I can hope to keep track of on my own. One thing that is absolutely essential for me is a variety of software tools that keep track of various information. Unfortunately, none of these rolls really talk to one another. Luckily for me, as a developer I'm in a position to do something about it. I've been designing what I think is a pretty flexible and useful XML representation of the various d20 rules and trying to use it in my own, home-grown character generator. So far, I can throw information from the core books, FR, Rokugan, Ravenloft, and Dragonstar at it and have it stand up pretty well. What I think is important and interesting about this is that it's really easy to define classes, skills, and feats using XML without resorting to recoding my tool everytime a new mechanic or prerequisite is introduced. More importantly, I hope, the publishers could produce XML equivalents of their rules while the tools people could concentrate on interpreting those rules. I have a little work to do to formalize the schema and show some examples of expressing some of the difficult prerequisites and effects associated with the rules. It will probably be a week or so before I have this information written and uploaded to my site. In the meantime, I would really like to know if developers and publishers would welcome such standardization, how they feel about working with XML, and what sorts of things are likely to pose challenges. [/QUOTE]

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