Other tools for PbP games?

[HolyMan]

That's odd you quoted that and it said I was mentioned again. Guess computers aren't as smart as everyone says they are.

HM

 

[pneumatik]

Can't you already put background images on a table? That would solve a lot of the complicated stuff you had.

Yeah, I checked and you can.

You inspired me to hack together a couple of examples and attached them. Well, that and [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] asked for advice on how to build a battlemap in enworld. Lop off the .txt at the end of each file and open them in a browser. Both use tables with a background image to position text into the center of each square on the map. One file uses a map that already had a grid, and the other draws the grid on top of a gridless image. Both images are hotlinked from the cartographersguild.com.

I did all the math and layout by hand, but it should be pretty straightforward to automate it. After a user pics a file, php's getimagesize should provide its dimensions. The user also has to pick either the number of rows or the number of columns. The image dimension on the appropriate side divided by the number of rows or columns (as appropriate) will give the dimension of each square in the grid. I set each square size with WIDTH and HEIGHT, but there may be better ways. Then a script builds the table.

PCs could be a letter or an image in a square (I filled a letter in every square in my examples). A user can click on their own PC (controlled via the board's existing access management system) and then either clicks on the square its going to or enters the coordinates into a text field.

 

[evilbob]

This is sort of a side bar, but I have no problem with only one person being able to update the map. I've played online games with maps where PCs can move themselves, and I've played online games with static maps that only the DM can update, and in my experience players moving their own tokens can be nice but it doesn't really add much. If it is easy to do then go ahead and throw it in; if it is in any way difficult, that would be the first feature to cut.

(And I'm guessing it'd be difficult, since it would be permissions-based and at the very least it would involve an extra interface for assigning permissions to an individual token.)

 

[ryryguy]

Sorry to be slow to answer the summons...

Regarding the character sheet issue, if it's kept flexible enough, people who like to use the wiki style (and have already invested a lot of effort there) could simply put links to the wiki pages in the character info sections. This would still be a nice gain in organization to have all those links in one convenient place for the DM and other players.

We also use little spoiler "ministats" blocks like the following:

[sblock=Ingot stat block]Ingot- Neuter Warforged Cleric 5
Passive Perception: 15, Passive Insight: 15
AC:20, Fort:17, Reflex:15, Will:19 -- Speed:5
HP:40/color]+5/47, Bloodied:23, Surge Value:11, Surges left: 8/9
Initiative +1
Action Points: 0, Daily Item Uses: Used, Second Wind: Not Used
Powers: Sacred Flame, Righteous Brand,
Healing Word(x2)
Healing Strike, Split the Sky, Warforged Resolve, Channel Divinity (Divine Fortune/Turn Undead)
Avenging Flame, Shield of Faith, Hallowed Advance
Acidic Fullblade, Acidic Fullblade, Flame Bracers
[/sblock]

In addition to a summary, they also track current status - note the crossed out powers, indicating they are spent. A form that could be used to display this would be awesome - typing out and deleting those little {s}{/s} are a pain. (Tracking used powers is a little bit D&D specific but might be useful for other games... and if we're talking a simple template, having some D&D specific options including color to implement power types might be cheap enough to be worth the effort?)

This kind of summary changes frequently and there's no need to track history, so there's no need to keep it on a wiki.

Also:

I second these items from pneumatik:

Anyway, if I could boot PCs out of my game when they stop playing it would help keep things neat.

Oh! The one thing that drives me the most crazy is when sigs aren't displayed while I'm composing a post. That's where I keep handy links to the rogue's gallery and OOC thread (with campaign reference). If there would be some way to keep the link to the main campaign page while composing a post it would be super-awesome.

I don't see that as being difficult, but would not a designated "Reward Tracking" page in the Campaign Manager achieve that more elegantly?

This is another thing that would be extremely useful. It might be fine just to have a tab in that campaign manager page from the mockup with freeform text entry... a more structured form might be nice too, but not necessary.

In the living world games judges have to approve the rewards. That's probably part of the desire to have "bookmarks" of specific posts - we place links to the judges "I approve" posts on character sheets for judges to check when reviewing a character. So, a super feature would be to link rewards back to characters somehow - I imagine this would be useful even in non-judged games. A double super feature would also allow optional judge review of each entry - basically an "I approve" checkbox, with appropriate permissions. That would actually be a significant step towards no longer needing the wiki for tracking.

(Not sure how all this stuff gets implemented under the hood, but the idea is having a rewards table, with one record for each reward. Boolean field in this table is "judge approved", with ability to set the default at campaign level, so a non judged game just defaults to "true" and it's effectively ignored. Character records contain references to rewards records, from both the present and past campaigns. Probably one-to-one relationship would be fine, meaning when awarding XP to a group of 5, you have 5 separate records, but many-to-one would be a bit slicker. A final slick feature would be having a numeric field with an associated tag such as "XP" or "GP", and auto-sum the values per character per tag to feed running totals back to the character sheet!)

So basically a DM draft/notes section, where you can save it privately for the DM and he can "publish" it to the campaign when he's ready?

Would be awesome! In fact I already use BBCeditor to do this for longer posts, but it's not the best tool, because it doesn't speak all the same BBCode that enworld uses. Having one built in, that uses enworld's own message editor, obviously would not have that problem!

 

[Morrus]

OK, I anticipate preliminary work on the new CAMPAIGN MANAGER to begin this week. It will be developed elsewhere in a test environment, and you will be welcome to join us there to watch/suggest/try etc.

It will be developed in stages - not every feature will be available at launch. For example, I don't even plan to start thinking about the mapping aspects for the initial release, as that will be an aspect as complicated as the rest of the system put together.

Now, the primary goal isn't to develop something cool and hope you use it; it's to develop something you need/want to use. So continued input will be vital (especially since this is not going to be cheap).

I'll keep you posted on developments. It will probably be a while before there is anything to actually see.

One slight quandary I have is how the Campaign Manager will actually interact with threads. There's not much point it existing in isloation separate to the the actual PbP games it relates to. Expecially, many of the suggested features are permission-based (game invites or applications, ability for a GM to boot people from a game); from a permissions POV that pretty much means a GM has complete moderator control over a messageboard thread, but via the interface of the Campaign Manager's join/boot/etc. functions. To accomplish this, though, new PbP threads would need to be created in the CM itself (they'd still appear in the forum normally, but they'd be managed by the GM via the Campaign Manager).

 

[Merkuri]

To accomplish this, though, new PbP threads would need to be created in the CM itself (they'd still appear in the forum normally, but they'd be managed by the GM via the Campaign Manager).

I think that's a perfectly acceptable caveat. If you want to use the Campaign Manager for a PbP thread then you have to use it right from the start, you can't "add" it later.

Once this goes live we might want to add a sticky thread at the top of the PbP forum entitled "How do I add Campaign Manager to my thread?" that would explain you can't actually do it and you need to start a new thread from the Campaign Manager to get the necessary functionality. I anticipate that question will be asked a lot, and having a sticky to link/point to will probably be helpful.

 

[renau1g]

I'm sure it will get asked asked at least as much as "Hey Morrus? Can I put the dice rolls in sblocks or make them smaller?"

 

[pneumatik]

So basically a DM draft/notes section, where you can save it privately for the DM and he can "publish" it to the campaign when he's ready?

Right now I use blog posts for this and make them as private as the system lets me. Particularly for longer IC thread posts it's nice to have a draft version that I can work on for 30-60 minutes and not worry about having to finish and post (not that I really "polish" posts before they go final). Having some sort of scratch pad would be great.