RC Builder Update, TotalCon Events, Other Plans

RC Builder Updates

I’ve been making progress on the RC Builder. Much of it has been on the back end, but I’ve made some interface updates as well:

  • Custom Weapons/Armor/Power Armor can now be properly linked to your character

  • There are now “Global” Weapons/Armor/Power Armor for selection. More on this shortly

  • Changes to the NoSQL database schema

  • Fixed an annoying issue where W.P. bonuses were not being updated when the character’s physical attribute changed (ex: selecting a physical skill)

  • Available combat moves are now displayed (more on this later)

  • PDF Download!

“Global” Weapons/Armor/Power Armor

As I was building test characters, I realized that it’s getting tedious to have to build my own weapon/armor/power armor. Yeah, I had made some to choose from prior, but it’s really annoying if this is your first character.

To remedy this, I created a “global” list of weapons/armor/power armor available to all users. These are the handful of items found in the RUE core book. This is a bit risky as PB may not appreciate me taking content from the book directly. If that becomes an issue, it’s easy enough to remove.

Available Combat Moves

The way combat works in this builder is pretty simple: if the bonus is greater than zero, display the bonus. Bam, done.

Or not.

It’s possible to have a combat move with no bonus but should be displayed. For example, there are circumstances where a character has the ability to Auto-Dodge, but does not have a bonus. The player must be aware that Auto-Dodge is an option!

Unfortunately, getting this to work the way I want would require a non-trivial change to the Combat section of the code. To work around this, I have a list of available moves and display them at the top of the Combat section. Not ideal, but good enough for now until I fix it later.

PDF Download!

I’ve made a lot of progress on the PDF download feature. Once your character is done, you click “Download PDF,” and you get a printable PDF of your character!

However, I’m struggling with the layout. The sheet is packed with more information than most of the existing PDF sheets, so I can’t just mimic one of those directly. The problem is different characters have very different uses for the physical sheet. For example, the front page has your basic info (name/level/etc.), your Attribute scores with bonuses, Saving Throws, Combat bonuses, W.P. bonuses, Armor, and Weapons. The idea is that the core info is available on the front page. The second page has your list of skills and O.C.C./Racial abilities. The third page has your spells/psionics - if your character has them, otherwise it doesn’t create that page. There are some context-sensitive sections such as Black Market, Tattoos, etc. I still need to add support for Cybernetics and Power Armor.

Sounds great, right? The front page is great if you’re a combat-heavy character such as a Juicer with all of its bonuses, armor, and weapons. But if you’re a Rogue Scholar, there is a lot of white space on the front page, and it just doesn’t look nice. On the other hand, the Rogue Scholar’s skills page is nearly full of skill stats, but the Juicer’s skill page has a lot of white space.

You get the idea.

So I’m thinking about having 3 or 4 download templates:

  • A sheet for combat-heavy characters

  • A sheet for skills-heavy characters

  • A sheet for Power Armor and Cybernetic-heavy characters

  • A general-use sheet

I’ll see how that works out.

TotalCon 2023 Events

TotalCon 2023 is fast approaching and I need to submit my events! I plan to run three events:

Band of Bothers - I wrote this adventure for Heroes Unlimited years ago and am proud to say it was published in The Rifter #68. It’s a fun adventure, but I haven’t run it in years. So I’m making some updates, polishing it up, redoing the character sheets, digging up the customized minis, etc. Should be fun!

Meltdown - My first Chaos Earth adventure! Demons and other scary stuff are coming out of rifts. A group of those demons is attempting to attack and destroy a nuclear power plant! You play as NEMA officers, defending the nuclear power plant from the evil demons. This is going to be an endurance test for the characters.

Zombies 101 - This is an updated version of a Dead Reign adventure I ran last year at TotalCon and Palladium Open House 2022. It was called Spring Break, but Zombies 101 is a better name. I’ve made significant updates to the adventure and the props.

GenCon 2023

I’m hoping to attend GenCon 2023 next August. If so, I will run the same three events that I will run at TotalCon. I’ll be honest: TotalCon sometimes serves as my play test for GenCon. Sssssh!

Conclusion

That’s about all for this update.

Special shout out and thank you to my RC Builder testers who have made massive contributions to this project!

RPGBrandenComment