Badass Space Dragon - GM Toolkit Development

I think that @Donald_Petersen, @penguinchris, and I are taking care of the GMing for the most part. I’m working on the spreadsheet now.

@Mister44, I really like the idea, but I think that players being able to view the spreadsheet could ruin some of the fun for you guys. Also, a couple more things:

  1. The spreadsheet is going to get very complicated, since basically everything that happens will be recorded in it.
  2. Though @penguinchris and I were both somewhat reluctant to GM, since that disqualified us from playing, we will be helping with the story, which actually is going to be pretty cool. I think that we will be having plenty of fun.

EDIT: Spelling error.

I think the eventual goal (long-term, not in time for this particular game) will be to have a Discourse plug-in type thing wherein a GM can select a certain number of attributes with stat ranges and combat multipliers and all those variables at the beginning of a game, and then when the game gets going, each round the players have an interface wherein they input their data (purchases, upgrade choices, mission numbers, etc), and at each round’s deadline the GM idiot-checks the entries for shenanigans or mistakes, then triggers the randomized rolls, interprets the results, then writes them up.

But until that point, I think we still need to keep the data processing centralized to maintain everyone’s confidence in the integrity of the game. As long as everyone’s entries include a standardized dataset in addition to their rhetorical flourishes for each round, the data entry should be manageable enough for @penguinchris and @JonasEggeater to stay on top of, assuming their spreadsheet is robust and well-thought-out (which I’ll take as a given) and as long as we maintain a reasonable number of players. I’m thinking of capping that number at 30, but if anyone thinks that number is too high (or low, for that matter, though that strikes me as unlikely, given the personalized writeups we’ll need to do every round), let me know.

It’s true that our goal is similar to BSD’s unspoken Mission Statement: a hell of a good time along the way is much more important than “winning” or “losing,” but the fun does still come in the structure of a game, so reliable refereeing (with a healthy helping of liberal interpretation to encourage creativity) should be in place.

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Hello Everyone :smiley: very long time no see.

I thought the big time problem wasn’t the dice rolling, but wrangling all the written text in preparation for the dice rolling. [*]

I was thinking that a very easy way to keep the data “platform agnostic” and “forum shareable”, would be an aplication that writes and parses PNG files, pretty much like QR codes (or just using straight QR codes):

http://www.squidi.net/three/entry.php?id=12

If we use png lossless compression, it would be very easy to move around, write and parse these files. (a single strip of 64 pixels of height and 128 pixels of width could store a metric shit ton of players).

I’m thinking about using rgb values, but that may be overkill, a very simple monocromatic QR code can easily store a 3000 character JSON, that contains all the data needed for each player http://qrcode.meetheed.com/question3.php

This idea was originally toyed with as an experimental way of minimizing js/css payloads. (Which is of course kind of neat, but in practice you should get better benefits from just minifying and gziping content.)

It does work as a way of storing arbitrary data on a forum, but would probably be too difficult for an average user to generate a reasonably compressed image. http://iamcal.github.io/PNGStore/

If someone provides the code to generate a standard json file structure for a game (probably hosted on a jsfiddle type of site for collaboration and ease of use to run), a completely client side solution wouldn’t be unreasonable. For example, just Base64 encoding the serialized json and then creating an image element with the data as the source. You could them prompt the user to drag and drop this file, or you’d have to bounce this off a server to get an automatic file download. Base64 encoding of course inflates the file size, but we’re not storing much data anyway so it doesn’t matter.

In any case, by the time you get to level of complexity, it may be worthwhile just setting up a proper web app which can track the characters, stats, purchases, missions, and trades etc.

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True, but a web app would make the game feel like another play by browser game, with complete disregard of the pacing, roots, and feel of the game.

I agree that it would be very easy to just build a web app on top of Node.js (for example) to centralize all the game logic validation, but do we want that? (I feel it would change the feel of the game too much)

Tho, I must say that, yes, the very first step would need to be the creation of a spec for a JSON data structure for players.

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I agree, it would pretty much ruin the excessively long forum thread fun.

The main problem I’m having is that I’m constantly squinting at a google doc spreadsheet. A read-only app would be kind of fun to make that presents the current rounds stats in a more human friendly view. Like radar charts for character stats, hp bars and the like. I might tinker around this weekend if I have time. Scraping the shared google docs page shouldn’t be hard.

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@patrace count me in on that singalong summoning!

Hey if you disrupt the lengthy threads then my method of using the mouse wheel to growth-hack my fitbit score will be totes obsolete.

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YES ^ THIS. Let’s just get a JSON spec together of the elements needed. Writing a parser for Google doc ↔ JSON is tedious but not too hard, and just abandon it later if we want to spend time writing a web page, or Disqus plugin.

Here’s my idea. A player has to have an account on the bbs, and enroll in the game. Those players who are enrolled in the game will see a fifth item next to the 4 choices in the upper right. Give it a small icon of the outline of a d20 or something.

And keep it simple. When you click that item, only 1 thing comes up. A form with a title of the game, a subtitle indicating which round, and the form elements the player has to fill in and click OK.

This form can use the JSON format we already created to either post to another webpage somewhere, or dump all of its shit into a google doc. Or whatever we want. But that’s an in-BBS UI in its simple simon simplest functional implementation.

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Okay, after fiddling around a bit, I’ve created a script that parses the public google spreadsheet, and renders a character’s information like this.

It’s just a proof of concept at the moment and needs some css styling love, so feel free to fork and play with it.

http://jsfiddle.net/gwwar/9Ly8W/ or
http://jsfiddle.net/gwwar/9Ly8W/embedded/result/ (if you don’t want to play with the code)

Edit: Now updated to be a bit more user friendly and with a compare feature.

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OH WOW

I presume that the representation of outer limits is relative to the pack of players (as we don’t have any info as to a stat cap).

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I’m currently using chartjs to create that graph. It’s choosing the max axis based on your highest value (which happens to be TQ). If I map all users on the graph it’ll probably choose whatever highest value someone has.

I’ll whip up a group example tonight if I have time.

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Neato, I’m a duck head

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Uh, makes me think of Sweden and Finland, if you know what I mean (nsfw).

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Ah, so it gives a representation of one’s own strengths / weaknesses (S/W) relative to oneself (ipsative) rather than one’s S/W compared to others in the group (normative) and also rather to one’s S/W compared to the full range of ability (aptitude).

Normative would probably be the best comparison for most - individuals could see if they are ahead of others or significantly weaker, and thus this would help them when deciding what to upgrade. Normative comparison would also help group min-max strategists like @bizmail_public, to see at a glace whether folks going to mission X looked unbalanced compared to mission Y.

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Here’s a group example: http://jsfiddle.net/gwwar/23cgm/ There’s no fancy number crunching yet, but it should give you a good idea on how a particular team stacks up.

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I think it basically just says I’m all round awesome.

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that’s so awesome. I can totally see @bizmail_public, and others, poring over three of these, one for each group signed up for each mission option. spiffy data viz, gwwar.

I’m on the road now so can’t tinker with it…but i want to!

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This is FANTASTIC.

Thank You.!

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