Generic NPCs

[The Mighty Buzzard]

After monkeying around with unnecessarily complicated perl data structures, I had a headdesk moment and decided to just stuff them all into a proper sql database.  You'd think having done this kind of thing for a living for decades, it wouldn't have taken me this long to come to that conclusion but there we are.

I'll see about having it wiki-friendly by Friday.  After that I may start work on creating a web front end for the database.  Be nice to be able to list out all of the Chest Deep + Supernatural + Have Power X + NOT having Catch (iron) + NOT spell caster.

[Sanctaphrax]

I have no idea what most of what you just said means, but it sounds good.

And real searchability would be fantastic.

Looking forward to Friday.

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Mostly done.  Still have to write a bit that calculates the stress boxes and dumps it all into a wiki entry but I can get that written while I drink my "morning" coffee.  You have prefer having it output each entry into a separate file and stuffing all the files into a .zip or would you rather it be one big lump?  Me, I'd go separate files.  Unzip them all somewhere and delete them as you get them copied and pasted into the wiki so you don't have to deal with losing your place.

Oh, no guarantee they'll all come out perfect.  There're so many it'd be much easier to do any proofreading to catch uncommon errors as they're entered onto the wiki.  Think I have most of the bugs taken care of though.

[Sanctaphrax]

They both sound fine.

If you think that separate files would be better, go with that.

I might actually get to use the unzipping program I downloaded last week.

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Everything I wanted to do done except for adding Toughness boxes.  Give these a check and if you're good with them I'll get to Toughness boxes Sunday.  Saturday is for abusing my players.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39806406/wikientries.zip

[Sanctaphrax]

Looks good.

Final count: 214 NPCs.

Will start copying onto wiki tonight.

Hopefully, the *s will translate into appropriate formatting.

Fun fact: The more powerful the NPC, the larger the file. The Deep Ones are all 3-4KB.

Should probably copy the dropbox link into a few places too.

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Looks good.

Final count: 214 NPCs.

Will start copying onto wiki tonight.

Hopefully, the *s will translate into appropriate formatting.

Fun fact: The more powerful the NPC, the larger the file. The Deep Ones are all 3-4KB.

Should probably copy the dropbox link into a few places too.

Dropbox keeps previous version copies in case you accidentally break something.  It is my boon companion.

On editing the wiki... up where it says Save, hit the little down-arrow right next to the word and click WikiText Editor.  Lets you paste directly and the formatting should be correct.

[Sanctaphrax]

Alright, I've copied two NPCs onto the wiki.

The Wizard Of The White Council and the Warden Of The White Council.

The Warden was copied using the Wiki text editor, the Wizard was copied without it. Hence the much better formatting on the Warden.

Will copy the rest onto the wiki over the next two days.

Might even erase the NPCs that are already there and replace them with the new ones for the sake of consistency in templating.

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Weird.  Looks like their parser needs as much work as mine then.  I'm still going to see about adding toughness stress boxes to the script tomorrow just because it bugs me.  When I get that done, I'll post an updated zip file. 

Stunts, not stats, that add extra consequences are too differently worded to script for without taking more time than doing it manually though, so that's where I'm leaving that.

EDIT: I read that entirely backwards the first time.  An afternoon and evening of abusing players then drinking will do that to you. 

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Ok, zip file is updated with toughness accounted for.  Same link.

[Sanctaphrax]

Have posted a fair number of NPCs to the wiki.

It was mostly easy and effective, but there were a few hiccups.

1. The Ancient Sidhe Trickster had messed-up bolding because it had a ** in one of the stunt names.
2. Some of the stress tracks were incorrect.
3. The word "physical" was spelled "physycal" in the extra consequence notes on the stress tracks.
4. The Demonic Colossus seems to be missing from the folder.

Suggested changes:

1. Fix the spelling of "physical".
2. Add the Demonic Colossus.
3. Look over the stress-calculating algorithm.
4. Remove the "(s)" from the extra consequence notes. It is rarely justified.
5. Put the armour from Toughness in brackets, like the extra stress boxes.

I kinda wish I could do this stuff myself instead of dumping it on you, but I don't have access to the code that you're using.

Anyway, this will take longer than the two days I had planned.

Oh well. It's still a lot faster than I thought it would be before getting this document.

[The Mighty Buzzard]

I kinda wish I could do this stuff myself instead of dumping it on you, but I don't have access to the code that you're using.

Which is probably a good thing.  Ugly, hacked-together scripts are fine for personal use but it's embarrassing releasing them to the world like that.

Have posted a fair number of NPCs to the wiki.

It was mostly easy and effective, but there were a few hiccups.

1. The Ancient Sidhe Trickster had messed-up bolding because it had a ** in one of the stunt names.
2. Some of the stress tracks were incorrect.
3. The word "physical" was spelled "physycal" in the extra consequence notes on the stress tracks.
4. The Demonic Colossus seems to be missing from the folder.

Suggested changes:

1. Fix the spelling of "physical". Done
2. Add the Demonic Colossus.  Didn't have it in the list I'm pulling from and search results for it on the board returns no results.
3. Look over the stress-calculating algorithm. Will need an example to find out where the bug is.
4. Remove the "(s)" from the extra consequence notes. It is rarely justified. Done
5. Put the armour from Toughness in brackets, like the extra stress boxes. Done

Also fixed inconsistent spellings of demonic co-pilot to match YW.  Same link to the zip file.

[Sanctaphrax]

You know, we had a great search function around here before the forum changeover. Not so much anymore.

Demonic Colossus

Example of stress track error: The Wizard Of The White Council should have 4 mental stress boxes, but he's only got 2.

[Sanctaphrax]

Two more things:

1. The Alchemist is listed as the lchemist.
2. In a few cases, only half of the powers are bolded.

[The Mighty Buzzard]

1. The Alchemist is listed as the lchemist. That's certainly odd... Ahh, I missed the 'A' when I was copying and pasting them for the source document.  Will be correct in future zips.
2. In a few cases, only half of the powers are bolded. They were probably formatted slightly differently. Even a minor change in formatting can break things. Point me to one and I'll see about kicking it until it stops doing that.

Demonic Colossus I'll add him when I get up and about tomorrow.

Example of stress track error: The Wizard Of The White Council should have 4 mental stress boxes, but he's only got 2. Going to debug it tomorrow. Can't see where the bug is tonight.

Eventually, once we get the formatting all uniform on everything, I'd like to tie all the stunts/powers/npcs together proper instead of using a string of quite ugly hacks.  Would drastically reduce the error rate on any future entries.  Pretty freaking huge job to get there though as you already know.