Another Character Generator

By OggDude, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

As a GM you need to be delegating some of these duties to your players. Initiative tracking is a prime example.

Print out and laminate Stan's Combat Tracker. I found it on the Stickied resource thread and use it for my group and it works great. However link doesnt appear to be working ATM.

combat-tracker.jpg

Looks like this is the creators website .

I prefer to keep track of this myself actually. After doing this for 26 years its really no bother. Its more of a convenience thing really which is why i requested it as a long term project. That sheet is nice and tidy, but it takes up table space and i have a lot of other stuff competing for that space.

I use my laptop as my GM screen, and track initiative order on it to save space. There`s also a lot of quick reference stuff on wookiepedia, OggDuse`s tool, various on hand pre prepared one offs (often concerning the players obligations), a main story arc, random name generator when i need one in a hurry and a bunch of other nifty tools. Then there is the main book, a few reference sheets and so on. It adds up. The rest of the table is cluttered with character sheets, a huge laminated galaxy map, a bunch of coffee mugs (which is why the galaxy map is laminated, yes my players are slobs), various food of the healthy and very unhealthy variants, handouts and so on. You get the picture. Having easy access to stuff through OggDude`s tool would be a great convenience.

If you are running a book story you dont need all this stuff, but when you create all of it yourself and often run in sandbox mode i find myself needing access to these tools.

Wherever this file is being hosted sucks. It's going to take 1 hour to download the 30MB file.

OggDude. I love this character generator. I have version 1.0.0.12 that I got by clicking a like in this thread. Is this the most recent version? Will there be expansions to incorporate more *stuff*? Will you make this generator compatible with Age of Rebellion/Force and Destiny when they release by expanding it to include data from those games? Thanks for putting this together. It has been a great tool as me and my RPG group have switched from 2E AD&D to Star Wars EotE.

Wherever this file is being hosted sucks. It's going to take 1 hour to download the 30MB file.

It worked fine for me this morning on my work computer. And again this afternoon at my home. Took less than 2 or 3 minutes each time.

Wherever this file is being hosted sucks. It's going to take 1 hour to download the 30MB file.

Might just be your connection. Like DMShag, I had no issue grabbing the file, and I'm using DSL to connect to the 'net.

Thanks for creating this highly useful program! I have a quick question: how would you prefer to receive bug reports? I'm getting a pretty consistent crash when I run it on my Windows XP virtual machine, which seems to be related to loading a custom image. (Loading a built-in image seems to work fine, but loading a custom image seems to crash almost every time, though not quite every single time.) I'll try to chase this down in a few days after I run my next game session, but for now: would you prefer bug reports to be posted on this forum thread? Or somewhere else (and if so, where)?

The Trandoshan species has a incorrect talent added, "Enduring". It's easy to remove with the data editior.

Thanks, it's been reported. The correction will be in the next release.

The Droid species also has "Enduring" as an incorrect talent.

Oggdude,

This is a great program. I would love to see a few things added.

1. I echo the requests to be able to run encounters in this program. That would be outstanding, at the moment I have to edit the PDF copies in Adobe. Setting up an interface that would let us set initiative, and track npc status and wounds would be great.

2. I really like the idea of being able to assign characters to crew positions in vehicles, which in turn produces a document with their skill displayed for the appropirate checks would be great.

3. Is there any way you can set up your program to export a text based stat block for PCs and NPCs? I am starting to use Realm works and the ability to import that information would be outstanding!.

Please keep up the good work. Also I have the AOR species and force powers already completed in your program, is there a way I can forward them to you?

Salcor

The Trandoshan species has a incorrect talent added, "Enduring". It's easy to remove with the data editior.

Thanks, it's been reported. The correction will be in the next release.

The Droid species also has "Enduring" as an incorrect talent.

Actually, Droids are supposed to have Enduring. EotE core rulebook, page 47, under Inorganic, last sentence:

"Due to their resilient metallic construction, droids start the game with one rank in the Enduring talent."

The Trandoshan species has a incorrect talent added, "Enduring". It's easy to remove with the data editior.

Thanks, it's been reported. The correction will be in the next release.

The Droid species also has "Enduring" as an incorrect talent.

Actually, Droids are supposed to have Enduring. EotE core rulebook, page 47, under Inorganic, last sentence:

"Due to their resilient metallic construction, droids start the game with one rank in the Enduring talent."

Thanks for pointing that out, I really missed that one.

2) Is an update for Age of Rebellion planned? I like to have all of my PCs use this to make characters but one of them wants to use a career in the new book.

Thanks, this is just an amazing program.

Yeah one of them then possibly another :P

Oggdude,

Is there a way you can make overflow sheets? If you're character has too many talents (or some talents with long descriptions), they just go off the page, and it doesn't add to another page. Also, this issue seems to occur for the inventory and ship page.

Thanks!

Edited by lordfireyes

That actually helped a lot, yeah. Thanks. So... in addition to an encounter sheet with all the adversaries, how about a vehicle roster as an optional part of an encounter? This would have a vehicle summary, plus a list of positions, skills, and actions/maneuvers, assigned from the adversaries in the encounter. It wouldn't be for stat tracking, just as a quick reference to know what skills to use for which action or maneuver, based on the assigned positions. Stat tracking would be performed on the current vehicle sheet. Basically, it would be just the part in my previous email that I actually found useful :) , but maybe laid out a bit differently (maybe using a grid instead of summary text) and adding more detailed information. If I get around to adding vehicles to groups, I could do something similar for PC's as well, so PC ships can have a roster.

I'm liking this a lot more than what I came up with before. What else would everyone want on a vehicle roster?

When running a long combat tracking damage and effects is best if its on a single sheet. Seriously, how much space do you have in front of you? Toss out a rule book, and adventure description and some notes. Your mind and your space is already pretty cluttered, now add 5 extra space ship sheets to track, and of course a way detailed player ship sheet.

You only want to dig out the detailed sheets if absolutely necessary. A single sheet roster which shows deflector orientations, damage and strain, and maneuver, etc, would really speed game play up.

Many other games use a more complex type of card for tracking. i.e. Something that would fit in a few lines on a roster. This is like setting a spread sheet with different column widths on each line. A real pain to do. (Easy if you dump it to a CSV, to load into Excel.)

Ship Name Shields Weapons Pilot (Various Skills) (Strain)

Damage F Auto Blaster GGY Co Pilot (Various Skills)

Strain L R Medium Laser GG Engineer (Various Skills)

Silhouette R Medium Laster YYY Slicer (Various Skills)

Speed\Handling

You get the gist... If I can run an entire battle from a single sheet, the game will be fast and fun. (Bonus points if it tracks initiative separately for each crew-member.)

Maybe add an option to tag on the relevant rule summaries to the end of the sheet or on another sheet.

Some people are still going to want a detailed sheet...

What I'm planning on doing is adding a vehicle summary along with a roster. This will be added to encounters and will show up in its own block, like the various adversary groups do.

There's already an initiative tracker on the encounter sheet. It's at the top. There's 10 slots where you can choose NPC or PC.

OggDude. I love this character generator. I have version 1.0.0.12 that I got by clicking a like in this thread. Is this the most recent version? Will there be expansions to incorporate more *stuff*? Will you make this generator compatible with Age of Rebellion/Force and Destiny when they release by expanding it to include data from those games? Thanks for putting this together. It has been a great tool as me and my RPG group have switched from 2E AD&D to Star Wars EotE.

Yup, .12 is the most recent version. In the next release, I'll be including an import pack for Beyond the Rim adversaries. I'm also adding a Source field, so you'll be able to limit character generation to particular sources (the core rules will always be included).

Thanks for creating this highly useful program! I have a quick question: how would you prefer to receive bug reports? I'm getting a pretty consistent crash when I run it on my Windows XP virtual machine, which seems to be related to loading a custom image. (Loading a built-in image seems to work fine, but loading a custom image seems to crash almost every time, though not quite every single time.) I'll try to chase this down in a few days after I run my next game session, but for now: would you prefer bug reports to be posted on this forum thread? Or somewhere else (and if so, where)?

If you find a bug, just give me a reliable way of reproducing it, including any steps you take. If it's only happening to a particular character, then send me the character, plus any custom data you might have. Thanks!

Oggdude,

Is there a way you can make overflow sheets? If you're character has too many talents (or some talents with long descriptions), they just go off the page, and it doesn't add to another page. Also, this issue seems to occur for the inventory and ship page.

Thanks!

I'm not sure I'll get to it this time around. What I've been doing is restructuring parts of the app so that I can reuse more of the GUI. Since I'll be adding inventory capability to more areas (ships, groups), I created a generic inventory control so the GUI will be consistent throughout the apps. I did the same thing with vehicles, since you'll be able to create stock vehicles and have vehicles as part of encounters and groups.

The main character sheet will also need such a refactoring, but as it was the first sheet I wrote, it's really messy :) In order to add extension sheets, I'll need to reorganize it better, and that's going to take a bit of work.

I'm still working on the next version. I haven't been working on it non-stop as I was, simply because I was getting a bit burnt out on the project. Here's a few things I've done so far:

Added stock vehicles to the GM Tools. You can create and print vehicles from here instead of always having a vehicle as part of a character, and you can take copies of stock vehicles and add them to your character.

Added inventory to groups. This will be any gear that the group owns as a whole.

Expanded Import feature of both adversaries and characters so you can import more than one at a time. Also added a copy feature to both that will allow you to duplicate a character or adversary. This will be really useful for adversaries, if you want to use an existing one as a basis for a new one. For characters, it'll allow you to make a copy for build testing, or something similar.

I'll also be adding vehicles to groups, and I'll add a way to transfer equipment around between ships, groups, and characters. For instance, if you want to offload extra equipment from your character, you can transfer it to either one of his own ships, a ship belonging to a group that the character belongs to, or to the group inventory of any group he belongs to. Sheets will also be updated with inventory.

I'm also planning on adding vehicle rosters to the next version. I haven't worked on it specifically yet (I had to create the inventory and vehicle controls first), but it'll be basically what we've already talked about.

Sounds fantastic as always OggDude.

I would personally be perfectly happy with this program exactly as it is, but with updates for each book, so anything added at this point is just icing.

I haven't attempted it yet, but is the source compiled in a manner that will enable it to run under Mono on a Mac?

I really know nothing about this, but from the little I've read about Mono, one of its Achilles' Heel is that it doesn't have complete support for graphics-heavy applications, which this is. So, it may, or may not work :) Not having a Mac, I can't test it.

As this is written in .NET, there's reverse compilers out there, if someone wants to try and compile it for Mono.

if you can share the code somehow, i'll take a crack at compiling with MonoMac. otherwise, it may be another factor in getting Parallels.

to be clear, i haven't done this before either, but i do have a mac!

Edited by unacoder

Not sure if this has been discussed earlier in the thread and determined there was no way to resolve...

Apparently for Humans, if you later select a specialization or talent that adds one of the two skills you picked as your bonus non-career skills, the program unchecks the bonus Human skill.

I see this as being a big issue in regards to the Recruit universal spec introduced in the Age of Rebellion Beta, as a fifth of that spec's talents are about making non-career skills into career skills, to say nothing of the Insight talent. Or as noted, just simply purchasing an additional specialization that has the previous non-career skill as a career skill.

Not sure if this has been discussed earlier in the thread and determined there was no way to resolve...

Apparently for Humans, if you later select a specialization or talent that adds one of the two skills you picked as your bonus non-career skills, the program unchecks the bonus Human skill.

I see this as being a big issue in regards to the Recruit universal spec introduced in the Age of Rebellion Beta, as a fifth of that spec's talents are about making non-career skills into career skills, to say nothing of the Insight talent. Or as noted, just simply purchasing an additional specialization that has the previous non-career skill as a career skill.

Maybe it's late, but I'm not seeing the issue. If you make a non-career skill into a career skill, then you can't pick it for the bonus human rank, since it only works for non-career skills. I must be missing something :)

Not sure if this has been discussed earlier in the thread and determined there was no way to resolve...

Apparently for Humans, if you later select a specialization or talent that adds one of the two skills you picked as your bonus non-career skills, the program unchecks the bonus Human skill.

I see this as being a big issue in regards to the Recruit universal spec introduced in the Age of Rebellion Beta, as a fifth of that spec's talents are about making non-career skills into career skills, to say nothing of the Insight talent. Or as noted, just simply purchasing an additional specialization that has the previous non-career skill as a career skill.

Maybe it's late, but I'm not seeing the issue. If you make a non-career skill into a career skill, then you can't pick it for the bonus human rank, since it only works for non-career skills. I must be missing something :)

That's the problem. The "bonus non-career skill" for a Human becomes unchecked, and the skill rank that the Human PC had prior to the chosen skill becoming a career skill is removed.

In the game rules, once a Human PC denotes a non-career skill as part of their special benefit, they've always got that 1 rank in the skill, even if it later becomes a career skill. As noted by lead designer Sam Stewart, this game is not 'retroactive-friendly' in that you don't get a refund on XP if you bought two ranks of a skill at the non-career rate and then purchase a specialization that offers the skill as a career skill.

For a more specific example, I have a Human pre-gen character that used one of her bonus non-career skill ranks to take a rank in Disicpline, as the character is going to be a Force-user. I then spend 5 of her XP to purchase the Insight talent (mostly to make Perception a career skill for her), but the system effectively sees that and says "okay, Discipline is a career skill now, so even though this character selected Discipline during initial character creation, I'm going to uncheck that skill and force them to chose something else." And as noted, the game system doesn't work that way; once you've made a selection, you don't get to go back and "pick something else" just because you made an advancement that turned the non-career skill into a career skill.

I tried simply executing the .exe using Mono on my Mac. It doesn't like the use of the web browser. Without a different design, I think we're left with using a Windows VM. FWIW, Parallels 9 is now on Amazon for $55.

Not sure if this has been discussed earlier in the thread and determined there was no way to resolve...

Apparently for Humans, if you later select a specialization or talent that adds one of the two skills you picked as your bonus non-career skills, the program unchecks the bonus Human skill.

I see this as being a big issue in regards to the Recruit universal spec introduced in the Age of Rebellion Beta, as a fifth of that spec's talents are about making non-career skills into career skills, to say nothing of the Insight talent. Or as noted, just simply purchasing an additional specialization that has the previous non-career skill as a career skill.

Maybe it's late, but I'm not seeing the issue. If you make a non-career skill into a career skill, then you can't pick it for the bonus human rank, since it only works for non-career skills. I must be missing something :)

That's the problem. The "bonus non-career skill" for a Human becomes unchecked, and the skill rank that the Human PC had prior to the chosen skill becoming a career skill is removed.

In the game rules, once a Human PC denotes a non-career skill as part of their special benefit, they've always got that 1 rank in the skill, even if it later becomes a career skill. As noted by lead designer Sam Stewart, this game is not 'retroactive-friendly' in that you don't get a refund on XP if you bought two ranks of a skill at the non-career rate and then purchase a specialization that offers the skill as a career skill.

For a more specific example, I have a Human pre-gen character that used one of her bonus non-career skill ranks to take a rank in Disicpline, as the character is going to be a Force-user. I then spend 5 of her XP to purchase the Insight talent (mostly to make Perception a career skill for her), but the system effectively sees that and says "okay, Discipline is a career skill now, so even though this character selected Discipline during initial character creation, I'm going to uncheck that skill and force them to chose something else." And as noted, the game system doesn't work that way; once you've made a selection, you don't get to go back and "pick something else" just because you made an advancement that turned the non-career skill into a career skill.

You're right, that will be difficult. The generator doesn't have a "creation" and "maintenance" mode, so there's no way for it to differentiate between what was originally picked and the current state. We may have to live with this for awhile, until I can think of a simple way of doing this. Adding up XP costs is a fairly in-depth task as it is, and having some costs remain fixed, while others are figured out on-the-fly, will greatly complicate things.

One easy fix for the non-career to career skill bug would be to give yourself an extra 5 XP (that should be what it costs to get the level 1 skill once it is a career skill). It may not be the prettiest or best solution, but it would work. Or maybe you don't restrict the human skills they can choose based on their career/specialization?