11-08-2018, 07:45 AM | #1 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Questions about random treasure generation
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy has a book dedicated to randomly generating detailed treasures.[1] I loves me some detailed treasure, and I loves me some random tables, but Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables is entangled with a lot of GURPS stuff, including the entire Armor section being incompatible with DFRPG, and various items and enchantments being not-entirely-DFRPG.
As a human using the DF8 tables, the differences are pretty minor and I can integrate them into my game casually, but I'm a programmer, not a human :) I'm writing a webapp to randomly generate DFRPG specific treasures and hordes. Preface: Name, merchant value, weight, and page references will be provided for each item. The names of special qualities will be listed as well as their CF value or $ cost (e.g. enchantments). The unenchanted cost and weight will be listed separately from the enchanted cost, for use as a Power Item or if the object suffers a magical accident. No other game-rules will be provided (that's what page references are for) - not only would it be infringing on SJG, I'd go mad trying to scrape that much text. I have some questions about what people feel should be in a DFRPG-dedicated treasure generator.
I feel gems, jewelry, clothing, and other kinds of "art objects" don't need to be in a book to use them, but I will be sticking with DFRPG rules where provided (such as the values for the gems from Exploits and the gem formula). Where there are GURPS rules/values, I'll hew close to those as well if only for simplicity. [1] It also has books of wondrous items! And other books of shiny things! Shiny shiny shiny. *hovers over her PDFs like a dragon on its horde*
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11-08-2018, 07:52 AM | #2 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: Questions about random treasure generation
Other than content, here's some of the features I have planned, in rough order that I plan to implement them:
All plans subject to change without notice.
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11-08-2018, 08:02 AM | #3 | ||||
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Join Date: Feb 2005
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Re: Questions about random treasure generation
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I'm very much in favor of piling on as many different adjectives as possible, so yes.
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I've been making pointlessly shiny things, and I've got some gaming-related stuff as well as 3d printing designs. Buy my Warehouse 23 stuff, dammit! |
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11-08-2018, 08:09 AM | #4 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: Questions about random treasure generation
Some notes about internals:
I'm writing an ASP.NET web service and a web-page front end. All the treasure generation is done on the server and the results are delivered to the web-page (treasure data is not exposed). Other people can use the web service, the API will be exposed for the nerdy amongst us. I like to also have a stand-alone offline windows app; that's not particularly hard, "just" more work for me to do and thus I'm not rushing into it. If I can figure out how to cross-compile for a MacOS app (or someone else can), that's awesome but I may not be able to figure that out. This is a longer-term goal, my priority is the web app itself. I'm interested in making a self-contained offline phone app (but I've never done that, and SJG forbids distribution of unofficial game aids on app stores for very good reasons, so there's a lot of hurdles there). I'd have to talk to SJG about what is and isn't acceptable, and also figure out this whole phone thing. If this went anywhere I'd start by targeting Android because I don't have access to iOS devices. Consider this a tentative idea, not a goal. Internally, my program is not replicating DF8: Treasure Tables. In part because Treasure Tables is designed for humans using dice and implementing that exactly is a pain in the rump (I have gone down that road before, it stank). The greater reason, however, is that by abandoning that framework and the restriction of d6-based tables, I can use more finely tuned chances for items, and use more complicated logic. As an example, I'm experimenting with directly tying the chance of an item to its value - cheaper items being more common. I'm also introducing a chance of being decorated with gems which is based on a combination of the items value and a base chance for the kind of item. A log100 function is involved. I would never ask a human to do that. If I end up satisfied with my result on the gems, I will probably look at a similar concept for chance to be enchanted. While it's funny to have an enchanted dirty wool sock with a patched-up hole in the toe, I don't think that's a good assumption for a general treasure generator.
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11-08-2018, 08:24 AM | #5 | |||
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: Questions about random treasure generation
Squee! A response from the author himself!
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Something I'm particularly giggling about is that C# comes with a giant list of colour names. So not only can I have a great big list without any effort, but my web-page can provide a little colour swatch to show what colour something is enameled with :)
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11-08-2018, 08:41 AM | #6 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Questions about random treasure generation
This sounds like a cool project, Bruno.
So, I have a fantasy here, and it may not be achievable, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. I always want a way to generate treasure, not simply by value (which is really great in itself!), but by theme. The idea is that when I roll up treasure for the Orcs, they don't end up with a vast collection of fine crystalware and perfume, and when I roll up treasure for the Princess's antechamber, she doesn't end up with a Deadly Jagged Mattock of Blood. Or whatever. The old D&D "Treasure types" used to try to achieve this - it was always fun to go "Ah, finally we get to roll on Treasure Type F!" (Or whatever..). But those letters were not very intuitive. When I was designing my own (much simpler!) random treasure generator, I considered attempting this, but ended up opting for simplicity (sadly!). But if I were really trying to do a great job, I think I'd have categories, or filters, to help differentiate things here. Not sure if that is do-able in your timeframe, or if you'd have any interest in doing it! It's certainly a puzzle.
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My (ahem... hugely entertaining... ahem) GURPS blog: The Collaborative Gamer Last edited by Joe; 11-11-2018 at 12:57 PM. |
11-08-2018, 09:02 AM | #7 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: Questions about random treasure generation
I think to an extent restricting item generation to specific categories would help with that - the princess should have luxuries, jewelry, gems, clothing, household items, and furniture, while the orcs should have armor, weapons, adventuring gear, and potions. Or whatever.
Specifying a minimum individual item value would help for the princess too, making sure she has nice clothing and household items. A maximum individual item value for the orcs would restrict the tone of their treasure, but largely eliminate enchanted weapons which is probably not what you wanted. It's not as good as hand-curating the lists but it can go a long way to preventing sillyness.
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11-08-2018, 09:06 AM | #8 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Questions about random treasure generation
That sounds like a sensible middle road. Excited to see the results!
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11-08-2018, 09:44 AM | #9 | |||
Aluminated
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: East of the moon, west of the stars, close to buses and shopping
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Re: Questions about random treasure generation
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In my own implementation, I did something in this direction by checking/unchecking subcategories, limiting random choices to or excluding them as desired. For example, the armory of a fighting order might consist entirely of arms and armor, while a long-lost dungeon might contain no perishable items (that is, no cloth, no paper, no leather, etc.). This is something which could be implemented broadly with proper use of item attributes, but coming up with proper attributes to reflect specific "treasure type" conditions could be tricky.
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I've been making pointlessly shiny things, and I've got some gaming-related stuff as well as 3d printing designs. Buy my Warehouse 23 stuff, dammit! |
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11-08-2018, 09:49 AM | #10 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: Questions about random treasure generation
I'll be hand-curating lists for the "random pocket stuff" feature, whenever I get around to that. That's a themed treasure list right there.
Depending on what I do to make that work, it might make it easier to add other hand-curated lists. Or not. It would be stylish to push a button and get treasure that only includes "crude" weapons, bone and antler and copper jewelry decorated with non-precious stone beads, scales, teeth, fangs, and feathers, leather and cloth armor, etc. Or never includes such.
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