Create Actor Wizard

[wake42]

Implement some kind of wizard that can embed hitlocations / runes etc after answering some questions. Some inspiration could be taken from the Chaosium wiki.

1. Choose race

   • if human include human hitlocations

2. Player / NPC

   • player should get all skills, should a NPC only get a few?
   • add player runes
   • set reputation to 5%

3. Choose homeland

   • Add Passions
   • increase cultural skills
   • increase cultural runes

4. Choose Occupation

   • Add Passions
   • increase cultural skills
   • set background info like Standard of living etc

5. Characteristics

   • A step to choose which runes should be raised?

6. Cult

   • Show a list of cults in the world

7. Customise

   • Pick 4 skills and add +25% to each
   • Pick 5 skills and add 10% to each

Some additional thoughts. Players need to be able to run this wizard to make it possible for them to create their characters. Players don't have access to the "Create Actor" button in foundry so how should the players run this? One idea is to add a state to the actor to show if a wizard has been run on it or not. The flow would then be that:

• The GM creates an actor and gives the player access to it.
• The player opens the actor sheet and since the wizard has not yet been run, it should display a big prominent "Initialize Character" button that runs the wizard.
• The GM should have another button / option "Skip Initialization" to make it possible to manually set the actor up.

...Other ideas are welcome :-)

Is blocked by

• [x] #199
• [x] #202
• [x] #203

subtasks

• [x] #229 (reverting)
• [x] #246
• [x] #230
• [x] #231
• [x] #314
• [ ] #233
• [ ] #234
• [ ] #235
• [ ] #232
• [ ] #236
• [ ] #237
• [ ] #238

[Moonpile]

Capturing our discussion, one way to implement this might be to have a "Character Creation Sheet" (in addition to the normal Actor Sheet and eventual NPC and Loot sheets). The sheet itself could function as a "tabbed wizard" using the same looking side-tabs that we use in the normal Actor Sheet, but the tabs would be the steps of character creation. And when you're done you just change sheet to the normal Actor Sheet (or NPC).

[Moonpile]

How would we store the data required for this so that it's expandable in the future? For example, "Homeland" is fairly simple but it does add passions, skills, and runes. I'm thinking it could be a json blob somewhere, but that raises two questions. First, is that extensible in the future? Second, where do we put the blob? In the starter set? Or do we make a new item type of "Homeland" and have them in a compendium? Then the Actor creation wizard can just search for all the "Item" compendium entries of type "Homeland".

We have the same basic problem with "Occupation" and whatever works for "Homeland" ought to work for "Occupation" as well.

We also have the grandparent, parent, and self history tables. I think it would make sense if these were modular and by year, and then the Actor sheet wizard walks through year-by-year rolling on the table and adding things. I think however we decide to store "Homeland" and "Occupation" will work for these too, but these tables will be a bit more complicated. Or perhaps we implement it as a roll table somehow?

[Moonpile]

• Homeland -- Description (large text) -- Cultural Stereotype (large text) -- Common Cults (list of references to "Cult" items by ID?) -- Suggested Occupations (list of references to "Occupation" items by ID?) -- Passions (list of references to "Passion" items by ID?)

If we're making a "Homeland" item type do we just have a field on the Actor to hold a Homeland? Then just render it on the background tab, replacing some existing fields there. Also need to give a way of copying a cult over to the Actor, and copying over the base passions.

[Moonpile]

• Occupation -- Description (large text) -- Homelands (list of "Homeland" items by ID? or just text? -- Occupational Skills (map of "Skill" items by Compendium ID and bonus as integer and whether or not the skill is used for income) -- Standard of Living (text, fills in field on background tab) -- Base Income (text, fills in field on background tab) -- Cults (list of "Cult" items by ID? Or just text?) -- Favored Passions (list of "Passion" items by ID?) (player chooses one at +60% or increases one they already have by +10%) -- Ransom (text, fills in field on background tab) -- Equipment (list of "Armor", "Gear", and "Weapon" items by ID)

If we're making an "Occupation" item type, do we just have a slot on the Actor for an array of Occupations and render them that way? On the actor we would only need to render the description, standard of living, base income, and ransom. During creation there needs to be some way to add the skills (or update existing skills), add a cult (optional as this could have been done under Homeland already), add or update a favored passion, and copy all the equipment over to the Actor.

[Moonpile]

• Yearly Events -- Years (sometimes the start and end year will be the same value, sometimes they will encompass a range of years) --- Start Year (as integer) --- End Year (as integer) -- Applies to ("Grandparent", "Parent", "Self") -- Participating Homelands (text or list of homeland IDs?) -- Tables (a list of Roll Tables? or just our own data structure?) --- Type ("Base" or "FollowUp") --- Map of die result range (ie 14-17) and text description to be copied to character history. Should we try to have it automatically add passions and stuff? Result might also refer to roll on a follow up table (ie Building Wall Battle)

• Random Cause of Death Table

• Parental Siblings Table (roll 1d6-1 times for mother and father to determine Aunts and Uncles) (Maybe hook this up to a random name generator of some kind?)

[Moonpile]

I think we need to decide how important it is to make this totally automated. For example, adding homeland passions. I can see this going three ways in ascending order of complexity:

1. Homeland Passions are just text. User is expected to add the passions. Upside: easy to develop, user less forced into things. Downside: slightly harder
2. Homeland Passions are just links to passions enabling the user to drag them into place. This may require that they then set the value appropriately since it's either a new passion at 60% or an existing one at +10% (in which case they wouldn't drag it I suppose)
3. The wizard sheet automatically adds passions or updates them to add +10% as needed.

[wake42]

For reference; in IronSworn the initial create actor dialog is replaced with this, and the character name is randomised

If we implement #200 we could also do something similar - in fact until we add more than one actor type we could even skip directly to the wizard when the user clicks "Create Actor" in the foundry interface. The initial name of the actor would have to be a temporary name in that case until the homeland is chosen.

[wake42]

We should probably split out the creation of homeland & occupation item types into separate issues before starting on this issue.

[wake42]

The issue about automatically adding common spells when adding a cult #153 should also be done to minimise manual work when creating an actor.

[Moonpile]

Totally agreed with all three points. Create Actor dialog is a great idea and solves a lot of issues. We can have "Blank Sheet", "Character Wizard", "Loot/Merchant Sheet", and anything else we need in the future as options. Homeland and Occupation item types should definitely be their own issues and they're being blocked by "rqid". Adding common cult spells is a no-brainer.

[wake42]

Created issues for creating Homeland #202 and Occupation #203 items