This week I have got custom folders to the point where it is nearly fully integrated with the rest of the system. That is, Sojour is nearly fully operational with the same functionality it currently has, but using the new custom folder technology rather than the older static views technology.
However, despite the work on custom folders, I have also been working on overhauling Sojour’s characteristics system. The intent is to release the characteristics overhaul first – as this has a bigger impact on gameplay. This will then be followed up by custom folders.
At the time of writing, Sojour’s characteristics system is extremely crude. It can only track hit points and that’s for NPC’s only!
Many RPG’s don’t have hit points. Some RPG’s use a total of several different characteristics to keep track of hit points, whilst others have additional characteristics that also need tracking – such as magic points. Sojour currently has great difficulty in modelling these values unless you do it directly within the journals, character sheets or campaign documents themselves.
The new characteristics system will allow the user to add up to four trackable characteristics for use with NPC’s, PC’s and Campaign Assets.
These characteristics will be defined at ruleset level:
The image above is from the new ‘Add Ruleset’ dialog window. It now allows the user to add zero to four trackable characteristics for the ruleset. Here, I have set it up to model the characteristics found in the Traveller TTRPG.
Sojour will default to giving you a single field called hit points, which if left unaltered will provide similar functionality to what we already have.
When a character, token or campaign asset is created, it will inherit these characteristics from its parent ruleset. At this point you can choose to enable or disable them for the newly created entity.
Characteristics will normally be filled out with numeric values, however, tokens will also allow you to use a dice expression in lieu of a fixed value. Where a dice expression is provided, sojour will automatically roll these characteristics when the token is dragged to a map.
I have restricted Sojour to four trackable characteristics as I wanted them to be easily editable with the mouse wheel. Alas, I can only think of four easy to use mouse wheel combinations: Mouse wheel only, <Ctrl> Mouse Wheel, <Shift> Mouse Wheel and <Ctrl + Shift> Mouse Wheel – hence the limit.
All NPCs and PCs will display health bars, one for each characteristic. These will also be visible on the map – though this will be a toggled feature under Sojour’s settings.
There is still a ways to go. But most of the low level coding is done and the characteristics system is now fully integrated with entities, map-tokens and journals.
Existing games will be auto-upgraded to use the new system. The way this will work is that each existing ruleset will get Hit Points as a characteristic. This characteristic will then be disabled for everything except NPCs, with the current values ported over. In theory you shouldn’t notice any changes to existing games (other than some of the new features).
Once released, I will put up a video too, as this system is very flexible and pretty extensive in scope.
I hope you folks like where the characteristics system is heading. 🙂
That’s it for this week!
Thank you for buying Sojour and have fun!
RobP
Sojour 