I’m pleased to announce that Sojour v1.1 has now been released! As with all updates, this one is completely free for all existing customers!
The main new feature is trackable characteristics. These are very flexible and impact most parts of the system. I highly recommend watching the video below to get a good overview as to how they work.
It should be noted that I have much more in store for characteristics and many more things Sojour related! Sojour is an evolving product and will only get better with time.
If you aren’t a customer and are interested in purchasing it, Sojour costs a one off payment of $10 USD. There are no servers or DRM – so it’s yours to keep forever and you will get free updates – just like this one – as I release them.
You can purchase Sojour from DriveThru RPG using this button:
The last jobs left are updating the manual and filming a new tutorial video. Alas, the manual update will need to be pretty extensive as a lot has changed!
As is usual, all existing customers will be entitled to thisas a freeupgrade 🙂
If you examine the screenshot above you can spot the next enhancement added to trackable characteristics: Characteristic Sets.
Each ruleset can have from zero to as many characteristic sets as needed. Each characteristic set can be built to model a particular thing in a game system.
In the above example I created three characteristic sets for the selected ruleset:
A standard characteristic set with just strength, dexterity and endurance – In this example, Aias is sporting the standard set with three bars.
An enhanced characteristic set for those that are Psionically aware – Arla is one of these – that’s why she has an additional 4th purple bar.
A characteristic set for monsters. These only need one value and that’s hit points. All the monsters are using this one – the tokens with the single green bars.
I also have a red token on the map that I have decided will not have characteristics – so that one sports no characteristic bars.
In addition to characteristic sets, each map can also have its characteristic bars toggled on and off and these settings persist between sessions – It’s the new map tool button, third from the right.
Characteristics can be altered either by mousing over the portraits in the tool bars / journals or mousing over the characteristic bars directly on the map and then using the mouse wheel.
Don’t worry about the specific details, the manual will be updated and a new video will be released to show you folks how to take advantage of the trackable characteristics system 🙂
I’m still on schedule for a release on Sunday! 🙂
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. 🙂
Sojour 