What are parameters for?Parameters allow you to assign attributes to characters, NPCs and items in your game. An example of a parameter would be a character's hitpoints or an item's durability or the amount of experience an NPC will award a player if it is killed. The parameter system is extremily flexible in order to suit the needs of any RPG. Here are some example character parameters that would be used in a traditional RPG game:
NPC parameters should mirror character parameters as much as possible with some obvious differences. Generally NPC characters do not level and they should contain a parameter that shows how much experience a player will get if they kill this NPC. The reason why NPCs should have all character parameters is simply because GMs may want to "play" an NPC and this would be the only way for a GM to play a character in their own game since GMs cannot create characters for their own game. Here are some parameters NPCs should have in addition to character parameters:
Here are some example item parameters that would be used in a traditional RPG game:
How do I define parameters?Parameters are defined in the Game Administration tab and is only available to Game Masters. Additionally, parameters can ONLY be defined once a game has been saved for the first time. To start creating parameters for your game, hit the "Create New Game" button in the game lobby, give your game a name and then hit submit. If your game name does not exist yet then it will then be saved for the first time and you will be able to start creating your parameters. There are 3 types of parameters: Text, Number and List. Each type has it's uses and will be explained in the following sub-sections. Each parameter's type can be set as show in the following image...  Text parameters are the most basic. They are simply parameters that will contain text only. An example of a text parameter could be the Damage parameter on an item. Game Masters will sometimes want to create items that can be used as weapons and will need some way of showing how much damage that item would do (like 2d6 or 1d4+3) and the damage parameter would need to be set to Text. List parameters types will only allow you to select values from a pre-set list of options. You define these options using the Add and Remove buttons as seen in the screenshot below...  Number parameters are certainly the most important parameter type for your game. Most of your parameters will infact be number parameters. A good example of a number parameter would be the Quantity on an item. There are a number of excellent features that number parameters have including the ability to contain a dice roll formula. Number parameters also have a convenient +/- link beside them (for GMs only) which will prompt you for a value you would like to add to your parameter when managing your game.  You'll notice that the link to next feature is used for hitpoints. Checking "link to next" will cause MyRPG to display 2 parameters side by side. The example in the screenshot will end up looking like Hitpoints: 10/10. I just used 10 as an example of what the hitpoints and the max hitpoints could be. It is important to understand that if you would like to randomly generate the hitpoints for an NPC, make sure you fill out the first parameter (the hitpoints) with your dice roll formula but leave the max hitpoints parameter blank! Leaving the max hitpoints parameter blank will cause the system to use whatever the resulting value was for hitpoints. The "Break" feature is there for organization. Sometimes your games will have a lot of parameters (10-20 is a lot). This is ok but having that many parameters in a row can be difficult to look at and you'll probably find yourself searching for the parameter you need to modify. The break feature is used to group parameters. Just make sure you create your parameters in logical groupings and then "break" them up. As you can see in the screenshot above, I've separated my character attributes from the hitpoints and level parameter. As of right now, parameters cannot be reordered. So make sure you create your parameters with a nice order BEFORE you start adding players to your game! How do I use parameters in my game?Once you've created your parameters in
the Game Administration tab, you can now create Item Types and NPC
types that use the parameters you've specified for them. In addition,
when players join your game, you'll be able to edit their parameters in
the Transactions tab, but for now, lets just start with the Item
Types...
Game masters have access to the "Item Types" tab which will allow them to create and edit item types for their game.
So whats an Item Type? Think of it like a blueprint. Some examples of
item types would be a sword, shield or some sort of material like wood
and leather. You would use the item type entry to define things like,
how much damage this type of sword does.  As you can see in the above screenshot, each of the item types I created have their parameters filled out. Like damage or gold value. Item type parameters can contain dice roll formulas but its not a common thing for an item. Usually items have static parameters (like damage or durability). It is much more common for an NPC to have dice roll formulas making up their parameters. However, if you were to create a new item type that contained a dice roll formula in a parameter, the dice roll formula would be calculated as soon as the item type is created into the world. Examples of parameters containing dice roll formulas will appear in the next sub-section NPC Types. NPC Types are almost identical to Item Types. The only real difference is what we call it. Everythign else works exactly the same way so if you'd like to learn about NPC Types, definately read the Item Types section first. The only real difference between item types and npc types is the fact that npc types tend to need a lot of dice roll formulas in their parameters. The following screenshot shows an example of this...  If you have a closer look at this screenshot, you'll see the wolves have parameters which contain dice roll formulas (like {5+1d6}). As soon as a wolf NPC type is created into the world, any parameters which contain dice roll formulas will be calculated out (provided the dice roll formulas are surrounded by curly brackets as per the rules of dice roll formulas). Of course, each parameter can be edited after creation as well and this is done in the transactions tab.
As of right now, there is no way of creating a "Character Type" with all of these pre-defined dice roll formulas to make your life easier. This will be implemented in later versions of MyRPG. Infact, the next thing to be implemented will be the default values for parameters. Under the Transactions tab you will find a tab called Transfer/Edit as shown in the screenshot below.  This is where parameters can be changed on characters, items and NPCs. For example, Nekot in our screenshot has 20 hitpoints out of a possible 22. I could use the +/- to subtract or add a set amount to/from his hitpoints or I can just set the parameter to whatever value I want. Additionally, I could set the parameter to a dice roll formula and it would be calculated when I hit the "Save Parameter Changes" button near the bottom. For example, I could set his hitpoints to {20-1d4} which would end up being 20 minus a random number from 1 to 4. (This is not generally done but anything is possible!) Any changes made to these live characters, items or NPCs will NOT affect the Item or NPC Types they were created from. But that's pretty straight forward. |