# GMGen 5.7.4 Alpha released (part of PCGen 5.7.4a)



## soulcatcher (Aug 27, 2004)

Hi all,
although GMGen is a part of PCGen, most users of PCGen are players, so thus not many people know about the expansive toolkit that is GMGen.  As such I have decided to start announcing what is in it when a new pcgen version is released.

You get gmgen (for free) when you downlad the full pcgen at http://pcgen.sourceforge.net/03_downloads.php Be sure to download the pcgen_full, not pcgen partial.

So, GMGen in 5.7.4 can do the following:

GMGen has a series of plugins that do a variety of things for you as the GM, but also for players.

So, the plugins are:
Character Sheet
Dice Bag
Doomsday Book
Encounter
Experience
Initiative
Network
Notes
Overland Travel
and PCG Tracker

what these do in order:

Character Sheet:
The character sheet plugin is usable in both pcgen and gmgen.  In pcgen is shows up as the "Preview tab" which is now it's default place.
The character sheet allows you to make changes in pcgen and see a real character sheet to identify what your changes have done.
Features:
- fully renderd character sheet that updates as you make changes in pcgen
- support for 3.0 and 3.5 ed (still need to explicitly support spycraft and d20 modern and anything else - it's still useful with them, jsut incomplete)
- Ability to make notes on the sheet
- Ability to mark things like damage, or uses of wildshape/rage/turns/etc that if you save your character afterwords can be useful for remembering the state of your character across sessions
- Can change colors to match any of the pdf ourput sheet colors (this currently can only happen in gmgen, I really need to get the prefs working in pcgen)

Dice Bag:
The dice bag plugin can stor an arbitraty number of dice for you to roll.  I actually didn't expect the usage of this I have seen - all of my players now use it for damage with their 4x sneak attacking flaming bows 
- you can type in any die expression 1d20, 2d6+5, (1d6)d(1d5)+(1d3)d2+1
- you can permanently add dice to the bag for dice you use often
- you can save the dice bag out as a .dbg file, and if you leave a save dicebag open when you clsoe gmgen, it will automatically load it
- Dice rolls can be logged to the GM over the Networking plugin

Doomsday Book:
This is a random name generator that takes random name generation to the next level
- Instead of trying to find a complete name you like, after you see one that is partially there, you can randomly generate just the other parts (say you like John of "John Carpenter", you can keep rolling till you get a lst name you like)
- Can be used to generate names for people as well as towns/swords/boats/etc...
- allows you to take a random name structure, or to select from a list of predefined structures (example: [firstname] [genetive byname], [first name] [descriptive byname], [first name] [descriptive byname] [genetive byname])
- For words we have definitions of, it will display the definition along with the name (Liam mac Donald (def: Liam son of Donald))

Encounter:
This plugin can be used to create encounters from the list of monsters loaded in pcgen.
- lets you select a number of monsters, and add them to the list
- supports random generation of the encounter (but doesn't have really any data to support this)
- hit "start encounter" and you roll up the hit points for the monsters, and then it loads them into both pcgen, and initiative
Honestly, this is the plugin I am least happy with, it needs some loving

Experience:
This plugin allows a gm to assign experience to PCs.
- Pulls dead enemies from the initiative plugin (make sure they are dead, bleeding or stable don't do get sent over) This uses the creatures known CR
- allows you to add 'deafeated combatants' with CRs
- allows you to change any defeated combatant's CR
- allows you to apply an experience modifier from .5x to 2.0x
- you can use 3.0 or 3.5 experience rules (yes, they are different and imho, the 3.5 ones are vastly superior)
- when you assign experience to the party, it splits it up based on the rule set
- experience can be assigned directly to single chraracters
- experience can be assigned over the network, when it will end up on the player's pcg (so long as he saves  )

Initiative
This plugin is a full combat tracker, and is in many ways the meat of GMGen
- takes any loaded pcgs and displays them
- allows you to add a quick combatant that is not a pcgen character, but can have a great deal of information if needed
- you can roll initiatiave for all laoded combatants
- allows you to damage, heal, kill, raise, refocus, reroll for any comatant
- allows you to set any combatant as a PC/Ally/Non-Combatant/Enemy (for experience purposes - enemies give exp, exp is splti between PCs and allys - no combatants have no affect - use that for summoned creatures)
- you can save a combat out as a .gmi file - this file will load all pcg files that are in it, and will input all quick combatants.  it will restore the combat back to the exact situation it had been in before - doesn't know how to handle network combatants tho.
- any PCs loaded on a player's system will show up in the GM's initiatve plugin when networked
- all damage/other things applied will go over the network
- All loaded PCs (including ones over the network) have a stat block that will show up.  This stat block contains all important information about the character (Gms, no need to load pcgs if your players connect via the network)
- The stat block can pop up dialogs for rolling attacks, rolling checks (skills and stats), and for casting spells
- Initiative tracks spells and their duration (no, it does not yet grab the duration from the PC's spells, but it will!!  )
- Initiative can track bleeding/massive damage/subdual damage, and can deal with all the appropriate rolls (and has numerous options for all three (3.0, 3.5, modern, some house rules, etc)
- can track events and alert the GM that said event happens
- Umm...other stuff

Network:
The network plugin is the glue for multiple people runnng gmgen at the table or over the internet.
- allows one person to run a server (we assume it's the GM), and others can connect as clients
- as a rudimentary IM system built in.  Players can send messages to other players, the GM and everyone, with all messages CCed to the Gm
- there is a message indicator icon that will pop up on the Network tab to alert that there is an unread message
- Logs most intereting information from a combat so that you can see what all happened (think neverwinter) Again, GM is CCed on all logs
- other plugins do the bulk of the interesting things for the networking plugin

Notes:
Notes is a heirarchical note taking system for GMGen.  This can be used to manage campaigns, adn to organize even simple encounters (a module could very easily be implemented in Notes)
- Allows you to create new nodes on the tree - each node can contain written notes and files
- Written notes can use the simple worp processor that is included, and can render most simple HTML
- All notes nodes are stored as a directory in pcgen/plugins/Notes (though you can rehome it with your preferences)
- you can drop files in the approipreiate notes directory, or drag and drop a file directly on the not itself.  this file will show up as an icon at the bottom of the notes window, and can be double clicked to launch (or right click to launch/delete) in the appropriate application (I use a lot of word documents/pdf files and campaign cartographer maps for mine).  Launching in the right application works on windows (an maybe mac, can someone test, and perhaps if it doesn't work write that code?)  I need to get around to doing it for Gnome/KDE.
- You can launch pcgen/gmgen files that are stored in notes.  .pcg, .pcp, and .gmi.  This could be used to prepare a combat beforehand, and then just launched from notes, with all teh information for that room.
- The word processor can take images that have been dragged and dropped into it - to allow you to have images in your notes
- you can click on any node and hit export - this will create a .gmn file, which can be imported under any other node, or by anyone else.
- Did I mention we have a .gmn of the 3.0 srd, and a 3.5 srd in process?

Overland Travel:
Overland travel calculator for determining distance a party can travel acc to the phb (as wellas costs associated with food and such
- Calculates travel time based on move rate
- Calculates room and board

PCG Tracker:
This is just a simple plugin that allows you to open and close pcgs from within gmgen.

Devon Jones
PCGen Code Silverback
PCGen BoD


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## Ranger REG (Aug 27, 2004)

Wow. It has been a long time since I've heard anything new for the _PCGen_ line.


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## soulcatcher (Aug 28, 2004)

Ranger REG said:
			
		

> Wow. It has been a long time since I've heard anything new for the _PCGen_ line.




We have been *doing* a lot, but not reporting it.  On the pcgen side, we have full support now for spycraft, and a working msrd/rsrd/srd.  New sources are finally starting to make it in to the program.

I think the big problem is that we lost the person who did most of our advocacy here and in other places.

Devon Jones
PCGen Code Silverback
PCGen BoD


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## kingpaul (Sep 1, 2004)

So, has anyone tried out GMGen? If so, what are your thoughts?


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## redkobold (Sep 1, 2004)

Does the dice bag have the ability to drop a die?  Such as 4d6 drop lowest for character ability score generation?  If not, I would love to have it when I generate characters instead of having to roll actual dice or use a point buy method.


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## Wrathamon (Sep 2, 2004)

So you can use this to play games over the net? Does it support maps of any kind?

would be nice to have something like Interactive Dungeon tied on to this so a DM can display rooms as players enter them


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## soulcatcher (Sep 2, 2004)

lyonstudio said:
			
		

> Does the dice bag have the ability to drop a die?  Such as 4d6 drop lowest for character ability score generation?  If not, I would love to have it when I generate characters instead of having to roll actual dice or use a point buy method.




Nope, but I'll add this to the features to do list.

My goal is actually to record on a log the results of each die, and the total, but we could add syntax for dropping the lowest n dice or highest n dice.  Currently it lets you do some pretty wacky dice expressions already (like (1d4)d(1d3) + 1d6 + 1)

Devon


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## redkobold (Sep 2, 2004)

Great, I would love to have it to roll up characters.  I tried it out yesterday after I posted.  In relation to having it roll characters, can it also be made to do 6 rolls instead of just one and clearing itself each time.  

You mentioned some type of logging.  Is there a way to save/record a series of rolls?

And one last corny request, could it have a rattling dice sound and a delayed roll option when you click on the roll button?  It sounds silly but I had two computerized versions of Monopoly way back in the day.  One just displayed a number when you clicked on roll and the other version showed spinning dice and made a dice rolling sound with a pause before it showed you the results.  The second option was much more enjoyable to play because of those effects.


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## soulcatcher (Sep 2, 2004)

Wrathamon said:
			
		

> So you can use this to play games over the net? Does it support maps of any kind?
> 
> would be nice to have something like Interactive Dungeon tied on to this so a DM can display rooms as players enter them




Yes, with the networkign plugin, you can use GMGen to play games over the net.  No, we don't have a battlemap *yet*.  We have a list of plugins that we would like to have on a wiki where you can add suggestions: Proposed Plugins  & Current Plugins 

The idea here is that we can store all of these good ideas for when I can get around to implementing them 

Devon
PCGen Code Silverback


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## soulcatcher (Sep 2, 2004)

lyonstudio said:
			
		

> Great, I would love to have it to roll up characters.  I tried it out yesterday after I posted.  In relation to having it roll characters, can it also be made to do 6 rolls instead of just one and clearing itself each time.




This is already on the list of functionality to do 



			
				lyonstudio said:
			
		

> You mentioned some type of logging.  Is there a way to save/record a series of rolls?




Ok, here is how: Go to edit->preferences, and then go to the Notes->General branch.

Check the box "Log game data".

then, rolls done in dicebag will be recorded in the notes plugin under Notes->Logs->DiceBag.  you can cut and paste from here (probably need to add an option to not have the date info), and when you exit GMGen, it will ask you if you want to save the "unsaved notes".



			
				lyonstudio said:
			
		

> And one last corny request, could it have a rattling dice sound and a delayed roll option when you click on the roll button?  It sounds silly but I had two computerized versions of Monopoly way back in the day.  One just displayed a number when you clicked on roll and the other version showed spinning dice and made a dice rolling sound with a pause before it showed you the results.  The second option was much more enjoyable to play because of those effects.




ok, I added this to the list, I would be fine with this as an option.  now I just need a good sound for it.

I ahve put all these suggestions here: PCGen Wiki

you can add mroe suggestions by hitting "edit" at the bottom of the page, and then following the instructions (or continue to post them here  )


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