PyReach

[somasatori]

In the spirit of Raistlin’s post, I’m also not starting a new game but I wanted to see what I could do with Evennia and nWoD/Chronicles of Darkness. See, I kind of dislike oWoD and am not entirely sure why it’s currently in the zeitgeist to run on WoD MUSHes (with the exception of City of Glass most recently). I could go into why that is, but that’s not the intention of this post.

Okay! So PyReach is intended to be a setting-neutral and system-focused Chronicles of Darkness (or nWoD 2nd Edition) code system. It’s not remotely ready, but I do have a public repo for it. One day if I figure it out (or ask other, better python coders I know very nicely) I’ll set up an installer file for super ease of use.

Someone once told me that all you need to get a game started is a sheet and a rolling system. Well, we got that!

Excuse the dice spam, I was trying to get an exceptional success:

Mainly it’s a modular system. Because I don’t have a particular game in mind (though I have some ideas, but I don’t really have time to run anything), I set everything up to be templates and modules that you install into the system. For example:

If something is marked “System” it means you have indicated that it cannot be uninstalled. If I wanted to, for instance, uninstall Promethean and then install Demon, it would look like this:
(ignore my own syntax error there)

Demon isn’t really set up, as in I haven’t really entered any of the powers or anything into the system, but now we can change our character sheet over to Demon and it’ll update our bio information and clear out the section that shows our vampire-specific powers. the sheet code doesn’t know to look for Catalyst, Agenda, Ring, Cover Identity, or Incarnation, so it will ignore that in favor of the vanilla mortal stuff.

Let’s see… other stuff. Health is in there, as you can see it updates live on the sheet. I’m still working out the kinks about getting it to subtract a health penalty. Spending & regaining WP is set up, but I haven’t set that up for other power points like Vitae or Glamour. I have a rudimentary room template based on the way The Reach (and Fallcoast) rooms look:

and… yeah! Still working on it, no idea when it’ll be done. It’s a hobby project. There’s some other stuff, but it’s probably not as interesting as these more essential pieces.

[MisterBoring]

Very cool. If this turns into a full game, I might give it a shot if I have time. I like both OWoD and NWoD for very different reasons, and I really think there’s a.need for an NWoD game in the hobby at the moment.

[somasatori]

@MisterBoring That’d be great!

Truth be told I have a bunch of ideas for a CofD game. Although I implemented the full suite, anything I’d do would just be either a single template (probably Changeling) or two (Changeling & Werewolf). I’d likely have Geist as well because no one plays Geist and it’s my favorite.

As for setting, it’d probably be Pittsburg.
…
…
That’s right, beautiful Pittsburg, California!

J/k, I wouldn’t set it in California again

[MisterBoring]

@somasatori said in PyReach:

I’d likely have Geist as well because no one plays Geist and it’s my favorite.

[somasatori]

One minor change. I was going to have Beast in there for completion’s sake, but I both read the Beast powers and had some of the controversies around the author explained to me and

So I’m going to remark all that out. I’ll leave the template in there if someone really wants to complete it, because that would be between you and God, but I think I’m going to … leave it for now.

[MisterBoring]

@somasatori Completely fair. My Kickstarter copy of the BTP book has been gathering years of dust for that very reason.

[labsunlimited]

@somasatori Good deal, Beast is a full deal breaker for me and I’m not alone.

[Redbird]

@somasatori holds up his poor neglected HtV sphere like a Victorian orphan

please sir may we have some more

[catzilla]

@Redbird said in PyReach:

@somasatori holds up his poor neglected HtV sphere like a Victorian orphan

please sir may we have some more

I have a whole HtV game planned out… unfortunately it’s set in California.

[somasatori]

Gonna run that Hunter/Geist/Deviants/Promethean game

[Muscle Car]

@Redbird I’m out of touch, but please tell me this stands for Human: the Victim.

[somasatori]

@Muscle-Car said in PyReach:

@Redbird I’m out of touch, but please tell me this stands for Human: the Victim.

goddamn it, Muscle Car, I said NO BEAST

(it’s Hunter the Vigil)

[Pavel]

@Muscle-Car That is often how it turns out. Though, it’s usually that they’re victims of being unable to fuckin’ do anything.

[labsunlimited]

CofD game would be fantastic and I would be up in it day one.

I suggest Changeling/Geist, for the Motley Krewe experience.

[somasatori]

@labsunlimited said in PyReach:

CofD game would be fantastic and I would be up in it day one.

I suggest Changeling/Geist, for the Motley Krewe experience.

Shout At The DevilMUX

[Redbird]

@catzilla Whom do I have to sacrifice for it?
I’m fine with California!

[somasatori]

Playing around with formatting

[catzilla]

@Redbird said in PyReach:

@catzilla Whom do I have to sacrifice for it?
I’m fine with California!

I’m terrible with coding and I really like Ares but I also like soma’s code. Somehow mix the two and I’ll bring the story!

[MisterBoring]

@somasatori Is it possible to switch between 1st and 2nd Ed? Like, could a game using this do VTR 1st Edition?

[somasatori]

@MisterBoring said in PyReach:

@somasatori Is it possible to switch between 1st and 2nd Ed? Like, could a game using this do VTR 1st Edition?

So, kinda! One of the more common reactions I got when showing this off like six months ago when I was starting it was “oh… It’s 2nd edition nwod?” As a result I was playing around with a setting called legacy mode which is basically just an import switch that developers can control from the MUSH itself. It currently only turns off beats, aspirations, conditions, tilts, uses a different experience system that relies on larger numbers, and has a (very) basic framework that says to use some 1e templates. The only 1e template I have at the moment is Geist 1st edition since it’s relatively simple to create. Unlike Dies Irae, I’m using python dictionaries to call stats instead of an imported JSON library. I wanted to get the other stuff working first, then figured I would go back and complete legacy.

So the answer is that it theoretically can do that, and largely has been included because 1e seems more popular and more likely to attract interest.

Honestly I’m probably missing a few things that need to be added to the switch.

edit: Going through the God Machine Chronicle translation guide and there’s really not much mechanically that needs to change. I have a little copy/paste if statement that I drop into files that need to turn off if legacy mode is on, and I believe I got most of them. I still need to figure out how to get all of the template files starting with ‘legacy_’ to implement if you’re running in legacy mode, but for now you can just install those instead of the 2nd edition CofD ones.

IMO, Chronicles has better mechanics, especially coming at it from a story gamer perspective. Conditions are tilts are great rewards and points of failure for characters that didn’t exclusively rely on XP, which was a very 90s trad game sensibility, for instance.

I do understand that a lot of the changes that were made between 1st ed and GMC were unpopular. The one I hear the most is Changeling Kiths and Seemings no longer being attached to one another. Geist’s changes take a little getting used to, but I feel like it’s superior to the old school stuff. Anywho! I didn’t add any of the stat dictionaries for the mountains of merits that 1st ed nWoD has, but it overall seems to work on a bare bones kinda level.

edit again: Yeah, y’know, it needs work, but it’s mostly there. There’s some debugging I need to do, primarily in that I think there might be some confusion over multiple templates using the same power stat (in this case, blood potency). But it reads the clans correctly, disciplines are loading properly, and it’s properly showing prereqs for things if you don’t meet them, so that’s, like, halfway there.