TiddlyWiki for RPG Campaign Management

[Joshua Fontany]

Hi Tiddly-folks,

I thought I start a thread for my gaming use of TiddlyWiki, to discuss and improve my TiddlyWiki techniques or share anything cool we develop.

I will be running a tabletop rpg game of Earthdawn (4th Edition), and wanted to start building the basic rules/mechanics references into my TiddlyWiki.

(For anyone curious, Earthdawn is the "precursor" to Shadowrun - basically a high-fantasy ancient-mythic-Earth setting.)

The first thing to tackle is the concept of Steps. All character and game-mechanic ratings are given as a "Step", which is then converted to a Die Pool via the Step/Action Dice table from the books/character sheets.

So, for example, your character may have a Dexterity Step of 5, and a Melee Weapons Rank of 5, giving a total Melee Weapons Step of 10.

Step 10 = 2d8, so roll 2d8 to see if you hit. BTW, dice in Earthdawn "explode" (if you roll the max#, keep it and roll another die of the same type, adding to the result), which means that the die pool for a "Step#" will roll above the Step# around ~50% of the time.

Players and GMs should not have to spend time looking that up, so it should be given with each Stat or Skill automatically (possibly as a tooltip) when using TiddlyWiki to manage characters.

This is the first "lookup" function I will need in order to make transcluding character data into a Character Sheet template work.

Here is a sample of the Step/Action Dice table. There is a pattern buried in there, but it's not obvious until you see the first 30 Steps. 

Step  | Action Dice
1     | d4-2
2     | d4-1
3     | d4
4     | d6
5     | d8
6     | d10
7     | d12
8     | 2d6
9     | d8+d6
10    | 2d8

Anyway, that's the basic "lookup" function I need. What would be best used to handle this?
I can see a data tiddler ("dictionary tiddler" or JSON) or even a Macro (or Javascript Macro?) working for this....

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The next "function" I need is a simple conversion of the classic 1-18 "stat" range to the corresponding Step #. 

This is easier, as it's basically math:
Step# = Ceiling(AttributeValue/3) +1

So a Dexterity Value of 16 through 18 would be Step 7, a Strength Value of 13 to 15 would be Step 6, etc, etc.

Would a Javascript Macro work best for these math functions?
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Thanks for any help you guys can offer. :)

[Jed Carty]

You should probably use a data tiddler for the lookup part. You could do it using normal fields but I like using data tiddlers for these things. For the math parts I have a few tools that I put together to make the wiki dynamically update values for me, but I don't really have any documentation or anything in a state to show off. The parts I used were from my mathything and trigger actions plugins.

For your purpose you may be better off writing your own widget if you are comfortable with javascript. You could probably edit the widgets in mathything to directly do the math you want, and there is a demo site for the trigger actions plugin that hopefully will show how you can make the math update automatically.  Even if you aren't familiar with javascript it sounds like you want to make some interesting things with tiddlywiki and learning a bit of javascript will make that easier.

The reason they are widgets instead of just javascript macros is that widgets can update on any change to the wiki while macros are more limited in when they will update.