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Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
How I prepare for my tabletop RPG sessions has changed a lot over the last 12 years, and open source software has been a big part of those changes. It's now a vital part of every step in the process, from collecting and sketching out ideas, to dungeon map creation, to map keying, right through to the tools used during play.
When I first started gaming, around 1980, the idea of open source was just beginning to form. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D, 1st edition) was still very new and our tools were just paper and pencil. I didn't get to play very much back then because my closest friend lived several miles away.
I got back to it in 2005 when a coworker invited me to play in his game. Four years later he couldn't continue as the DM because Life Got Busy™ so I took over as DM.
Initially, I went back to the old pencil and paper tools, just like back in 1980, to prepare for gaming sessions. Quickly, though, my work as a sysadmin and open source user changed how I prepare and run my campaign, the series of play sessions run by a DM that create the world and the challenges the other player characters (PCs) confront in AD&D or the Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea.
Guy had a few ideas I hadn't thought of yet. You lot care to add any of the tools you use to the list?
Source: OpenSource.com
(Score: 5, Informative) by ShadowSystems on Thursday June 22 2017, @04:50AM (12 children)
Back when I could still see to do so I used to draw maps.
Colored pencils (PrismaColor) on map sized vellum, depicting a land mass that might be as small as an individual island or as large as an entire continent if the user wished. Forests, grasslands, plains, steppes, mountain ranges, lakes, rivers, oceans, & all of it given a Legend in the lower right corner to let the viewer know what the symbols stood for: "This is trees, this pattern is desert, this one is swamps" etc.
I'd use three or four colors for each element - from a dark color to indicate the lower elevations through to a light shade of the same basic color to indicate the high points - so even though "green means trees", you would get dark green for the densest & darkest parts, a medium dark for the medium dense parts, a slightly lighter shade for the medium low areas, & a brighter green for the sparse stuff.
It really made the elements stand out with a degree of realism that gave the map life.
Once I had finished drawing & coloring in the map, I'd draw a grid in silver over the top of it all: one inch squares that acted like Lat/Long Lines & made it extremely easy for a viewer to locate individual areas. With an Alphabet along the left side & Numeric along the bottom, you could then point to the map & say "Your party is standing in AZ-19 at the base of the hills."
From there I could draw each individual square on the big map, creating ever smaller maps that let the viewer go from the "Thousand miles per square" scale to a specific smaller map of a given square that might increase it to a "one hundred mile scale" instead.
Big map at 1,000 miles, Medium maps at 100 mile scale, Smaller maps at 10 mile scale, & Tiny maps at 1 mile scale.
By the time I was done you could "zoom in" by following the map grid coordinates from whatever map you were on, finding the corresponding larger/smaller map for that grid location, & be able to track where you had been, where you wanted to go, & see all the terrain inbetween.
Then I started scanning them all on my long since gone flat bed scanner.
Turning all the maps into JPG's, recombining the individual scans into the larger map they came from, & filling DVD's with all the images.
I'd keep each map in its own folder (like "The Land of Borkfest" or some such) with Large, Medium, Small, & Tiny fulders beneath that to store the ever smaller maps.
Then I could share the maps with my players as easily as printing out the specific grid they were on, or the +1 size larger map they would be traveling.
I could send them via email so my Play By Post players would all be on the same page.
I decided I'd try my hand at skipping the colored pencils & scanning step, just going straight to digital.
I created a blank BMP in Windows Paint, zoomed it out to max size, & drew a grid of 5x5 pixels across the entire image.
When you zoomed to normal size it left you with a sheet of virtual graph paper.
Saved the "graph paper" & made a copy for each new map.
I couldn't make it as detailed as the ones by colored pencil, there are just some things that need a professional drawing tablet which I didn't have, so had to make do with a mouse.
But I made elements for trees, mountains, steppes, rivers, lakes, plains, etc, then saved the blank (uncolored) elements to separate files.
Copy them all into a Legend file, paste the Legend into each map, & saved myself much time.
I could then do similar copy+paste jobs to populate the maps, & spend the bulk of my time coloring everything.
As in on the paper maps, I'd draw in symbols for cities/hamlets/metropoli/villages/etc, dotted lines that gave the general location of "The Great North Road" style bits, etc.
I'd make all the smaller maps in the same way as before, just doing each one digitally instead.
By the time I was done I'd have a couple of thousand maps of each land mass, all in forms that the DM & players could use as they wished.
I used this same method to draw a purely greyscale set of maps for an RPG I was trying to write for a device called the Cybiko.
Because it had seriously limited storeage & a pitiful screen, I figured that if I made the graphics acceptable on the Cybiko, they would be useable on pretty much everything else.
So if I did a good job on the project coding & demand came for it to be ported, I wouldn't have to do much work on the maps.
(The underlying code would be a whole 'nuther ball o' wax!)
That was my amateur cartographer phase.
I miss it.
*Sigh*
For character sheets I've created plain text versions for each of the standard races & classes.
Want to play a Dwarf Rogue? I've got one of those.
You have to roll the stats, pick the feats, put ranks into the skills, etc, but the Dwarf racial data & the Rogue class game data are all there ready to go.
I streamlined much of the math by changing "your Charisma Modifier" style bits into "+(Cha)" instead.
That way any time your score changes (like you go up the level needed to get an ability improvement), you can do a global replace to change "+1(Cha)" to "+2(Cha)" instead.
Now everywhere that Charisma is part of an equation (skills, feats, etc) then the value has been changed.
You don't have to wonder if you remembered to change it for any particular part, you changed it *everywhere* at once.
So things like calculating the Base Attack Bonus for a Melee attack might look like:
"ToHit: +1(BAB), +2(Str)(Melee) or +1(Dex)(Ranged), +1(LuckStone)."
That way you can tell at a peek that you need to add +X to your d20 roll.
The equation for a skill check might look like:
"Knowledge Arcana, +1(Int) +3(SkillFocus) +2(Ranks).
Again, a quick peek tells you what to add to your d20 roll to check for success.
I've turned all of the unofficial^ source material into plain text files that are easier for a screen reader to read.
Turning tables that might be visually legible to comma separated values instead, thus they make sense to a reader.
By having them all as text files, broken down into smaller files dedicated to topic, it's easy to check all the different files about (for example) Feats from all the different sources.
I've also made a single large "All Feats from the following sources" file, noting each entry with it's source, so I can quickly search "the all file" for any specific Feat.
Want to know all the various MetaMagic Feats? Do a search on "MMF" & you'll find them easily.
^: I asked WotC for a plain text set of the material so I could be able to use all the books I've bought over the decades now that I'm blind.
They told me to GFM. Since WotC isn't interested in providing official texts, I've had to go the pirate route to get text copies of stuff I already own.
*Sigh*
Way to go WotC, you've made someone that has spent thousands on D&D materials into a pirate because you can't be bothered to consider the blind.
*Golf Clap*
Anyway, use a program like Paint to doodle maps.
You can zoom in/out to reveal as much/little as you (the DM) want.
You can use the "roller brush" tool to black out the parts you don't want them to see yet, then give them a copy with the "fog of war" removed.
You can create plain text files of all the different character sheets, so any player can fill one out much faster than before.
Creating text files of the source material makes searching for any particular bit easy, especially if you break them down into topics.
"Book of Exalted Deeds, Feats.txt" is fairly simple, & "All Feets from all sources.txt" is self explanitory.
You can then use said files via PBP, F2F, or any other setting.
The player can view them on anything from a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or full desktop.
And you can use a program like Hero Machine to create the character portraits, encouraging players to share their character portraits with the group.
=-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 22 2017, @04:57AM (1 child)
This is what I did from the 4th to 6th grade (a friend's dad was an architect and we got 2 9x12 sheets of vellum graphpaper apiece. I still have them in a binder somewhere. I actually bought a whole book of the stuff a few years back, but it sadly has languished as time, lack of friends with creative interests, and a decline in phantasy worlds I'd like to make maps of have taken over :(
That said, it gave me hundreds of hours of enjoyment.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by ShadowSystems on Thursday June 22 2017, @05:41AM
Thanks. So am I. =-)p
I got a large roll of clear plastic that was a few MM thick.
With it rolled up into a thin little tube it would fit inside the map tube where I kept all my map vellum blanks, or the tube where I kept the created maps.
The plastic had a 1 inch grid embossed on one side, probably for use as a sewing cutting guide or similar purpose, but I used it to place over the maps I'd made.
Put the map down, lay the plastic protective cover over it, & not worry TOO much about spills.
I'd still yank it off the table if one happened, but it gave me a bit more hope that I'd be able to save the map.
The plastic also did double duty as my battle map: use water-based eraseable markers, doodle the current battle scene, & let everyone drop their MiniFigs where they belonged.
It was SO much fun having Lego figures, StarWars action figures, the plastic figs from various board games like The Game of Life, or official plastic/pewter figs, or any other figure that was the right scale size.
"Will it fit in a single square? Great! Set it down & let's play!"
*Happy sigh*
I had a giant plastic tub of the click lock lid variety full of various figures.
Beasts, playable races, robots, zombies, skeletons, amorphous blobs, Lego MiniFigs, animals from those bags of farm critters they often sell at the dollar store as play toys for kids, you name it.
I even had those silly green plastic soldier dudes that I would use as place markers for bad guys in waiting.
"Ok, this one is actually an Orc sitting beside this tree. Just pretend the guy with the rifle is an Orc."
=-)p
My son & I had years of fun playing against each other, one of us DMing & the other playing.
Then we got his GF involved & turned each session into a round table: first one would DM & the other 2 play, then switch to a new DM, & then switch again later.
Each person got to DM for part of the time (say an hour or two) then play for the rest of the night.
It kept us honest since any shit we pulled would end up coming back to bite us on the ass later that night.
*Chortle*
Go ahead & throw a thousand zombies at the kids barbarian now, but then when he's the DM don't be surprised if he "accidently" introduces the Tarrasque.
"Hey dad, you remember those zombies? Yeah, well, RANC. (Roll A New Character)"
=-D
(Score: 2) by microtodd on Thursday June 22 2017, @04:25PM (5 children)
You're comments on plain text character sheets actually made me think. What would be cool would be a JS webapp, or a Google Sheets sheet, or a tablet app, that, if you set race and class and feats and stuff, type in your original attribute rolls, things are automatically calculated for you. What was annoying to me is "Oh I level up now I need 60 minutes and a calculator" to update my character sheet and figure out how many new spells I need to learn and what my new off-hand attack bonus is.
(Score: 1) by ShadowSystems on Thursday June 22 2017, @08:57PM
Unfortunately there are already plenty of third party, unofficial, unlicensed, & thus of dubious use, desktop programs & mobile apps for character generation, manipulation, & tracking.
They all suffer from the fact that they can't legally include anything WotC has kept under copyright control, only being able to use the stuff WotC has released under Open Game Content.
If it's not OGC then it will get stomped on, the developer sued, & WotC will take a Dragon's BreathWeapon to the product.
*Fwhoooosh*
My personal character sheets are divided into sections:
Personal: where all the flavor text goes.
Main: where the Stat Block, HP, BAB, Grapple, Initiative, Fort/Ref/Will, AC, Weapons, Special Attacks, Special Qualities, & Languages is recorded.
Ability Score Rolls: where the player records their d6 rolls, how they applied them, the improvements they make at every 4th level, etc.
Skills: This includes the Class Skill Points per level, the Class Skills, any Special Notes (things that modify Skills), & the Skill List itself.
Feats: This lists all the SRD Feats in a condensed form (so each one takes only a single screen line), alphabetized, & presented as a quick block of "Feats Taken", "Feats List"; this makes it easy to check which ones you have & have yet to take.
Equipment: This includes Armor, Shield, Melee Weapons, Ranged Weapons, Ammunition, Gear, & a Armor Weight, Shield Weight, Weapons Weight, Gear Weight, Total Weight Carried portion to make it easy to check that you've not overloaded your character.
Class Progression: This is where the Class game data is listed with an easy to parse Class Progression Table, complete with single line condensed forms of any Special Abilities gained at each level.
With each section divided by a "---" I can simply search for that string to jump to the next section.
With everything turned into an equation with +2(Str) style bits, I can globally update the entire file in a single Find&Replace.
By having the Feats & Special Abilities in single line condensed forms, it makes them easy to Copy&Paste from their normal sections to under the "Special Attacks" line in the Main section, where I can then be reminded that I have that Feat/SA to use during play.
Once my players figure out how I've arranged things, how I've streamlined it all, they tend to love the results.
No more having to "spend an hour with a bucket of dice, a calculator, & the spell list" to update the character.
You do a F&R to change the appropriate Ability Score & *that* takes care of updating that score modifier everywhere.
You go to the Skills section, look that you get +2(Base) +1(Int) Skill Points per level, & then apply them to the clearly presented list of Class Skills.
New Feat? Choose it from the list, CutCopyPaste it under Taken & the Special Attacks section, & that's done.
You've got a SpellCaster? The Spells Known or PerDay are listed in the included Class Progression section.
You'll know exactly how many you get at each level.
Go to the $Class Spells section & there all the spells available to that class are listed in their quick block form.
(Just a C&P from the SRD, cleaned up to be easier for the screen reader, & merely to remind you).
Again, you CC&P the single entry into your Personal Spells section under the proper Nth Level Spells part, & bam you're done.
The whole update takes less than 5~10 minutes for a SpellCaster, or as little as *two* for a Fighter.
All your players can do their sheet updates in less time than it takes the DM to potty or order pizza!
=-D
If anyone wants to see an example of how I've set things up, send me an email.
Identify yourself as from Soylent in the subject line so I know not to filter it as spam.
I'll send back a random Race+Class sheet so you can get a feel for how I've tweaked things, the better to do it yourself if you like.
If you have a specific Race+Class combo you would like to see, just say so & I'll try to accommodate.
Note that I have *NOT* done any of the Psionic Races or Classes.
I *loathe* Psionics & never play them myself.
*Makes comical cat gagging noises*
=-)p
Please don't ask for "one of each Race & Class combo", that's over 75 Megs & won't fit via email.
You. Greedy. Bastages.
=-D Hahaahahhahhhahhahha
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Thursday June 22 2017, @11:14PM (2 children)
Does anyone know anyplace online that has automated the 1st Ed. dungeon and wilderness generators?
I've found several other generators, but they don't seem to have the same feel--more later edition-y, maybe...
That being said--one of the first programs I remember writing on the old TRS-80 that was my high school's only computer was a 1st ed., 4d6-drop-the-low, stats-in-order, character generator with rudimentary class-picker, that printed out to the green-and-white-striped continuous feed paper in the lab--I don't remember if I actually used any of the characters, but certainly I had fun making 'em....
(Score: 1) by ShadowSystems on Friday June 23 2017, @01:38AM (1 child)
Not necessarily for wilderness, but can be adapted to generate such terrain.
Grab a stack of plain white posterboard, the kind normally provided to preschool kids for craft projects.
Draw a rectangle 1 inch in from the sides top & bottom, so there's a 1 inch border all the way around.
Draw the 1x1 inch grid across the entire interior, plus along the left & bottom edges.
This becomes your Blank Graph Paper.
Make as many of these as possible.
Grab a Blank & doodle trees, rocks, puddles, grass, cow poop, fences, dirt trails, & anything else you can think of to add to a jigsaw puzzle sized piece of a larger nature scene.
Put a row of letters down the left edge & a column of numbers along the bottom, thus creating an alphanumeric coordinate system for later use.
Turn the paper over & call it "Map Bit 0001."
Do this a thousand more times, each time putting in different elements (ponds, puddles, gnarled trees, a rock shaped like a fish, etc) so each map is a different jigsaw puzzle piece to the larger complete scene.
Now that you have a stack of nature scene, you can shuffle the stack & draw them at random, placing them on the table one after the other as the party moves from one map to another.
If there's a dirt trail in the one they're on but not the next map, draw new maps until you find one with a bit of trail on it.
Turn the new map so the two trails match sides (even if not accurately), & tell the players that the break is due to natural erosion or something equally plausible.
As you progress in the game you can keep a running log of the maps they encounter & in which order, so back tracking is easy enough to recreate.
Record that they were on Map#X & were headed $Direction when they left it, to move on to Map#Y next.
You just check your notes, see that they started on 7, moved to 57, 81, & 115 in turn; if they're going back then they encounter those same bits in reverse.
Each map doesn't include any monsters, that's done by random every time they encounter that map.
You can use a Random Monster By CR table to determine if they find one, what they find, & if they need to run away screaming.
=-)p
With a stack of 100 such maps you can create giant "mega maps" that were essentially randomly generated AS they were being played.
It is VERY unlikely that you will EVER create the same mega map twice by accident.
This same tactic can be used to create dungeons as well.
Each individual map is just a hall, part of a room, a set of stairs, a ladder, a trap, or some other element they might find in a dungeon.
Record that they went from Map#x "up the ladder" to Map#Y, & continue adventuring from there.
If the map you draw can't work with the map they came from, keep drawing until you find one that does.
Rotate it to fit & call any edge discrepencies as "tunnel shift".
The monsters come from the table so the maps remain free of critters, concentrating on the objects/walls/floors/ceilings/etc instead.
Same thing goes for cities, hamlets, metropoli, towns, villages, etc.
Make individual map bits for lengths of street (one way, one lane, two lane, narrow alley, broad thoroughfare, etc), buildings (small hovels to massive structures), homes & stores & everything else you might find in a locus of population.
If you want a "little cow town" & draw a map for a Grand University for example, put the GU back & keep drawing until you find something relevant.
You can create as large or small, as tightly knit or as loosely woven communities as you like, just remember to record each map as they encounter it so they can retrace their steps.
Basicly any terrain you can think of, map it.
You can then create truely epic maps of where they've been, all without ever having to draw a "World Map" to start from.
DM's like to call this method "Pulling it outta my ass" & it can be rather fun for everyone.
Don't ask the DM for what they're about to run into WRT the map, the DM doesn't know & simply flings monsters, treasures, & plot points at you to keep you jumping.
=-D
If you WANT to draw a World Map & have a bit more structure, then label each individual map as "$TerrainType Map ####."
Then when you want to run them through a forested region, grab just the Forest Maps; or just the City Maps; or just the Dungeon Maps.
Whatever matches the environment you want them to encounter, you narrow the subset of maps to draw upon to only the desired terrain.
I suggest keeping a binder folder with each subset in it's own subsection.
I put mine in plastic binder paper protectors & just left them in the binder.
I'd roll for which map to get, flip through the binder to find it, & show the results to the party.
Roll?
Yes, because once you have all the maps drawn & numbered, a simple D% roll can be used to make it even more random.
If you've got 100 individual maps then 1d100 will generate the next map.
If you have 1,000 then 1d10 * 1d% gets you your next map.
If you have some low number like 44, divide it into d10's so you can roll #d10 & then 1d10 again to get to the rough section (like 30) & then the specific (like 4) to find map 34.
The only limit is your own imagination & willingness to draw maps.
If you get tired of doing it then "sub contract" out to a bunch of others.
Explain the jigsaw pieces concept, that they're not to draw in animals, & let them go for broke.
You'll have to go over each one to make sure it works for you & give it the map number, but YOU won't have to draw anymore.
=-)p
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Friday June 23 2017, @03:39AM
Cool--I'm gonna have to play with this a bit. Thanks!
(Score: 1) by ShadowSystems on Friday June 23 2017, @04:13AM
Ok, I just reread your post & it dawned on me that you weren't talking about an app or desktop program, you were talking about doing it *as a web page*.
That can make a HUGE difference!
No JS, no massive amount of fluffy cruft, just simple, plain, pure HTML.
A Text Entry Field (TEF) for the Name, Hair/Eye/Skin color, & another for "Personal Fluff".
Race could be chosen by a DropDownMenu (DDM) that's configured to NOT auto trigger on the first entry encountered (like what happens when you open the DDM with a mouse & then scroll to the entry you want) but only after you arrow down through the options & hit Enter to confirm the option choice.
That would then populate all the Racial bits through the rest of the form: Ability Score improvements/penalties, Size modifiers, Base Speed, etc.
Another series of DDM's to adjust the Ability Scores to any value from 3 to 30, or give a TEF so they can type in a larger value.
The form would then populate the Modifiers where they needed to go, in the exact same way my equation idea auto populated the whole sheet at once.
A DDM to pick the Class would then auto populate the various bits (BAB, Saves, HP/Level, Skill Points/Level, etc) & free you from having to do that either.
Another DDM to pick the Level (say 1 to 20 with a TEF for higher), then have the form calculate all the math for HP, Skill Points available, number of Feats you get, starting GP, etc.
Under the Equipment you could have a DDM listing all the various types of Armor, another for Shields, a third for Melee weapons, a 4th for Ranged weapons, & then a BIG DDM for adding Gear.
That (adding Gear) might require a bunch of check boxes for bulk actions (delete, resize, etc), but you could Select/Enter from the DDM to add an item (backpack, candle, canvas, pitons, etc), a TEF to list the quantity, and let the form keep track of the cost, weight, etc.
If you try to give a Monk armor or a shield for example, it would have to be able to tell you "This Class has no Armor Proficiency to cover that item. You need to take a Feat for that!"
A DDM of all the different Feats from all the different sources, so you could select the ones you wanted from the whole spectrum.
Again, the form would have to be smart enough to say "You're a Fighter. Are you sure you want to take the Improved Familiar Feat? You don't HAVE a Familiar so you don't need an improved one either. Not that you CAN'T, I'm just saying it's a really stupid idea."
*Cough*
The biggest issue I can think of is creating the database of all the various bits.
All the Feats from all the sources, rewritten into a purely math equation so the computer can act on it.
All the Spells turned into equations so it can calculate the effect it has on your character; this is optional if you merely have it LIST the Spells, not do any calculations on the spells themselves.
As in "You can cast a Fireball spell at X Level" rather than calculating Area Of Effect, Range, Casting Time, Components, Effects, etc.
It would be hard, it would take a long time to do right, but I think it COULD be done!
...
...
*Comical whiney kid stuck in the back seat during a long car ride tone of voice*
Are you done yet?
Are you done yet?
Are you done yet?
*Kicking the seat*
How about now?
How about now?
How about now?
I GOTTA PEE!
*Cough*
=-)p
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Thursday June 22 2017, @11:35PM (3 children)
Not being overly familiar with assistive technology--does your reader have the ability to read the embedded text in PDFs?
The latest official PDFs of the rulebooks I have all have embedded text, to facilitate searching. Note that I don't have anything from the current edition, so I don't know if they currently do it, but I can't imagine they wouldn't.
(Score: 1) by ShadowSystems on Friday June 23 2017, @12:54AM (2 children)
Nope. Unless the person creating the PDF embedded the plain text in the PDF version of AltText, there's nothing for my screen reader to read.
I can manually force it (Jaws from Freedom Scientific) to OCR the PDF, but 99 times out of 100 it gets garbage.
Even worse is the fact that folks like to make the PDF scans as "facing pages", aka open a book, lay it flat, & scan both pages at once.
This results in a visually appealing layout, but it's *absolute crap* for Jaws to OCR.
Instead of being able to read straight across in standard left to right fashion, the text STOPS in the middle of the page.
So instead of getting "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs." from facing page 1 & "Mary had a little lamb, it's fleece was white as snow." from page 2, it concatinates it all into a single line to form crap like "The quick brown mary had a little fox th- eece was wh1+3 -at jumped over the lazy snow."
Even if it manages to get any text from the OCR, now I have to manually restructure the results & try to figure out WTF it had been to begin with.
This is almost ok if I knew the original content, but absolutely worthless if it's new material & I have NFI what it was supposed to say.
Effectively PDF's are Not Accessible.
You are handing a picture to a blind person & telling them to look at the "pretty picture worth a thousand words".
Ummm, only if those words are all the vitriol vomited forth in incandescent rage over the tactlessness of the act.
*Cough*
My son bought a complete set of the official PDF's & then had them professionally OCR'd into plain text.
He gave me the plain text copies & kept the PDF's for himself.
Anything not provided by WotC but that I had the originals for, we went on various torrent sites & grabbed the pirated copies.
Since WotC wasn't interested in making available anything truely archival (hello, I've got a copy of the original D&Dgods with the stuff about Cthulhu- can I get an official PDF please? No, then there's piracy you cheap bastards!)...
Anyway, PDF's are worthless.
I wish the person that invented them spent the rest of eternity forced to smash themselves with a rusty ice pick in the head.
=-(
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Friday June 23 2017, @03:36AM (1 child)
Dang. Sorry to hear that. I had assumed that PDF documents, being a "universal standard" (in finger-quotes) would just naturally be readable, if they were professionally made. I guess it ain't so universal after all. I also suppose columns also screw with OCR.
What readers do you use normally, if I may ask?
And--speaking as someone who has an interest in formatting and layout of gaming materials, and who has never even thought about accessibility for blind gamers: In order to make a better reading experience for blind players, do you just prefer text and tables, or do you like descriptions of cartoons and illustrations as well, appropriately set apart, so they don't interfere with the flow of the main text?
I am assuming you want tables, because, well, you play D&D. I am also assuming that you would also want them in-line at an appropriate spot in the text (as opposed to wherever they fit visually), as well as in a separate section for easy reference.
Is there a standard for something like the descriptive track on DVDs for illustrations and ornament? Is that even something you would want?
I was also going to ask about how tables appear in text readers, but I suppose I can just fire up a screen reader and hear one for myself. I wouldn't have any idea of intelligent questions to ask until I've done that.
And now that I have typed this, it occurs to me to ask: how do HTML formatting tags like italics and blockquotes and such appear in your screen reader?
Forgive me if any of the preceding has appeared rude--if so, it was purely unintentional.
(Score: 1) by ShadowSystems on Friday June 23 2017, @05:19AM
I took no offense at your questions, they show that you're actually *thinking* about the situation & for that I'm very happy!
=-D
Tables are best (understandable) when arranged in Comma Separated Values rather than Tab SV.
Tabs are nice visually but offer no distinction between values when read by a screen reader.
For Example, the following two tables sound vastly different to a reader.
Table 1: Stuff
Level BAB Fort Ref Will Special
1st +1 +1 +1 +1 Something.
2nd +2 +2 +2 +2 Something else
Table: Stuff.
Level, BAB, Fort, Ref, Will, Special.
1st, +1, +1, +1, +1, Something.
2nd, +2, +2, +2, +2, Something else.
The first one reads as a run on sentance with no pauses between values nor lines.
What you see visually sounds like utter rubbish to the Reader.
The second table on the other hand has the commas to make pauses between the values ("+1" pause "+1" pause "+1" pause "+1", etc) and it gives a full gutteral stop at the end of each line, exactly as if a person were reading a list & came to the end of the line.
You can HEAR that you've switched to a new value or line, there's no guessing if you're still on a line or where you might be in the line's sequence of values.
(You heard four pauses, you know you've probably hit the 5th cell in the table.)
The commas & periods make the difference.
=-)
As for describing images & such, only if they contain game data we need.
If the pic is just of an Orc brandishing a sword & scratching it's nose with it's elbow, you can say so in a format like:
[Image of an Orc. He's hairy, ugly, probably stinks like poop, & looks like he hasn't groomed for a year. He's got various critter skulls braided into his chest fur. Oh gross, I think that one's still got skin on it! YUCK! Anyway, he's thankfully wearing a soiled loincloth of brown & black ratty cloth, is carrying a VERY large sword in one hand as if it were a mere toothpick, & he's picking his nose with the other hand. Oh dear lord, he's got his entire FIST up in there! Excuse me, I gotta go barf..."}
We'll understand that everything between the Braces is the image description & can either ignore them or read as we wish.
HOWEVER, if it contains game data we need to have in order to play effectively, then include such as a plain text addendum after the image, probably like this:
{An image of a chart. The chart lists the Ability Scores & their Modifiers. Please read the Table of the same name below.
Table: Ability Scores & their Modifiers.
Ability Score, Modifier.
1, -5. Note that a Player Character can't have an Intelligence score this low or it is too stupid to play.
2, -4. Same here.
3, -4. This is the minimum Intelligence Score you can have as a sentient, playable character.
4, -3.
5, -3.
6, -2.
7, -2.
8, -1.
9, -1.
10, +0.
11, +0.
12, +1.
13, +1.
...}
A Reader ignores the visual only bits of the presented text.
Font styles, size, color, embellishments (B/I/U), & reads it all as if it were pure typewriter stuff.
This makes it harder to tell when a speaker wanted to emphasize something by bolding it for example, but it ALSO means that a web site can't hide text as a single point size in some demented font like "MS New Calidonia Elongated Hyper Serif".
It also means that some dork putting everything as 99 point illuminated, blinking, rainbow irridescent can go fornicate themselves.
The Reader ignores it all & just reads it all as if it were hammered out on a standard typewriter: all the same size, all the same color, all the same font, & no extra stuff to get in the way of just reading the text.
Unfortunately it means that any foreign fonts (say the stuff for French accents, German umlauts, etc) also get either stripped (if possible) or ignored (if not).
So something like naive appears as I've written it, not in proper French accents.
=-J
As for the OCR, all the different fonts, sizes, levels of serif, kerning, blah blah blah all combine to give OCR software fits.
If *everything* you scan is the *exact same* font/size/etc, then eventually the OCR will learn that "Oh! That's an i not a 1!" and stop screwing up.
But if you've got thousands of documents all using different ones, the OCR software can only give a one-pass best-guess.
Which is where words like "c@+" come from, or splitting words across pages, or sto-
A differeent paragrApHs c0nT3ntz
-ops & another one interrupts the flow.
I only know what those two parts just said because I wrote them, but if the OCR gives me something like that, I have to figure it out the hard way.
=-|
I use Jaws, it's the number 1 reader for Windows.
However I'll be getting a Linux machine once my Win7 reaches EOL in 2020, and then there are plenty of others for me to play with.
I was given a copy of Jaws when I was first getting retrained on "how to use a computer now that you're blind", & that's what I've stuck with ever since.
There are others out there for Windows as well, but none of them hold a candle to it.
Worse, there's a built in reader (Windows Navigator) that is SO bad it is an insulting & festering pile of poop.
"Navigator? Dude, you couldn't find your ass with both hands, a GPS unit, a Thomas Brothers map, a live satelite shot, a Sherpa Guide, & a trail of breadcrumbs!"
*Cough*
I know the Apple OS has a reader built in, I wouldn't mind giving it a try, but I'm wary of the stupidity Apple has pulled lately & I'm unlikely to buy a computer from them.
It may be the best reader out there bar none, but if I have to accept a prison-like walled garden to use it, I'd rather not.
=-J
I know MS is no better, it's why I'm buying Linux for my next system.
Enough of that, back to D&D!
The tables would be best given as soon as possible to the material to which they relate.
If you can include it at the end of the section (Feats, Skills, Disarming someone larger than you, etc) then that's great.
It also helps to save the table as a separate text file with the table name as the file name.
YES it means more files, but it ALSO means that a player can go *directly* to that table to get the data, rather than having to hunt for it first.
Freedom Scientific offers a free trial of Jaws.
It runs in "40 minute demo mode" permanently until/unless you register it.
That means it'll speak for 40 minutes then require a reboot before it speaks again.
That is the ONLY restriction, rebooting, & it'll continue to operate that way indefinitely.
Be sure to use the internal update function to keep it up to date.
You can use the Jaws modifier (usually Insert) + F11 to bring up the System Tray, select the Jaws icon, hit the right Application key (right click menu) to alter the settings.
The easiest way to REALLY find out how accessible your creation might be is to launch Jaws, open your creation, then *turn off the monitor*.
No peeking, so if you can't do it entirely by the audio clues, take notes to change those bits.
If you can launch Jaws, turn off the screen, & have a random stranger figure out the creation, then you've Done It Right!
=-D