Pirates Referee Tool

[DickNervous]

Hey, anyone who is running the Pirates of Drinax campaign please check out this spreadsheet I made. It has a database with all the worlds and the info for each of them.

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?p=507111#post507111

You can easily adapt it for any campaign if you want.
Check it out, let me know what you think.
Thanks!

 

[simonh]

I just had a play aroudn with this, it looks handy. I can see it being useful alongside a copy of the Trajan Reaches map.

You've implicitly raised a great point. Pirates of Drinax is a great example of a campaign that uses a sector-sized area of space and really demands good reference material and tools. For future development of my iPad sector mapping app, I'm going to put that front and foremost - what features can I build in that would be useful when running Pirates of Drinax. I think it's a useful lense through which to measure the utility of a mapping and information organisation tool like this.

I'll try and do another show-and-tell for the app this weekend. It's come a long way since I did the last one.

Simon Hibbs

 

[DickNervous]

Thank you for the feedback Simon!

I have found that one of my biggest issues when actually running the game is being able to get the info I need when I need it and in a timely fashion. This is especially true for things like the Law Levels and Government types and what they mean as far as the weapons, armor, and other items the group would be allowed. I end up looking in 2-3 PDFs or books to get it all, with this tool it is all right there.

And the real beauty is that anyone who knows just basic Excel can add whatever data they want to any planet (including creating an entire sector of their own) just by adding a worksheet with the data in the appropriate columns.

My next goal, after working out some formatting details) is to make it easier for a referee to add their own notes for each planet in the main view without having to go into the data sections of the sheet. After that I am going to try to add features like a sector map, or at least a listing of other planets that are in jump range.

I would also love your feedback on the back end data format because I think it would be pretty cool if I could take sector data from other sources (such as the app you are making) and be able to have people import it into Excel with as little effort as possible.