Now that HARP Sci Fi is finalized, at least as far as the rules go, I’d like to redo the Characters and NPC’s from my playtest group and post them using the most recent Open Office Character Sheet. I think I’ll do each character up to 5th level and post the sheet for each level.

The other continuing project is to do up a set of stats for using the Selkies Secret adventure in Rolemaster Express / Rolemaster Classic. I’ve done up Selkies as a Race for RMX/RMC and done up the Aquatic Culture for RMX/RMC as well. I’ve submitted those to the Guild Companion and they should be showing in the October issue. Then need to create the NPC’s and Creatures for the adventure as well as look for any references to skills and other things that might need updating.

Once the RM2/RMX/RMC conversion is done, doing a RMSS/RMFRP should be relatively straight forward.

I’m not sure at this point what will happen with that when I am done. Either a Guild Companion article or maybe a Guild Adventurer appendix or something. I’d also like to have the maps of the ships presented in a larger format as well.

I also am doing preliminary work on a Battlestar Galactica adventure, I’ll probably stat it for HARP Sci Fi, but possibly for the BSG RPG as well. I did do an initial posting on RPG Forums to see if there was any interest in running it on-line and the results were disappointing, but I’m planning on continuing with it anyway. Because it’s a licensed property I don’t know if I’ll be able to publish it as an article anywhere, but I’ll look into that when I actually have something completed.

Another project is to revisit the article “Converting Professions from RMSS/RMFRP to Rolemaster Classic” that I did for ICE. Now that Rolemaster Companion I has been rereleased it would be a good opportunity to update that article, and perhaps include a master conversion list. If I do it as a Guild Companion follow up article then I can probably include references to some of the material that was off limits as an official ICE product. The original article can be found at: http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/index.php?action=tpmod;dl=item58

As for changes with the Website itself, there isn’t likely going to be any noticable changes anytime soon. Most of the work I’m doing on it now is in the background getting set up for future enhancements. Primarily rearranging some of the tables and getting additional information moved from static pages into the database. Probably a couple years worth of work at my current rate.

One thing I will be doing is finishing a sweep of the existing pages and fixing any dead links and getting some of the remaining articles reformatted properly.

On a totally non game related front, I’m also working on converting alot of my old cassettes and albums to MP3′s so I can listen to them on my IPod. Somewhat labour intensive, but I’ve got alot of obscure stuff that’s never been released on CD or Itunes.

A bit of technical background on the site, I’m currently using WordPress on my site, although most of the page entries other than the ones on the main page are still either standalone php pages or WordPress Pages that just contain an include statement that pulls in a standalone page.

Ideally I want to get to the point where someone using the site can pick which items they want to see on a list (i.e. All Rolemaster, RM2, English only, etc) and how they want it sorted (Product number, release date ascending or descending, alphabetically, etc.
It would also be good if they could choose which information would show on the list

Then they can generate a customized product list and still be able to click a link to get to the full product information page.

So, a few items to consider:

Are there any plug-ins for WordPress that can handle this sort of thing? One suggestion is to look for image gallery mods for WordPress that have categories and searching? I could put the description of the book in where the photo description usually goes.

I could set up a bunch of customized fields for the info and store the info that way.

Joomla has also been suggested and looks like it has some real possibilities, I just started looking and I’ve already spotted a couple items that might do the trick. EZ Catalog Lite is one example

The option I think I will go with is to set up a seperate mySQl database and do some php coding to get what I want. There are several reasons for this.

First is that it would be easier to import the information from my Excel spreadsheet rather than trying to populate a bunch of custom fields or redo all the pages in some other product

Secondly is that it is something I’ve wanted to learn anyway, Switching to something like Joomla would pretty much mean doing a complete redesign of the site. If I do the coding myself I can move things over in stages. I can put just the RM1 items in the database and have just switch the list over while still keep the links to the current static pages, then add RM2 and eventually create the detail pages from the database one at a time. I’m not sure I could do that with something like Joomla.

Last time I checked I figured I have over 400 pages of products, so whatever plan I come up with has to be able to be implemented in such a way that I can mix the new pages with the old pages and slowly switch things over.

The other thing I want to be able to handle better is the various versions of the same product, which covers two main areas, multiple printings where there are some minor differences between the printings and multiple formats, such as softcover, hardcover and pdf.

I want to be able to generate a basic list that looks similiar to the one I have now, but also an expanded list that includes all the variations.

I also want to be able to generate links to affiliates such as Noble Knight, ebay, and ICE (if they ever get a store that supports Affiliates) where people can buy the products.

The other thing that might be interesting about setting up the database myself is conceivably I could give someone like ictus an account and connection info so he could set up something on the RPGForums site and generate a list in his own format with up to date information and not have to maintain it seperately.
Maybe ICE could do something similiar in the future for a product list and filter out some of the unwanted material like MERP. That’s way down the line though…

An initial thought on what the Tables in the Database would look like is:

MAIN TABLE
Product_ID
Product Line – MERP, Rolemaster (Table)
Product Edition Code – RM1, RM2, RMSS (Table)
Stock #
Authors (Table)
ISBN
Publisher (default ICE)
Publish Date
Cover Price
Format – PDF, Hardcover, Softcover, BoxSet (perhaps seperate table?)
Page count
BookType – Sourcebook, Rulebook, Adventure (Table)
Cover Text
Language (Table)
Thumbnail Image
Cover Image
Map 1 Image
Map 2 Image
Brent’s Notes
Copy Owned

Need to decide how to handle the different formats for the different products, might want to move to a seperate table and move a few of the fields down to that table, or leave the most common or first version in the main table and put additional version in the secondary table. Likewise for various printings.

FORMAT TABLE
Product_ID
Format
Stock #
Publisher
Publish Date
Cover Price

PRINTING TABLE (can be variations for different printings of the same product)
Product_ID
Format (maybe?)
Printing
Notes

RELATED_PRODUCTS TABLE
Product_ID1
Product_ID2
Notes

PRODUCT_LINE TABLE
Product_Line
Product_Line_Description

PRODUCT_EDITION TABLE
Product_Line
Product_Edition
Product_Edition_Description

PUBLISHER TABLE
Publisher
Publisher_Description

BOOK_TYPE TABLE
Book_type

AUTHOR TABLE
Author_id
Author First Name
Author Middle Name
Author Last Name

PRODUCT_AUTHOR_CROSS_REF TABLE
Product_id
Author_id

LANGUAGE TABLE
Language

PURCHASE TABLE
Product_id
Format
Sellers_URL

Still looking for a good plugin for WordPress that might be able to handle the Product pages as a database but haven’t found anything I like yet, will probably end up doing it as a seperate php-mysql set of pages. Any suggestions are welcome.

The switch to WordPress hasn’t been as useful as I had hoped. It seems to have slowed the access to pages down significantly and there have been very few comments posted by people. However, the advantage of being able to catagorize the entries I’ve made and the potential for being able to move to a more database driven design for the ICE Product lists means that I think I will stick with this format.

I don’t have big plans for the site for this year, I need to clarify some of the entries for some of the earlier products, particularly those that I am discovering had multiple versions released. There are also several areas where the cover images could be improved, I still have small images and now have aquired copies of the products so could easily scan in larger images.

I also want to get all the major pages moved to be WordPress pages and get rid of the “unconverted” portion of the left hand menu.
There’s also some tweaking of the style sheets needed to get some things cleaned up. That’s about it for planned site changes. I’ll probably still work on entering the individual products into a database behind the scenes, but I don’t expect to add any access to that from the site this year.

My main focus this year will be on doing up some additional articles for publication, first up is an Adventure that will hopefully appear in the 2nd edition of the Guild Adventurer. A big part of getting that done is learning how to use Campaign Cartographer 3 / Dungeon Designer 3 for doing maps. It’s coming along well so far, but I’ve only done two basic buildings. The challenging part will be doing up the plans for the two ships in the adventure.

I’m also hopeful that ICE will get HARP Sci Fi published this year and I can work on doing some articles related to that. I have a couple of creatures and races ready to go from my playtest group, and I am hoping to do an adaption for running Star Wars with HARP Sci Fi.

I’m also planning on doing several more Underwater Articles for HARP for the Guild Companion, including Underwater Spells and an article on Mermaids.
In there somewhere, I will be doing some more contributions to the Rolemaster Classic project with ICE, but I couldn’t reveal any details about that right now even if I knew them.

That’s about it, doesn’t sound like much, but it does leave room for some unexpected additional projects, and since another goal for me this year is to get out and excercise more and spend less time in front of the computer, I think it’s a reasonable amount to aim for.

So, for no particular reason, here is the list of MERP items I’m still looking for, although I’m not looking too hard at the moment and am not willing to drop alot of cash on them.

8000 Middle Earth Role Playing (UK)
8001 Middle Earth Role Playing Combat Screen
8011 Mouths of the Entwash
8012 Warlords of the Desert
8013 Dark Mage of Rhudaur
8015 Forest of Tears
8080 Rivendell The House of Elrond
8090 Brigands of Mirkwood
8100 Middle Earth Roleplaying 1986 Edition Box (UK)
8101 Haunted Ruins of the Dunlendings
8103 Trolls of the Misty Mountains
8105 Gates of Mordor
8107 Woses of the Black Wood
8109 Ghosts of the Southern Anduin
8112 Hazards of the Harad Wood
8202 Teeth of Mordor
8205 Nazgul’s Citadel
3110 Mount Gundabad
3111 Greater Harad
3112 Gorgoroth
3113 The Grey Mountains
3300 Havens of Gondor, Land of Belfalas
3400 Sea-Lords of Gondor, Pelargir & Lebenin
3600 Dunland & the Southern Misty Mountains
3800 Far Harad, the Scorched Land
3900 Shadow in the South
4001 Northwestern Middle Earth Map Set
4010 Mirkwood The Wilds of Rhovanion
4011 Empire of the Witch-King
Rescue in Mirkwood
2002 Middle Earth Accessory Pack ( box )
2003 Middle Earth Campaign Guide
2005 Arnor
2007 Minas Tirith Softcover
2008 MERP Poster Maps
2013 Elves
2014 Dol Guldur
2017 The Shire
2018 Angmar
2019 Mirkwood
2020 Southern Gondor : The People
2021 Southern Gondor : The Land
2022 Arnor : The People
2023 Arnor : The Land
2024 The Lord of the Rings Poster Map
2025 Northern Waste

Now, the problem is that it isn’t a simple task for me to do this, it probably takes about 30 – 45 minutes for me to clean up and adjust each page so it will work properly under WordPress. That doesn’t sound like much until you realize that I think there are now over 400 pages that would need updating.

So, my question is, how many people would find this useful, and if so, which Products would you like to see me get done first?

Here is an example of what the pages would look like:

http://www.icewebring.com/ice-products/rolemaster-first-edition/arms-law/

Please add a comment to this post if this is something you would like to see. Where I put this project on my list of things to do will be greatly influenced by the number of people that respond. Thanks!

(Note: I do have comment moderation turned on, so there will be a delay from when you post your comment until it appears)