Mon Jun 21 13:01:42 2010

The RolePlayingDB3 program manages the information used in table-top role 
playing games.  Almost any type of game or game system can be supported.
These games normally use sheets of paper containing game information,
typically things like player or object characteristics or attributes, such
as name, size, strengths, weaknesses, powers, and so forth. Since this
information is structured, in that all objects of a given type all have the
same sets of information generally listed in the same order and format, 
this information is effectively structured information.  This means that for
given game or game system, a template can be created that defines this
structure.  The RolePlayingDB3 program allows creation of such templates
and in turn uses these templates to implement ``sheet'' editors, where
players and/or game masters fill in the game playing information.  The sheets
can then be printed out, displayed on the computer screen or saved on
the computer's storage devices (hard drives, thumb drives, CD/DVD-Rs, etc.), 
or sent to other computers via E-Mail or other file transfer methods.

In addition to generic object informational sheets, of which there are six
classes: Character Dressing Monster Spell Treasure TrickTrap, the 
RolePlayingDB3 program also includes a Map editor, which implements a 
specialized editor for making maps of the playing environment. The 
RolePlayingDB3 program also includes a template editor for creating and
editing game system sheet templates.

This is mostly a pure Tcl application, using a couple of standard libraries
(some coded in C). The program is built using starkits and the binary
program can be installed merely by copying it to any convientent
location and can even be run from a removable device or a CD/DVD ROM. 
It does not need to be installed in any partitular location and uses no
system installed support files, other than the ones normally installed
by the base operating system.  The binary program is completely self
contained. It does look in the current user's home directory for a
configuration file (named .roleplayingdb3 under UNIX/Linux and MacOSX and
roleplayingdb3.rc under MS-Windows), which defines values for
directories containing documents and images, as well as the default
template file to use.

Robert Heller
Deepwoods Software
51 Locke Hill Road
Wendell, MA 01379
978-544-6933
heller@deepsoft.com
http://www.deepsoft.com/RolePlayingDB
