Originally, when I started back up this year, I thought I’d try something new and focus on one thing each month and then move to something else. I tried to move on from the work I’d done with my Dracula’s America collection but every time I went to move to a new game or project, my thoughts would return to all the other stuff I didn’t get done. I soon realized that fighting my nature would only lead me to stall out when I very much want to push forward so I’m going to run this Dracula’s America course until my horse collapses out from under me. To that end, onward for more Old West miniature stuff and Dracula’s America!
One of the things that really drew me to the Dracula’s America system is the simplicity of the skirmish rules. That simplicity exists throughout the rules set and is on display in the posse creation rules. Yet, even with these simple rules, I found myself annoyed having to add up costs for skills, gear, and rank of my cowboys and wanted something more automated.
A quick and fruitless search found the same question asked- “Is there a Posse Builder?” and always ended with nothing. Either the game isn’t popular enough or the rules simple enough others never found a need. Well, I have a need and the will so I set out to make my own.
I don’t have a lot of experience coding so I decided to start with Excel. It’s something I know will get me at least a minimum product and can handle any math easily. While the rules are simple, there are options buried throughout the rules that can start to trip you up. After reviewing what I need and the full rules, I decided to start small and deal only with the non-Supernatural rules. That is really the only way I’m playing right now so I don’t need anything else. On the other hand, if this is for public consumption, I assume I’m in the minority and most players will want the whole package.
Non-supernatural rules are going to have to be it for now as I’m also looking for some specific formatting. The goal is to make sure it prints all on one page. This does limit some of the selection options but I’d rather get it to work well with 90% of what someone would build instead of the edge cases of someone maxing out the weapon, gear, and skill options for one character.
Doing some quick math, you can make a legal build with 3 characters at 100 points ($) and one of them can have 3 weapons, 3 gear, and 8 skills. With that as a maximum and without making a dynamic macro-based sheet, it seems silly to eat up all that space for such weird edge cases.
The sheet itself is a simple formula-based layout with dropdown fields and data lookup commands. It will handle weapons and gear and give basic/paraphrased information regarding each choice. Skills are available as well and limited to three per character but they also give some paraphrased reminder text. Lastly, I entered the Hired Gun options as well. These come with some paraphrased reminder text as well but only regarding rules concerned with the standard game mechanics. Anything having to do with post or pre-game mechanics will need to be referenced in the rules.
I’ve been testing the builder for the last few days, making tweaks and changes to try get it final. The biggest hole is that it does not have any validation. It will not check to make sure you don’t have more than two of the same weapon in your posse or that you only have one of each type of Hired Gun. It doesn’t check to see if you are over your point allotment nor will it make sure you don’t exceed the 1/3rd Hired Gun rule.
For now, all the validation work will have to be done by the player. This was never meant to replace the rulebook but I may put in some reminders on a separate page to help players remember some of the validation points that are buried in the rules. I should have the builder finalized by the end of the weekend and then I’ll post it up somewhere with some links.
In other news, I got my variant custom cards!
Very excited to see them and they turned out great.