GCE Core Rules feedback and suggestions

[Flamekebab]

No one has volunteered yet. If you're up for it, there should be an update to the Gorker/Morker faction pack in the near future (backporting stuff from the Digga faction pack). Once that's done it'd be easy to fork it from there. I have some cover art ready for it (Clayton Tait drew it specifically for this over a decade ago and it's never seen the light of day!).

 

[joeturn]

On exploding weapons, I've just noticed GCE is different from "da rulez". OG book has 1 on ammo check followed by failed ammo roll to explode. Gce has double ones for everything, which is a lot less likely: 3x less for most weapons and 6 times less for "auto" check weapons.

Was that intentional? It's a little simpler, but I'm always for more chaos, and I like there being more drawbacks to using boomier guns. One in 216 shots exploding the gun seems hardly worth bothing to remember.

 

[Flamekebab]

This is an oversight. Much of GCE is written from memory so that it's not a paragraph-by-paragraph recreation thesaurus job.
Good spot!

 

[joeturn]

This is an oversight. Much of GCE is written from memory so that it's not a paragraph-by-paragraph recreation thesaurus job.
Good spot!

Your memory must be amazing. I can't get through a turn without looking stuff up. Let alone rewrite the rules from scratch

 

[Narflung]

I'm looking at playing a bit of GCE in the nearish future. Is there any particular elements you'd like me to focus on for feedback? There will be some Gorkers and/or Morkers, Diggas and maybe some Muties (I know they are a WIP).

I'm happy to run it as a non-standard campaign in order to test out any specific elements you're interesting in checking.

 

[Flamekebab]

On exploding weapons, I've just noticed GCE is different from "da rulez". OG book has 1 on ammo check followed by failed ammo roll to explode. Gce has double ones for everything, which is a lot less likely: 3x less for most weapons and 6 times less for "auto" check weapons.

Was that intentional? It's a little simpler, but I'm always for more chaos, and I like there being more drawbacks to using boomier guns. One in 216 shots exploding the gun seems hardly worth bothing to remember.

I've taken a look and as far as I can see this mistake was fixed in 1.21. We're currently on 1.31 with 1.4 on the horizon. The latest releases can always be found on the GCE page:

GCE

A community version of GW's Gorkamorka. Reimplemented from scratch and free to share.

gorkamorka.co.uk

I'm looking at playing a bit of GCE in the nearish future. Is there any particular elements you'd like me to focus on for feedback? There will be some Gorkers and/or Morkers, Diggas and maybe some Muties (I know they are a WIP).

I'm happy to run it as a non-standard campaign in order to test out any specific elements you're interesting in checking.

In broad terms we're interested in how to make the game easier to understand. It's hard for us to know how it reads to someone new to the game as we're so close to it!

It would also be very useful to get some feedback on what should go on a GCE Quick Reference Card. Which things do players need reminders of, that sort of thing.

We've got some new GCE releases in the pipeline. The Gorkers/Morkers are getting an update imminently, the Campaign Book is getting special characters and some other stuff, and there's some patches to the Core Rules. I'm still hoping we'll get the Muties done this year but that's perhaps just me being an optimist!

For my part I'd like to know whether the revised base skills (in the campaign book) are the improvements on the ORB skills. We've done our best but they need some good playtesting.

 

[Narflung]

No worries I'll work on that. I'll likely struggle to get a proper comparison on the base skills if players don't have much experience with the ORB, but I'll get feedback on the skills and add some of my own commentary.

 

[Flamekebab]

We don't really need a comparison so much as a verdict on whether the new ones are any good. The design goal was to not have any skills that were bad and ideally not have any that are super situational (and so might come up once in a campaign).

 

[Gornn65]

Hi there, I am recently brand new back to the game, and I'd like to help out if possible, but first let me say that of all, I LOVE that you folks have kept this alive. You are all superstars in my books, so please take any of my criticism/questions as constructive, not negative.

There are a few things I've noticed, some questions and some suggestions:

1. This first one may sound dumb - but I am unsure what ORB means? I'm someone who works in Canadian Press (CP) style a lot, and the first rule of introducing an acronym in any document is writing out the full name, and then putting the acronym in brackets at the end of the word. You all likely refer to the ORB a lot when working in the documents, but as a returning player (new to GCE) I am clueless. Of course I may just be a dummy missing the obvious.
   
   
2. Quickfix: In the newly released Campaign Book, the links don't work from the Table of Contents on any pages after 37.
   
   
3. Quickfix: The file name of the Core Rules has a different name in browser tabs. This is because word documents keep 2 titles for some dumb reason (it's more than word actually) But the fix is, if you have Acrobat Full version or another PDF editor, you can open up document properties and delete the "GCE LO Doc Template v1.1" title and then the file name will take over as the actual title. If you don't feel like doing this, it's not the end of the world.
   
   
4. The new artwork is amazing!! Just an appreciation comment, no criticism here.
   
   
5. Ok, so this point is feedback based off being a returning player and going over the GCE books, but it feels like information is in the wrong place. Why is all of the vehicle stats, equipment etc, put into the Gorker / Morker faction book, when they should be in the core rules or the campaign book?
   1. I had read in places that 'each faction has their own costs' but it feels like that never bore out to be true. Admittedly, I'm using the Ork Klan Rules for us to create our gangs. I have seen that Freebooterz and the non-orks have different costs. Kult of speed only changes the price of trukks and bikes (I think?)
   2. What would make sense to me, is to have all of the generic gang creation rules in the core rule book, including costs (along with a handy 1 pager price sheet) and then anything else that's relevant to the core game moved into the core rules and the campaign rules, out of the Faction book, and simply just have factions in the faction book.
   3. With this method, if I am a starting player and I just want to learn the rules, but not worry about campaigns or factions, I just need the core rulebook. Anything related to a campaign or a league, etc. would go in the campaign book, and...
   4. If the gorker-morker faction book, simply became the "Faction book" or Fakshun Bukk! (play with the spelling as you see fit) It could simply be the accumulation of all the klans and factions in one document, but also formatted consistently.
   5. Alternatively, there is no faction book and each faction stays as separate PDFs like they mostly are in the extras on the website. (like a codex, but a 2-sided sheet of paper?)
   6. Also, I'd love to see the original Ork Klans fleshed out more and done in this way.
      
6. A game like Gorkamorka needs some balance between flavour text and functional text. (descriptions vs rules) but there is an opportunity to shorten the books by quite a few pages, if that was ever a desire.
   
   
7. This is an entirely optional piece: Make the Small and Big Ork vehicle cards 1/2 page, and then convert the other 1/2 into a reference with everything you have there (but also include the Failed Thrust Test table) I will likely do this actually, and will be happy to share the PDFs
   
   
8. I've made a few of my own resources to track information better while playing that I'm happy to share. The thought process is that instead of one central sheet, I'll have a card per Ork (inspired slightly by Modulorka - but I also dont like the single sheet for tracking info). The first few pages are status effect cards and the last is the card for the orks. They are set up to be sent to a printer to have these printed on card stock.
   
   here's a link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1je9qu4dAyZyHuJ4uiue-Tif7rgnpFEC6/view?usp=drive_link
   

I'm not sure if this is the type of feedback you're looking for, so apologies if this is way off topic, but I just wanted to throw this out there, and I'm happy to chat about this further, or help out in whatever way I can!

 

[Flamekebab]

First off, this is an amazing response and tremendously helpful.

I'm going to have to ask some follow up questions though as there's some bits in there where one or both of us is confused. There's also going to be a few opinions as GCE has some (and so do I).

There are a few things I've noticed, some questions and some suggestions:

1. This first one may sound dumb - but I am unsure what ORB means? I'm someone who works in Canadian Press (CP) style a lot, and the first rule of introducing an acronym in any document is writing out the full name, and then putting the acronym in brackets at the end of the word. You all likely refer to the ORB a lot when working in the documents, but as a returning player (new to GCE) I am clueless. Of course I may just be a dummy missing the obvious.

This one is tricky because of the nature of GCE.
ORB is the term used in things like Necromunda Community Edition to mean "Original Rulebook". GCE does not stand for anything, it's just the name of the ruleset, and whilst it has the same mechanics as GW's Gorkamorka (for the most part) its relationship with those rules is not the same as NCE to Necromunda. NCE is the original Necromunda text with new bits added to it.

GCE is a full reimplementation from the ground up. So Gorkamorka isn't really the "original rulebook" but the term "ORB" is what people are used to.

Yeah, I don't have a good solution to this one. If we include a definition we're describing a relationship that doesn't exist and if we don't we're being confusing.

[*]Quickfix: In the newly released Campaign Book, the links don't work from the Table of Contents on any pages after 37.

This is a known issue due to the way the documents are created. The datacard pages have to be swapped out for the full page ones and this breaks everything.
I'm not aware of a good way to resplice PDFs without breaking their indices, unfortunately!

[*]Quickfix: The file name of the Core Rules has a different name in browser tabs. This is because word documents keep 2 titles for some dumb reason (it's more than word actually) But the fix is, if you have Acrobat Full version or another PDF editor, you can open up document properties and delete the "GCE LO Doc Template v1.1" title and then the file name will take over as the actual title. If you don't feel like doing this, it's not the end of the world.

I'm trying to find a good process to input the metadata for the PDFs upon output but so far I've not found anything that's consistent about it. Open to suggestions - ideally open source ones.

[*]Ok, so this point is feedback based off being a returning player and going over the GCE books, but it feels like information is in the wrong place. Why is all of the vehicle stats, equipment etc, put into the Gorker / Morker faction book, when they should be in the core rules or the campaign book?

GCE is not Gorkamorka - it's a system that can be used to play Gorkamorka with Gorkers and Morkers but it can equally be used to play a campaign with only Muties in it.
The Core Rules cover battles, the Campaign Book covers in between games, and the faction packs allow players to pull in only the rules for the factions they need.
Currently there's only the four faction packs but eventually the plan is for more. For example I'd like to create a compatibility layer for Shadow War: Armageddon so all those factions can be used easily.

[*]I had read in places that 'each faction has their own costs' but it feels like that never bore out to be true. Admittedly, I'm using the Ork Klan Rules for us to create our gangs. I have seen that Freebooterz and the non-orks have different costs. Kult of speed only changes the price of trukks and bikes (I think?)

The costs are listed in the faction packs. Page 12 of the Gorker & Morker faction pack (1.31) has pricing for warriors, equipment, and vehicles, for example. I can't speak for the non-GCE resources like the Ork Klan Rules though. Stuff listed on the downloads page of tUGS aren't part of GCE unless they're in the GCE section.

[*]What would make sense to me, is to have all of the generic gang creation rules in the core rule book, including costs (along with a handy 1 pager price sheet) and then anything else that's relevant to the core game moved into the core rules and the campaign rules, out of the Faction book, and simply just have factions in the faction book.

I don't understand what "just have factions" means in this context. The costs cannot be in the campaign book because there is no such thing as universal equipment or warriors. There's no concept of a "generic GCE warrior" (are they human? Are they an ork? A grot? Something else?) or what they'd be armed with.

[*]With this method, if I am a starting player and I just want to learn the rules, but not worry about campaigns or factions, I just need the core rulebook. Anything related to a campaign or a league, etc. would go in the campaign book, and...

I take your point, but that also means that any player that isn't starting out picks up the book then it's twice the length it needs to be and full of unrelated rules.

I would instead suggest taking the rules that exist and copying and pasting to create a cut-down "learning book" (with a better name!) that has premade mobs from popular factions and the basic rule structures (cutting lots of the complexity). The Core Rules try to cover everything in a lot of detail and that's way more than a player starting out needs.

[*]If the gorker-morker faction book, simply became the "Faction book" or Fakshun Bukk! (play with the spelling as you see fit) It could simply be the accumulation of all the klans and factions in one document, but also formatted consistently.

But that book would be literally hundreds of pages long and each player would only need a single section of it. It would also be an absolute nightmare to maintain or publish new versions for.
I own the big yellow Necromunda book. It's got everything in it and is an utter pig to game with . Individual books that can be strewn about the table are so much easier to work with, I find. Of course, players could print everything and bind it into a nice doorstop - or even rearrange the ODT files however they like.

I would like to see all factions that have been written for Gorkamorka (including a few unpublished ones I'm sitting on) get GCE faction packs though as the consistency would be nice!

[*]Alternatively, there is no faction book and each faction stays as separate PDFs like they mostly are in the extras on the website. (like a codex, but a 2-sided sheet of paper?)

2-sided sheet of paper?

[*]Also, I'd love to see the original Ork Klans fleshed out more and done in this way.

The Ork Klan Rules are under a permissive licence - you could have a bash at it!

[*]A game like Gorkamorka needs some balance between flavour text and functional text. (descriptions vs rules) but there is an opportunity to shorten the books by quite a few pages, if that was ever a desire.

The amount of work to do that at this stage would be tremendous. One of Da Kommittee felt that there should be greater separation of this stuff and I generally disagree (I tend to find reading rules with no flavour to them literally worse than reading legal documents). That said, as you've probably guessed, you are welcome to have a bash at creating a scrubbed version if you like!

[*]This is an entirely optional piece: Make the Small and Big Ork vehicle cards 1/2 page, and then convert the other 1/2 into a reference with everything you have there (but also include the Failed Thrust Test table) I will likely do this actually, and will be happy to share the PDFs

I'd love to see what you come up with. I've playtested the A4 datacards and been very happy with them and I'd be concerned that making them smaller will cause problems. Or to put it another way - I can't justify the time to iterate further at this stage.

You can find the source PSDs here:
https://gitlab.com/flamekebab/gce/-/tree/wip/others?ref_type=heads
(The ODT files are a level up)

[*]I've made a few of my own resources to track information better while playing that I'm happy to share. The thought process is that instead of one central sheet, I'll have a card per Ork (inspired slightly by Modulorka - but I also dont like the single sheet for tracking info). The first few pages are status effect cards and the last is the card for the orks. They are set up to be sent to a printer to have these printed on card stock.

here's a link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1je9qu4dAyZyHuJ4uiue-Tif7rgnpFEC6/view?usp=drive_link

Player aids are something GCE is lacking in and there's also the issue that I'm one of the least qualified to populate them. I know these rules like the back of my hand (an apt metaphor - I know them very well with a few blind spots due to nerve damage!) so figuring out what players need is hard!

In the past I've tried to create a new roster format but ultimately bailed on it as it really wasn't coming together. If you have something that works I'd be delighted to see it.

Your cards are rather fun - although the individual warrior ones don't have anywhere for skills, equipment, or serious injuries. Is that by design?

I'm not sure if this is the type of feedback you're looking for, so apologies if this is way off topic, but I just wanted to throw this out there, and I'm happy to chat about this further, or help out in whatever way I can!

Looks like someone is gunning to be part of Da Kommittee!

There's good news and bad news on that front. The good news is that you're welcome to join. The bad news is that I currently have a baby and am planning to put the GCE project on hiatus for a while to focus on being a dad. The project has been going since at least 2017 though so a bit of a lull isn't a death sentence. Work happens in bits and pieces and my goal was to get things up to GW '98 parity before my daughter was born. That didn't happen but the kiddo is three months old now so it wasn't far off!

 

[Gornn65]

I take your point, but that also means that any player that isn't starting out picks up the book then it's twice the length it needs to be and full of unrelated rules.

I think either could work. Personally, I would avoid a 2nd 'learning book' and just focus on making sure the original rules are as tight as they can be. (with debatable amounts of flavour)

You can find the source PSDs here:
https://gitlab.com/flamekebab/gce/-/tree/wip/others?ref_type=heads
(The ODT files are a level up)

Thanks for this, I'll likely have a go at making something. The data cards are great, actually, I think that 75% of the time, the original data cards are perfect, especially if you just have a single Trukk. It's when you have 3 smaller vehicles in your gang that paper starts taking up a lot of room. Perhaps there's a good middle ground.

Your cards are rather fun - although the individual warrior ones don't have anywhere for skills, equipment, or serious injuries. Is that by design?

Well, I guess, technically yes. However, this is a classic example of why you need to combine new perspective and experienced perspective. Since those should be on there, so I'll have to adjust those cards. OR make them 2-sided.

Since gear is technically able to be swapped around, I was thinking about taking the equipment off of that card, and just making wargear cards like back in the day and then you buy the card and at the start of the game, you put the gear cards on the assigned ork (or digga, etc)

Looks like someone is gunning to be part of Da Kommittee!

Congrats on the kid!
I don't know how much time overall I can commit, but I'm definitely willing to help out how I can.

I have fixed the Document properties on the core rules, the PDF is here if you want to reupload: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mnyPDI1eWjGCcK3HYEb9uXVaM3qSMA8p/view?usp=sharing

As far as the bookmarks go, I can fix that as well for this version by using acrobat and creating new bookmarks, however that's not a good long-term fix, so I will take a look at the original doc, but I promise nothing on that front, I'm an Adobe user, so my long-term fix would be to recreate the doc in InDesign and set up the stylesheets to bookmark things properly for the Table of Content.

GCE is a full reimplementation from the ground up. So Gorkamorka isn't really the "original rulebook" but the term "ORB" is what people are used to.

I take your point here. It's mostly obvious enough that it'll be fine without any change.


I may take a crack at some other elements we discussed here. If I do, or as I do, I'll make some follow up posts here, or I can direct message you so it's not 'public' and fresh eyes can be on anything before posting.

 

[Gornn65]

2-sided sheet of paper?

Oh, what I meant by this is that ideally each faction could be as short as a 2 page document, instead of a full codex. I know that's not possible, so I should just retract that statement.

 

[Flamekebab]

I think either could work. Personally, I would avoid a 2nd 'learning book' and just focus on making sure the original rules are as tight as they can be. (with debatable amounts of flavour)

Gorkamorka had a booklet called "Read Dis Furst" that GCE has no equivalent to. I was thinking something like that would be very useful.

Ideally I'd also like to create some videos dealing with the GCE concept, playing the game, how remixing works, etc..

Thanks for this, I'll likely have a go at making something. The data cards are great, actually, I think that 75% of the time, the original data cards are perfect, especially if you just have a single Trukk. It's when you have 3 smaller vehicles in your gang that paper starts taking up a lot of room. Perhaps there's a good middle ground.

It's been my experience that the inclusion of the damage tables on the cards speeds the game up tremendously. Like, disproportionately.
One of the major time sinks in GoMo is cascading vehicle damage situations. A vehicle swerves, hits another, that one also takes damage, etc..
It ends up with multiple players leafing through Da Roolz and Digganob trying to resolve things in order and grinds the game to a halt.

There's also the difficult thing that each vehicle is unique. They start off stock, sure, but they rapidly diverge and then players need to be able to scribble all over the cards. This means there has to be enough space for that and that's a significant layout challenge.

I like what we have but I reckon there are other approaches that would work as well or better, it's just not an area I have further expertise or time to make improvements with. Have at it!

Well, I guess, technically yes. However, this is a classic example of why you need to combine new perspective and experienced perspective. Since those should be on there, so I'll have to adjust those cards. OR make them 2-sided.

Since gear is technically able to be swapped around, I was thinking about taking the equipment off of that card, and just making wargear cards like back in the day and then you buy the card and at the start of the game, you put the gear cards on the assigned ork (or digga, etc)

Don't forget that weapons of various kinds can be customised so they diverge too! (for Orks it's only applicable to ranged weapons but Muties can customise hand to hand weapons too - and let's not get started on Digga Archeotek!)

Congrats on the kid!
I don't know how much time overall I can commit, but I'm definitely willing to help out how I can.

I have fixed the Document properties on the core rules, the PDF is here if you want to reupload: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mnyPDI1eWjGCcK3HYEb9uXVaM3qSMA8p/view?usp=sharing

This spurred me to dig into some command line utilities to see how this works and ugh, there's not really a unified standard on PDF metadata. I've updated the title and authors on the Core Rules and the Campaign Book and I'll add the metadata files for it to the repo. At some point I should really document a release procedure too, now that it's getting a bit more standardised.

Could you take a look to see if the PDF titles render correctly now?

As far as the bookmarks go, I can fix that as well for this version by using acrobat and creating new bookmarks, however that's not a good long-term fix, so I will take a look at the original doc, but I promise nothing on that front, I'm an Adobe user, so my long-term fix would be to recreate the doc in InDesign and set up the stylesheets to bookmark things properly for the Table of Content.

Historically tUGS documents were done in Scribus but this effectively locked out anyone not comfortable with DTP software. As a result I recreated the template as OTT so that any word processing software that supports OTT (e.g. LibreOffice, Collabora, OnlyOffice, any number of others) can be used to work with the source files. There's also an element of technical cynicism here - I've seen a lot of software come and go and don't trust propietary formats and software to stick around consistently. It's bad enough that we're using PSD for the datacards (I should really come up with a better way of handling those but I don't think there's necessarily a user-friendly approach that works). I don't want to have to redo this work in fifteen years because I picked a format that died on its arse. I'm fairly certain that OTT isn't going anywhere due to its official use by various governments.

Using a word processor for this stuff also means that copy work and layout can be a single stage. I host a Nextcloud/Collabora instance so that work can be done on the documents in a browser too, collaboratively (with automatic backups being made to the gitlab repo every hour). Previously we used Google Drive and then performed layout as an extra step and it took absolutely forever. The resultant files can also be edited and then reuploaded without losing layout, which is a cool bonus.

It's why I keep saying "feel free to remix them" - it's not a dismissive thing, it's one of the major project priorities. We want the files to be easy for people to work in without specialist knowledge or software to remove barriers to entry. For example one of Da Kommittee is working on a remix called "GorkGoMorkGo" which aims to provide I-go-you-go play (like modern Kill Team).

I'm planning on reimplementing the Freebooter rules at some point (I've been meaning to for nearly fifteen years, dear gods...) and then remixing those to make a GCE implementation of my Outlaw MC rules. Might be a while but the game is pushing 30 so another few years aren't a big deal.

I may take a crack at some other elements we discussed here. If I do, or as I do, I'll make some follow up posts here, or I can direct message you so it's not 'public' and fresh eyes can be on anything before posting.

Excellent!
I probably seem a bit obsessive but a project of this size doesn't get done without a few pints of madness. I'd love to hear from you and if you do remix stuff it'd be awesome to see too.

 

[Gornn65]

I probably seem a bit obsessive but a project of this size doesn't get done without a few pints of madness. I'd love to hear from you and if you do remix stuff it'd be awesome to see too.

Madness is what got this project to this point, any obsessiveness is appreciated!

It's been my experience that the inclusion of the damage tables on the cards speeds the game up tremendously. Like, disproportionately.
One of the major time sinks in GoMo is cascading vehicle damage situations. A vehicle swerves, hits another, that one also takes damage, etc..
It ends up with multiple players leafing through Da Roolz and Digganob trying to resolve things in order and grinds the game to a halt.

There's also the difficult thing that each vehicle is unique. They start off stock, sure, but they rapidly diverge and then players need to be able to scribble all over the cards. This means there has to be enough space for that and that's a significant layout challenge.

I like what we have but I reckon there are other approaches that would work as well or better, it's just not an area I have further expertise or time to make improvements with. Have at it!

This is good feedback. I really haven't played enough to see all the pieces that I need to have in place for a good layout. All I know is that I don't like the 1 sheet for everything approach for the Orks. My vehicle card rethink is more of a nitpick than a necessity, so if I do attempt that, it will be last in line.

Gorkamorka had a booklet called "Read Dis Furst" that GCE has no equivalent to. I was thinking something like that would be very useful.

From a returning player perspective, I think one more book is unnecessary. Plus it's potentially one more document to keep up to date.

Using a word processor for this stuff also means that copy work and layout can be a single stage. I host a Nextcloud/Collabora instance so that work can be done on the documents in a browser too, collaboratively (with automatic backups being made to the gitlab repo every hour). Previously we used Google Drive and then performed layout as an extra step and it took absolutely forever. The resultant files can also be edited and then reuploaded without losing layout, which is a cool bonus.

Hmmm I see the challenge here, I am used to doing things on my own as the final stop, so I do use the adobe suite
Anything I make will be with indesign, but I can still make source files available.

Has there been any discussion around putting content directly onto a website, like Wordpress?
So it's easily searchable, and then discussions like 'what goes in what book' is irrelevant?
Your layout woes go away, (except for when people want to print things)

Last time I played this, I ended up using the live PDFs, so I could quickly do word searches to find terms. So a mobile website would be just as handy for looking up rules.

Or does this breach some kind of legality of copyright or something?

Could you take a look to see if the PDF titles render correctly now?

Where did you upload the PDF for me to view?

 

[Flamekebab]

This is good feedback. I really haven't played enough to see all the pieces that I need to have in place for a good layout. All I know is that I don't like the 1 sheet for everything approach for the Orks. My vehicle card rethink is more of a nitpick than a necessity, so if I do attempt that, it will be last in line.

I don't really like the traditional rosters, aside from the comfort of familiarity, but I've not come up with a better approach. As a result there is no official GCE roster, something that should ideally be remedied. I'll go add a note to the GCE page.

From a returning player perspective, I think one more book is unnecessary. Plus it's potentially one more document to keep up to date.

Given that the basics in there aren't going to change (as it'd be very simple examples) I shouldn't think there'd be much of a maintenance burden.
I also wouldn't think a returning player would use the book - it'd be only for players new to the family of game systems (much like a player who has played Necromunda or Mordheim isn't likely to need it).

Has there been any discussion around putting content directly onto a website, like Wordpress?
So it's easily searchable, and then discussions like 'what goes in what book' is irrelevant?
Your layout woes go away, (except for when people want to print things)

There has been, yes, and ultimately it'd be good to have a static site (WordPress has become so unweildy in recent years!). Come to that, I'm planning to replace tUGS with a static site too as various malicious entities keep trying to hack the damn thing.

Ideally an online version of GCE would use something simple like Markdown and there'd be a pipeline to take source data and create the relevant pages automatically.

Getting everything moved into ODT files is the first step. It means that we've got things like standardised heading setups that could be used to programmatically generate the Markdown code. Tables are a lot harder to handle, irritatingly, but it's probably solvable eventually. I've messed with the tools that exist today and haven't been satisfied with the output but I'll probably give it another bash in a couple of years and see where we're at.

Worst case scenario I'll write some code myself to do it. I've built various other utilities as needed and I've had plans for a PDF assembler for a long time (i.e. select the desired PDFs, add a front page with custom text, generate a ToC, populate the page numbers, output the result - ideally web-based with an ability to link to a specific setup).

It looks like I could probably use odfpy and go from there. Then I'd just need to pick a static site generator and create a suitable theme and go from there.

That said, it's a lower priority because print is the main format we're targeting. I've had tablets, phones, laptops, ereaders, and so forth and never found them as versatile as dead trees when it comes to gaming aids. It's also tremendously satisfying holding the work we've done as physical books!

Or does this breach some kind of legality of copyright or something?

Nope, everything is CC licenced and anyone can do pretty much whatever they want as long as they don't change the licence.

The issue is more that designing and coding a pipeline that fits the project requirements is a complex problem and isn't that high of a priority until GCE is more complete.
In an ideal world we'd be digital first and then that'd be magically turned into pretty print resources, but print layout is harder than web layout, so we're going that way around.

Also needing contributors to learn Markdown or equivalent is a big ask when we're already asking for free labour!

Where did you upload the PDF for me to view?

tUGS - the links on the front page right now (e.g. https://gorkamorka.co.uk/uploads/gce-core-rules-1.4.pdf ).

 

[Gornn65]

It's also tremendously satisfying holding the work we've done as physical books!

I do agree with this! I've been slaying trees for years.
I do love a good web-based system when it's easy to read and use, but I also love a well laid-out booklet.

tUGS - the links on the front page right now (e.g. https://gorkamorka.co.uk/uploads/gce-core-rules-1.4.pdf ).

Looks great now!

(WordPress has become so unweildy in recent years!)

I agree it's gotten filled with some kruft in the past few years. It is very approachable though, and easy for many to update. But I also respect your desire to be hack-free.

I don't currently know markdown, but I'm sure I could learn it if need be. I used to be web-savvy.


Also, I've reworked that Ork Card to try out.

GM-OrkCard-Cards.pdf

drive.google.com

I took a look at the vehicle cards, for now, I am not going to tough those.

 

[Flamekebab]

So... I may have built scripts to convert the ODT content to suitable Markdown for a web-based version. There's some tweaking to do with the source data (stuff like "[bold]Equipment: [/bold]" rather than "[bold]Equipment:[/bold] ") and all the diagrams need to have "diagram" as their title so that the script picks things up. Also the code is an untidy mess that needs refactoring buuuuut... I built it.

This brings me to:

I do agree with this! I've been slaying trees for years.
I do love a good web-based system when it's easy to read and use, but I also love a well laid-out booklet.

Do you have any examples of web-based systems that you feel work well?
I could do with knowing what works for people as I think it looks horrendous in the tUGS style!

However I am old school and don't do all this mobile-first malarky (I'm no luddite, but I like a proper screen and keyboard for using the 'net).

I don't currently know markdown, but I'm sure I could learn it if need be. I used to be web-savvy.

It's much like BBCode - nothing fancy. The point of what I've been working on is so that no one has to learn it. We work on the ODT files and then just run them through the converter.

Also, I've reworked that Ork Card to try out.

GM-OrkCard-Cards.pdf

drive.google.com

I like it!
The only thing I'd change is that the big box doesn't mention equipment - what if a Warrior has a shield, for example? Admittedly the title could just be "Other stuff"!

I'd be inclined to see how they fit on a piece of A4 too - a bit of best of both worlds.

 

[Gornn65]

Do you have any examples of web-based systems that you feel work well?

I'm also getting older, and much like my music collection, which hasn't changed from late 90s
Canadian Rock (big Our Lady Peace fan). My use in software and my design habits haven't changed either.

I say Wordpress again here, because even though, I agree it is filled with bloat, it's also incredibly easy for others to enter content into. I will put a big asterisk on this, though, because I really haven't looked at competing options. Squarespace and Wix were terrible at the start. Now I see ads for it everywhere, so I can only assume it got better. Joomla is basically dead (thankfully), so I always circle back to my ol' faithful Wordpress. Typically with the Divi theme, but it's also overloaded for what's need.

I'm more of a design than I am a programmer. I started out straddling that line, but today I work in design and communications and I know enough about programming to know what's possible, not enough to do it anymore.

We work on the ODT files and then just run them through the converter.

If that works, then don't bother with Wordpress.
Also if it's simple enough with less chance for the hacky types to get in, then stick with it.

The only thing I'd change is that the big box doesn't mention equipment

Fair. I'll update that at some point soon.
My work life is becoming overwhelming at the moment, but I'm still stubbornly trying to get my GorkaMorka/GCE league off the ground. So, as we get gaming with that, I'm sure I'll get more feedback from players with what else might be useful.

I still like the idea of equipment cards, with room to write modifications on them, but I think I need to see a bit more of that in gameplay before making something.



If you get going on moving the rules to the web, that may be an interesting place/way to deal with the descriptive stuff. If there's a way to define all the descriptive text with a particular stylesheet/divtag/whatever and then you can show/hide the descriptive depending on if you want it to help with examples or if you just want the core rules as short as possible. Just an idea, but also once the text is searchable online, maybe not necessary to bother with.

 

[Flamekebab]

Ah, I wasn't clear. I was talking about implementations of web-based rules. The infrastructure I'm fine on (although I've not thought about Joomla in a good long while!).

As in - what should the finished product look like? Are there some examples of it done right that I can learn from?

If you get going on moving the rules to the web, that may be an interesting place/way to deal with the descriptive stuff. If there's a way to define all the descriptive text with a particular stylesheet/divtag/whatever and then you can show/hide the descriptive depending on if you want it to help with examples or if you just want the core rules as short as possible. Just an idea, but also once the text is searchable online, maybe not necessary to bother with.

There might be a way but it would require anyone working on the documents to bear that in mind when writing - and to understand the criteria. Given that I don't understand the criteria, that sounds like a tough sell!

What would be easier would be for someone to take the ODT files, edit them down, and then we convert those to Markdown as a separate set of rulebooks. That does impose a maintenance burden but I don't really see any other way to approach the task. For my part I don't anticipate having the spare time or energy for anything like that over the next few years, and if I find any time I'd rather progress the project in terms of the existing roadmaps.

 

[Gornn65]

As in - what should the finished product look like? Are there some examples of it done right that I can learn from?

dndbeyond.com gets a lot of hate because WOTC has sold out to Hasbro and they're just another big evil corporation trying to squeeze every penny out of people. BUT, dndbeyond is a good site for rules lookup and reference.

The main thing it does really well is focusing on the big search bar in the top middle.

The rest of the front page being filled with news updates is nice too.
In a really ideal world, we could have a mob calculator on there that can export to a PDF. That's trickier and more work, but good function.

What would be easier would be for someone to take the ODT files, edit them down, and then we convert those to Markdown as a separate set of rulebooks. That does impose a maintenance burden but I don't really see any other way to approach the task. For my part I don't anticipate having the spare time or energy for anything like that over the next few years, and if I find any time I'd rather progress the project in terms of the existing roadmaps.

If we were really smart, we could find a way to use the stylesheets and have those auto-convert to the proper markdown tags.

Like if something is marked as title in the .ODT file, it would auto-apply to an h2. I dunno if that's possible, I'm just spit-balling here, but you get the idea. Maybe it's possible through a series of Find & Replace in the text.

Also the code is an untidy mess that needs refactoring buuuuut... I built it.

Sorry, I missed this last time.

I think this is good, but I'm curious if you can do a contained search that only looks at the 'uploaded book contents'