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[PTU] RAMP - Random Automated Micro-ventures for Pokemon; What do your Pokemon get up to when you aren't watching them?
Topic Started: Apr 11 2015, 12:13 PM (3,310 Views)
Elemental Knight
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Knight of the Spread Sheet
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Download (Prototype)

Wanna help? Submit Your Micro-ventures!

We all know what our Trainer's Pokemon get up to when they're around us. They get into battles, they help each other out. Some players love role-playing as them, even (and I fall into that category pretty hard).

But a Pokemon isn't with their Trainer every second of every day. Some Pokemon go into the PC Box, or back to a Professor's Lab, and we have no idea what they get up to there. Even the Pokemon that travel with Trainers might be given some leeway to wander off on their own during downtime.

But what GM would spend the time running inconsequential sessions for each Trainer's Pokemon? That's a ludicrous use of everyone's time...

...Which is why I've created the RAMP sheet: Random Automated Micro-ventures for Pokemon. In short, it runs Pokemon through tiny adventures, and then reports on how they succeeded or failed.

What is this?
This is more a game system unto itself, rather than a spreadsheet for collecting or organizing data. So the more data plugged into it (with your group supplying the Pokemon, and the whole internet supplying the adventures), the more fun can be had with it.

How can I use this for my group?
First, you need to plug in your group's Pokemon, on the "Pokemon" tab. If you're using this to simulate the adventures of the Pokemon 'back home' (in the PC Box or at the Professor's Lab or whatnot), type in those Pokemon. If you're using the Pokemon currently with the players, to simulate their adventures when they have a few moments of free time, plug in those Pokemon.

For each Pokemon, you need to fill in their Name, their Species, their Alignment, and their Trainer. If a Pokemon has different skills than their Pokedex entry would suggest, be sure to fill in that skill's full dice roll (IE, 4d6+2). If a skill is left blank, the sheet will use a default skill roll for it - either the species' default skill roll (for those skills where this applies, like Acrobatics), or a default roll based on the Pokemon's evolutionary stage.

A Pokemon's Alignment controls what kind of micro-ventures they'll go on. A Paragon Pokemon won't go on Renegade adventures, and a Renegade Pokemon won't go on Paragon adventures. A Neutral Pokemon can go on any adventure, and any Pokemon can go on a Neutral adventure. This means that, even when you aren't with them, a Pokemon has at least some protection against acting out-of-character.

Frequently Asked Questions (Using the Sheet)


Frequently Asked Questions (Creating Micro-ventures)


Some Example Micro-ventures


Phew. There!

Feedback, suggestions, and especially submitted micro-ventures are appreciated!
Edited by Elemental Knight, Apr 11 2015, 02:01 PM.
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Elemental Knight
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Bump & update: the sheet now has 22 microventures, including the handful that've been submitted to date! I've also either fleshed out or removed all the micro-ventures that weren't yet actually written, so now every adventure you roll will be an actual, usable piece of text.

Thanks to everyone who submitted a story! I definitely encourage people to think of more micro-ventures and to submit them, especially for all the different environments. The more possible adventures there are, the more fun this sheet will be to use.
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DNA
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I am totally going to run the hell out of this and mash that button forever.

There's only 1 problem so far I ran into when doing this, though it might be unique to me:

On the 'Output' tab, where it has the box that puts the adventure, Excel treats it as an object, but not much else. The scroll function doesn't work on it; I can see the top, but it won't let me scroll beyond that. This occurs both when I open it in Excel separately and then save it later as an .xls (which is probably not the best idea), and even saving it directly from the link as an .xlsm file.

Edit: And when I hit 'Run Adventures', I get a 'run-time error 1004'.

I haven't really had problems with .xlsm files before, so I found it a little odd. Was anyone else able to reproduce the error, or is it just me?
Edited by DNA, Apr 18 2015, 08:27 PM.
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Elemental Knight
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I've made some updates to the sheet.

  • Added a few more adventures, including some that came in on the form while I was working. Nice!
  • Fixed an issue where the sheet would hang if it couldn't make a particular combination of Pokemon and an Adventure work out.
  • Fixed an issue where Luck-based checks would hang.
  • Removed some code that tried to make the output textbox go back to the top of the scrollbar when it changed. So it may jump around a bit when you first click on it now, but this should also resolve DNA's issue with the error upon opening the sheet.
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The-Mage-King
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So, decided to download this and play around with it.

Buuuutttt....

I'm getting a "Run-time error '32809'" whenever I try and use the macro button. Figured I should let you know. Not sure what other information would be relevant for you, though.
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Elemental Knight
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Doing some digging, it sounds like it might be because of an issue with Excel, funnily enough. An update in December seems to have broken some things about Form controls, which means that the text box I'm trying to use isn't working nicely on others' machines.

I've removed it entirely from the sheet; hopefully this will work better (though the text display will be a little less elegant). Let me know if it continues to have problems - and if it does, try making sure your Office is fully updated, too.

EDIT: It also appears that the sheet has an issue with Excel versions earlier than 2007. Not entirely sure why, but that may also be the cause of problems.
Edited by Elemental Knight, Apr 21 2015, 03:55 PM.
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The-Mage-King
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Working perfectly fine, now, though I need to double click on the output to read it. Thanks!
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GrayGriffin
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Just noting that I got an "out of memory" Run-time error when trying to put two different Pokemon teams in. I had 11 Pokemon on one team and 7 on the other, so I'm not sure if this was a number-based error or not. Later on I tried with 7 on each team and got the same error.

Also, I don't know if this is possible, but would there be a way to make the "team" adventures favor choosing certain combinations? Even just entering one "favored partner" for each Pokemon.

Last, just as a flavor thing, I think it'd be nice to have a way to show the trainer's name in adventure text.
Edited by GrayGriffin, Apr 25 2015, 01:15 PM.
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Elemental Knight
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Updated! So, the issue was twofold:

  • The sheet was incorrectly adding a second Trainer to the list way too many times.
  • Excel can't handle that much text in a single cell, apparently.
So, I fixed the out-and-out bug, and I updated the display to handle lots of adventures between lots of Trainers a little better. Now you scroll through the adventures one-by-one with up and down arrows, and the cell will only hold a single adventure at a time. This means that it should handle - or at least, should better handle - an arbitrary number of adventures. (And in my testing, it did solve the Memory error on my machine under the same circumstances that GrayGriffin reported.) Of course, if an adventure is long enough, you may still have to click on the output box to read the whole thing. I don't think that's something I can make much better at the moment, short of just making the box itself much, much bigger... I may yet do that, but not today.

I also added <TRAINER> as a variable. It'll grab the Pokemon's Trainer and use that. The "Formatting Help" in the submission form has also been updated to include this new variable.

As for weighting teams... That might be a bit trickier, but I can noodle on it some. It's solvable, I just don't know if it's a huge amount of work or not.

I've also added the adventures that've come in since a week or two ago. Neat stuff, y'all! : D
Edited by Elemental Knight, May 2 2015, 03:24 PM.
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You know, a how-to explaining how you created this masterpiece would be very appreciated. Your handle on Excel is extremely impressive, and it would be nice to know how it all works. Now, I realize that asking basically for a tutorial on creating a story generator in Excel is asking for a lot, but it's also plain to see that you don't shy away from big projects. Anyway, it would just be nice for those of us who aspire to your levels of greatness. But don't feel obligated.
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