Chummer Wiki

Modified on 2013/06/11 09:50 by Keith Rudolph — Categorized as: Uncategorized

Welcome to the Chummer Wiki!

The goal of the wiki is to act as a mini-manual for the application and describe the inner workings so that users can define their own custom data. Another main goal is to get all of this stuff written down so that it exists in other places than just floating around in my head and buried in code. The larger this thing gets, the harder it is to remember every little detail.

Information has been entered for for all of the Data Files, creating Custom Data Files, creating Custom Character Sheets, How To Guides, and an explanation of the Improvement Manager that provides a great deal of Chummer's power.

Why Chummer?

So what possesses someone to wake up one day and exclaim they're making a character generator for Shadowrun? I had run a Shadowrun game with some friends for a while and found that the NPCs in the modules didn't tell you most of the things you care about. They give names of items but none of the details. How much armor do they have? How much damage does that weapon do? What book is that in? What bonuses does that piece of Cyberware give? Does that Skill value include their Attribute and/or Cyberware and/or other bonuses? It got to the point of just being frustrating. I wanted to run the game but shouldn't have to piece together all of that information. The first thought was to just go out and find a character generator. What I found was a few incomplete applications and a handful of Excel spreadsheets. I've found that spreadsheets just don't do it for me. I had no other personal development project going on, so writing my own sounded like a interesting challenge!

The Goal

Chummer has a few goals. The first is to provide an easy to use character generator as an application that adheres to the game system's rules while still allowing users to enter custom data. It should show you how your character will look during play, not just be a series of scattered numbers. That is, you should see your actual Dice Pools with all of the modifiers during the creation process. By selecting any item, you should see the total damage, recoil, or armor values for the item, and not have to guess what it will be after adding modifications. Another main goal is to provide a way to maintain a character throughout their career. As you gain Karma you will be able to spend it to improve your character in the same way that you created them. Finally, it should give Game Masters a way to quickly assemble NPCs and view all of their relevant information in one place rather than having to piece it all together from multiple sourcebooks. The game should be about playing and having fun, not hunting through a stack of books to figure out what something does.

Chummer for SR5

Work is underway for a new version of Chummer that will work with Shadowrun 5th edition. A lot of work has already gone into rewriting large portions of the code to consolidate pieces and make it easier to work with going forward and work has already begun on implementing the Priority build system that has been outlined in the preview documents. There is still a lot of work that needs to be done to get things ready for the game's release like further clean up work, stripping out house rules (they'll be supported again but since the game is unreleased, nobody has created new house rules so out they went!), and finishing off the first steps for the Priority system. I have no idea how long it will be after the game's release before the new version of Chummer is available; there are too many unknowns like how much data needs to be entered, how the game mechanics have changed, and how things like Cyberware and Weapons have changed which all require complex code changes, along with how much time I'll be able to dedicate to doing all of this to really give an accurate estimate. In any event, the first release will do what it can to support the core SR5 rulebook. I have no plans on supporting migrating characters from SR4 to SR5 as large portions of the code have changed drastically. The system requirements have not changed as I have no desire to alienate anyone who has used Chummer for SR4. If you can run the current version of Chummer you'll be able to run Chummer for SR5 as well.

Recent Wiki Changes

2013/07/11 17:53	Keith Rudolph updated the page Improvement Manager.
2013/07/11 11:13	Keith Rudolph updated the page qualities.xml.
2013/07/11 11:06	Keith Rudolph updated the page Improvement Manager.
2013/06/26 13:22	Keith Rudolph updated the page vehicles.xml.
2013/06/13 07:22	Keith Rudolph updated the page Chummer SR4 FAQ.
2013/06/13 07:19	Keith Rudolph updated the page Chummer SR5 FAQ.
2013/06/13 07:17	Keith Rudolph updated the page Chummer SR4 FAQ.
2013/06/13 07:03	Keith Rudolph updated the page Chummer SR5 FAQ.
2013/06/12 19:24	Keith Rudolph updated the page Data File Overview.
2013/06/12 19:23	Keith Rudolph updated the page GUID Generator.