LibreOffice, The Adventure Template and Monster Stats Blocks

Creating game materials? Monsters, spells, classes, adventures? This is the place!
Locked
Hardof
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Mar 03, 2017 3:55 pm

LibreOffice, The Adventure Template and Monster Stats Blocks

Post by Hardof »

(Apologies if it's been covered. I've had a brief search on 'Adventure Template' but nothing related came up.)
Edit Not sure if the images are showing. PDf of this post attached.
What?: Use Mike Roop's spreadsheet to quickly find, select, and paste a Monster Stats block into an Adventure Template in the correct format.
Who?: for anyone on Linux/Mac/Windows who can download LibreOffice(LO), Mike Roop's spreadsheet(BFCL), the Adventure Template(AdT), and follow simple instructions.
Why?: save time, avoid transposition errors, comply with the sacred formatting laws.

https://www.libreoffice.org
https://basicfantasy.org/download.cgi/B ... oop-r3.ods
https://www.basicfantasy.org/showcase.cgi?sid=107

Creating the database:
(it's simply a frontend with a link to the existing spreadsheet so we can drag and drop info into the template).
File>New>Database
select the 'connect to an existing database' radio button

Press the 'Next' button

Press the 'Browse' button and navigate to the BFCL spreadsheet (.ods)
Choose 'Yes, register the database for me' and 'open the database for editing' options and press the 'Finish' button.

Now choose a name and location and save this .odb file. (For simplicity's sake call it BFCL.odb)

Creating a query to narrow down the data.
Mike Roop has kindly saved us a lot of time and concatenated all the Monster Stats into the final four columns of his spreadsheet. Data in the 'Colon Text only' column is the correctly formatted option according to the style guide.
We could use the table entry 'MAIN SHEET', but as that displays all the info in all the columns, it involves a little more editing.

Click the 'Queries' button in the left pane, then click 'Create Query in SQL View'.

Paste all the SQL code on the following line into the Query Design window that has just opened:

Code: Select all

SELECT "Colon Text only" FROM "MAIN SHEET" WHERE LOWER ( "Name (Stat Block)" ) LIKE LOWER ( CONCAT( '%', :MONSNAME, '%' ) )
Press the save icon or use File>Save and give it the (useful) name 'qStatsByMonsterName'

Selecting the stats block we want and inserting it into the template:
File>Open the Adventure Template.
Open the 'Data Sources' window (the top right depressed button. If you're not using the Sifr icons scheme look for one similar, or default keyboard shortcut Shift+Ctrl+F4). This appears under the icons across the top of the window.
In the left pane click on the BFCL entry then on 'Queries', then on 'qStatsByMonsterName'

Now the parameter query window opens using the SQL LOWER() functions and the wildcard indicator '%' in the query qStatsByMonsterName, we can simply enter 'goblin' and get all matching entries with that text upper or lower case (ie. 'Goblin Shaman', 'Hobgoblin' etc.)
Go to page 2, left column in the AT and place the cursor above the line beginning with the text 'Wild Boars' in Bold. Press the 'Enter' key once.
In the Data Source click and hold on the row indicator (the little blue arrow pointing right). Drag this down to the empty space (it's a paragraph) above 'Wild Boars'. and the 'Insert Database Columns' window appears.
Choose to 'Insert data as Text' click on 'Colon Text only' in the Database Columns box and press the big arrow button pointing right. Choose 'MonsterBlock' from the 'Paragraph Style' drop down box, so the correct paragraph formatting will be applied.
Unfortunately we still have to select the monster name and colon ('Goblin:' in this case) and apply direct Bold (Ctrl+B) formatting.
If you want to choose another monster click on the refresh button (the 2 circular arrows going anti-clockwise) and re-enter your monster name parameter.

There are plenty of variations/extensions on the above, when I have some time, I'll post a few more tips.
Locked

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Bing [Bot], leon and 49 guests