Palladium Books Character generator

[thedrunk]

I remember there was one back in 05ish,
I am not sure if there is still one around or if it has been inproved form the clunky dropdown menu interface. yet if there isnt is there a reason why one hasnt been offered by palladium ?

[MADMANMIKE]

I remember there was one back in 05ish,
I am not sure if there is still one around or if it has been inproved form the clunky dropdown menu interface. yet if there isnt is there a reason why one hasnt been offered by palladium ?

With literally thousands of potential variations in character creation the complexity necessary to cover them all has prevented anyone from coming close to making a good one so far..

[Steve Dubya]

If only there was a company that did that exact sort of thing this could be outsourced to...

[edit] But, yeah, expecting someone to code this out of the goodness of their heart, while abiding by Palladium's IP stance, to be freely released to the wild is pretty unrealistic.

[thedrunk]

If only there was a company that did that exact sort of thing this could be outsourced to...

[edit] But, yeah, expecting someone to code this out of the goodness of their heart, while abiding by Palladium's IP stance, to be freely released to the wild is pretty unrealistic.

it would be easy to create a data base that would be able to do this, it is a project I been thinking on doing for my personal gaming. I would like to share that here, I am wondering if I could get in legal trouble by doing that, taking something I have done for my personal gaming sessions and share it with the community.

[Steve Dubya]

I would like to share that here, I am wondering if I could get in legal trouble by doing that, taking something I have done for my personal gaming sessions and share it with the community.

Your best bet would be to contact the office with an explanation of what you're looking to accomplish, and see what that might entail.

[thedrunk]

Yeah, I am planning on that. figured that would be the route. now to write up an proposal PSI-cola any one?

Ok, so are we able to discuss what and how it will include? I think it would be a greate idea to build one, yet is it safe to get ideas of what it should include, how it should be layed out?

[FatherMorpheus]

To quote Dune:
"Many have tried and failed?"
"Many have tried and died."

That is how I feel when people ask about a Palladium Character Generator.

Every time I see Hero Labs at a convention I always ask for this, every time they say, "We have spoken to Kevin about it but with limited success."

I know I've always wanted something like this, I would be willing to donate my time for raw data entry even. But alas, see my opening statement.

[thedrunk]

see, im not talking about one for sale, or to profit. one to share here like we share other non Pally tools,

I would be willing to do it, it would take some time help would be welcomed. as of now I only have one day a week and only a few hours in that day to devote to gaming, so it owuld take time. I know I am going to be doing it for my own personal use. yet after its done can it be shared?

[dpenwood]

I've been working on one the past few months. It's coming along well, but it's a private project. The problem is Palladium Books will not let you share it openly without their permission.

[thedrunk]

I've been working on one the past few months. It's coming along well, but it's a private project. The problem is Palladium Books will not let you share it openly without their permission.

ok so once its done i have to contact pally world n submit it to palladium for aproval ?
Ok, sounds fair,

[dpenwood]

I've been working on one the past few months. It's coming along well, but it's a private project. The problem is Palladium Books will not let you share it openly without their permission.

ok so once its done i have to contact pally world n submit it to palladium for aproval ?
Ok, sounds fair,

I would ask them before you put the effort in... because you will probably be turned down.

[NMI]

I remember there was one back in 05ish,
I am not sure if there is still one around or if it has been inproved form the clunky dropdown menu interface. yet if there isnt is there a reason why one hasnt been offered by palladium ?

With literally thousands of potential variations in character creation the complexity necessary to cover them all has prevented anyone from coming close to making a good one so far..

Actually, me and a friend from Canada back a few years ago, before there was an Open House, had a darn good one going, but the amount of data entry required and the need to earn a living to pay bills and eat didnt mix well. The project was dropped. I also had worked on one with Vinny. Company called "5th Gear Pro" had one going that was decent, but they were doing so in such a manner that they made it seem as if Palladium was a sponsor of their site, etc.... The site and software were removed from the net a year or so back.

[thedrunk]

Yeah, the time required is emense! but so is also the time it takes to write up 30 NPC per campaign and be able to roll a random one up for encounters, I reuse a lot of my NPC, but it would be nice to do for my campaigns.

[MADMANMIKE]

Yeah, the time required is emense! but so is also the time it takes to write up 30 NPC per campaign and be able to roll a random one up for encounters, I reuse a lot of my NPC, but it would be nice to do for my campaigns.

Yeah, I rarely make NPC's with stats.. usually I just put down the name and a brief description. If there's going to be combat involved I may put down the weapons and armor, but mostly I wing it..

[Prince Artemis]

I've been kind of re-learning programming a little bit by making palladium gaming apps, and a character generator will be one of the final products I make. The first one is simple enough and could be completely finished in a day or two. It's a techno-wizard calculator. Basically, it's drag and drop for the spells and levels and it will spit out the various costs.

I plan on making some apps to deal with stuff like the city creation, circus creation, etc. The stuff that works well for programs that are simple to do. They won't include the actual descriptions, you'll still need the books for that, but it will make it easier to deal with the point totals.

Honestly, I'd love to make a full suite of programs for players and gms like this, but time is money, as has been said.

[Shark_Force]

step 1: teach a computer how to make sense of palladium's rules

step 2: try to stop the robot apocalypse you just started by creating an artificial intelligence and then driving it insane

(in other words... the first thing a computer program needs is a consistent way to interpret things. any character generator is basically going to get stuck at this stage, because kevin never tells anyone how he intends the rules to be interpreted so no "official" interpretation exists for basically all of the stuff that's open to interpretation. i'd love to see one, but i don't see how it could even possibly happen, since any such thing would be someone's interpretation of the rules, and that person has no authority to make their interpretation official).

EDIT: Plenty of people make sense of the rules. As for generators that don't crash making PC's & NPC's, Palladium did have their old, archaic, burn to 3 floppies version. 5th Gear Productions also had a working RUE version template [unfortunately, they were distributing it without Palladium's consent] Both worked fairly well, though I do admin that the old one from Palladium was buggy, but that is probably due in part to the limitations of programming then and/or badly written code. - NMI

[Sureshot]

I wish they would go with HeroLab. It's spoiled me so much I can't write up a player character or npc without it. What used to take me 15-30 min now takes me half the time. No more looking through sourcebooks to find the information. It's all printed on the sheet.

[dpenwood]

I wish they would go with HeroLab. It's spoiled me so much I can't write up a player character or npc without it. What used to take me 15-30 min now takes me half the time. No more looking through sourcebooks to find the information. It's all printed on the sheet.

HeroLab is cool. The company that makes HeroLab also makes a product called "RealmWorks" which is pretty neat. I'm trying it out. My campaign is currently set in the city of Char, and I've imported much of Char's stats into RealmWorks.. including notable places, NPCs, etc.. It helps.

[Eashamahel]

Besides just a staggering number of options (between races and OCC's) and questions about who-can-be-what, there are just so many things out there that, when you start combining them, have to be supported with guesswork and leaps of reasoning that a programmer would have to decide when putting them together, and those decisions may very well not be what different players and groups like (and neither would be correct).

Every time I think of a RIFTS character generator, I get to Dog-Boy Cyber-Knight and stop.

ISP: CyberKnights get an ISP base of 6D6 ("higher than a typical human or D-Bee" and "THis number is in addition to what a D-Bee might normally get). So, besides the fact that a human and a D-Bee who both start off with 2D6PPE racially get different rolls for their PPE since the D-Bees 2D6 (or even 1D4) is added on for some reason, Dog Boys don't fit into either of these categories. They are neither human nor D-Bee. They start off with 3D6PPE (higher than a normal human, but that doesn't actually mean anything since a D-Bee with a base PPE of 1D4, significantly lower than a normal human, gets more out of their CK training PPE wise than the more magically imbued human) which... is replaced by the 6D6? Is added to the 6D6? That's a pretty big swing of the dice (from 3D6 to 6D6 to 9D6) and is competely up to interpretation.

And don't think this is the biggest issue with this combo (it's just the first one I hit reading through the OCC, the combination of Psychic Powers, or if they combine at all, is MUCH worse, and it gets even MORE worse when considering adding in the expanded mutation abnormality tables in Lonestar...), or that this combo is the worst of all (it's actually just the first one out of the rulebook that I think of). Heck, many gaming groups wouldn't even view this character as legal, despite being told in Lonestar that such a thing can be done, and that's in the Typical Free Born OCC's list in Lonestar under the Dog Boy RCC, where the RCC is given the choice of OCC's, leading to others wondering whether Psi-X Aliens can be Shifters, or if Ursa-Warriors can be Wilderness Scouts.... and on and on.


Before a full, library wide Character Creation program could be made (and again, because of volume it would take a huge amount of work) the character creation system would have to be fully detailed and the problems with it solved. If someone wants to make a simpler one, awesome, I have no doubt people would love to have access, but a complete one covering the entire line which has been done officially and not just with interpretation and guesswork to solve the problems? Not in my lifetime.

[thedrunk]

step 1: teach a computer how to make sense of palladium's rules

step 2: try to stop the robot apocalypse you just started by creating an artificial intelligence and then driving it insane

(in other words... the first thing a computer program needs is a consistent way to interpret things. any character generator is basically going to get stuck at this stage, because kevin never tells anyone how he intends the rules to be interpreted so no "official" interpretation exists for basically all of the stuff that's open to interpretation. i'd love to see one, but i don't see how it could even possibly happen, since any such thing would be someone's interpretation of the rules, and that person has no authority to make their interpretation official).

EDIT: Plenty of people make sense of the rules. As for generators that don't crash making PC's & NPC's, Palladium did have their old, archaic, burn to 3 floppies version. 5th Gear Productions also had a working RUE version template [unfortunately, they were distributing it without Palladium's consent] Both worked fairly well, though I do admin that the old one from Palladium was buggy, but that is probably due in part to the limitations of programming then and/or badly written code. - NMI

Skynet?

[thedrunk]

Besides just a staggering number of options (between races and OCC's) and questions about who-can-be-what, there are just so many things out there that, when you start combining them, have to be supported with guesswork and leaps of reasoning that a programmer would have to decide when putting them together, and those decisions may very well not be what different players and groups like (and neither would be correct).

Every time I think of a RIFTS character generator, I get to Dog-Boy Cyber-Knight and stop.

ISP: CyberKnights get an ISP base of 6D6 ("higher than a typical human or D-Bee" and "THis number is in addition to what a D-Bee might normally get). So, besides the fact that a human and a D-Bee who both start off with 2D6PPE racially get different rolls for their PPE since the D-Bees 2D6 (or even 1D4) is added on for some reason, Dog Boys don't fit into either of these categories. They are neither human nor D-Bee. They start off with 3D6PPE (higher than a normal human, but that doesn't actually mean anything since a D-Bee with a base PPE of 1D4, significantly lower than a normal human, gets more out of their CK training PPE wise than the more magically imbued human) which... is replaced by the 6D6? Is added to the 6D6? That's a pretty big swing of the dice (from 3D6 to 6D6 to 9D6) and is competely up to interpretation.

And don't think this is the biggest issue with this combo (it's just the first one I hit reading through the OCC, the combination of Psychic Powers, or if they combine at all, is MUCH worse, and it gets even MORE worse when considering adding in the expanded mutation abnormality tables in Lonestar...), or that this combo is the worst of all (it's actually just the first one out of the rulebook that I think of). Heck, many gaming groups wouldn't even view this character as legal, despite being told in Lonestar that such a thing can be done, and that's in the Typical Free Born OCC's list in Lonestar under the Dog Boy RCC, where the RCC is given the choice of OCC's, leading to others wondering whether Psi-X Aliens can be Shifters, or if Ursa-Warriors can be Wilderness Scouts.... and on and on.


Before a full, library wide Character Creation program could be made (and again, because of volume it would take a huge amount of work) the character creation system would have to be fully detailed and the problems with it solved. If someone wants to make a simpler one, awesome, I have no doubt people would love to have access, but a complete one covering the entire line which has been done officially and not just with interpretation and guesswork to solve the problems? Not in my lifetime.

That would be simple,

step 1) R.C.C compiles a R.C.C either with the R.C.C. skills, or with out awaiting a O.C.C.

step 2) choose the O.C.C. this will add on to the stats that where generated for the R.C.C.

Step 4) Optional. since there is so much optional material for the different races, and classes this would be where the mutation abnormality tables would fit in for your DogBoy Cyber Knight.

the thing is this, there is no " this shouldnt be able to exist" because you are creating the generator based of of actual book rules, so each race has a class limitation. or allowed classes. you will have the choice of putting that Dogboy CK in game or not or allowing one of your players to play it. the fact that it is allowed in game would be the hole reason you would be able to create it.

there willl end up being a lot of characters that most GM's would never allow in one of thier campaigns, yet the options would be there. and fact being this. just think if you added the race creation feature from Phase World.

It will take a while to do, I havent even decided where I am going to start, there is a lot of work for me to do personally and it can take a long time to do. but after its done I think it would be fun to have. I could probley spend hours upon hours creating the weired NPC vampire vagabon?

[Dreamstreamer]

ISP: CyberKnights get an ISP base of 6D6 ("higher than a typical human or D-Bee" and "THis number is in addition to what a D-Bee might normally get). So, besides the fact that a human and a D-Bee who both start off with 2D6PPE racially get different rolls for their PPE since the D-Bees 2D6 (or even 1D4) is added on for some reason, Dog Boys don't fit into either of these categories. They are neither human nor D-Bee. They start off with 3D6PPE (higher than a normal human, but that doesn't actually mean anything since a D-Bee with a base PPE of 1D4, significantly lower than a normal human, gets more out of their CK training PPE wise than the more magically imbued human) which... is replaced by the 6D6? Is added to the 6D6? That's a pretty big swing of the dice (from 3D6 to 6D6 to 9D6) and is competely up to interpretation.

Why did you switch from ISP to PPE? I imagine the frustration and point remains, I just don't understand the switch.

That would be simple,

Simple? All of the special cases would be a nightmare to implement! Especially, as was pointed out, because there aren't definitive rules for crossing Occupational and Racial (that's a loaded word) Character Classes. Eashamahel gave just one example from the core book (with extrapolations from Lonestar).

step 1) R.C.C compiles a R.C.C either with the R.C.C. skills, or with out awaiting a O.C.C.

step 2) choose the O.C.C. this will add on to the stats that where generated for the R.C.C.

Step 4) Optional. since there is so much optional material for the different races, and classes this would be where the mutation abnormality tables would fit in for your DogBoy Cyber Knight.

I'm not sure why you left out step 3, or what it was supposed to be, but I'll try to decipher how I think you imagine the remaining steps to go. Step 1 seems to address skills; step 2 is stats, with simple addition to figure them out; and step 4 is the kitchen sink, or every other thing that makes up a class. But before you even get to skills, you will need to determine "Race." So, here is a quick-off-the-cuff suggestion of how I would propose it should go:

1) The user is presented with a "Race*" selection. Human is likely placed at the top, and should be the default.
2) After selecting a "Race," as long as the "Race" can select from multiple R.C.C.s or O.C.C.s (as I believe there are some "Races" that are limited to a single class) the user will then be presented with an appropriate selection of R.C.C.s and O.C.C.s; all "Races" should likely default to their respective (or most applicable) R.C.C.
3) Selecting an R.C.C. should streamline the remaining work of choosing skills and powers (psychic, magic, or otherwise), but equipment might need some additional filters for location/availability. Selecting an O.C.C. will almost certainly throw additional wrinkles in, too, as now you have to deal with combining pieces of an R.C.C. with an O.C.C. Which, as far as I know and as mentioned above, has never been presented clearly. Is it as simple as taking the higher of two stats? How about an R.C.C. that forbids a particular skill, while an O.C.C. provides it standard? Non-psychic R.C.C.s taking psychic O.C.C.s (like the cyber-knight, which I know explicitly handles this case, but it still must be coded)? I imagine some combinations will create enormous headaches. One possibility is to prompt the user on which of two stats to use. Or, if a power is only available to the Racial or Occupational Class, prompt the user on whether to include it or not. Of course, that sounds like a lot of prompts, which means extra work and a ton of extra variables for the programmer to deal with.

And this doesn't even come close to capturing all of the other little problems. Advancement, or even starting at a level other than one? That's a whole 'nother kettle of fish. Each R.C.C. and O.C.C. have different requirements and benefits. Mixing them? Yikes! And on, and on, and on...

It will take a while to do, I havent even decided where I am going to start, there is a lot of work for me to do personally and it can take a long time to do. but after its done I think it would be fun to have.

I agree that it would be fun to play with. Start small, and grow it from there. Good luck on your endeavor!

*Race should, for the most part, reference species instead. Holdover from D&D, maybe?

[Eashamahel]

Why did you switch from ISP to PPE? I imagine the frustration and point remains, I just don't understand the switch.

No idea, the mistake is entirely mine, just must have made a mistake typing it out.

-EDIT-

After looking at the book, it's because the PPE for the Cyber Knight is listed under the heading "Inner Strength", which just caused me to mis-quote it at the beginning. All the references to ISP should be PPE in my original post.

[Shark_Force]

EDIT: Plenty of people make sense of the rules. As for generators that don't crash making PC's & NPC's, Palladium did have their old, archaic, burn to 3 floppies version. 5th Gear Productions also had a working RUE version template [unfortunately, they were distributing it without Palladium's consent] Both worked fairly well, though I do admin that the old one from Palladium was buggy, but that is probably due in part to the limitations of programming then and/or badly written code. - NMI

blech, didn't notice this. any reason you didn't just reply in your own post NMI?

in any event, the problem is simple: a computer will always do exactly what you tell it to do, but not necessarilly what you want it to do.

plenty of PEOPLE make sense of the rules. that's because they're people. if we were standing on the corner of a square, and i was to point to the corner opposite and say "let's go there", you would be able to get to the other corner of the square, provided you want to. you could do it in a multitude of different ways; you could take the diagonal, shortest route. you could decide to follow the edge of the square around like it was some sort of path. you could meander along through the middle of the square, taking time to view anything that might be in that area that interests you. you could even leave the square entirely and walk around the whole thing in a circle, or choose any number of other possible routes. alternately, you might decide you don't *want* to go to the opposite corner of the square, and go someplace else entirely.

if me and a computer-controlled car were in the same square, and i told it to go to the other side of the square, it would ask me to give it a formula that will get it there, or give it a series of points to travel between, or in some other way require me to explicitly designate every location in between the start and end point that it should travel, unless i've previously given it that information. whatever route i tell it to take is the only one it will consider, and indeed it may not even acknowledge the existence of other possible routes unless i tell it about them first and tell it what to think about them (at which point, whatever logic i've given it to determine which route to take is always the same it will take, given the same information).

or, in other words, plenty of people *make* sense of the rules, and they do it in their own way, filling in gaps, selecting the choice they prefer when confronted with contradictory rules, changing what they want, and interpreting things based on their own experience. that's fine. there's nothing wrong with that. it isn't a bad thing, for people (in fact, i dare say that if you don't apply your own experience to what you do in the future, that's a bad sign because you're probably not learning).

but a computer doesn't work like that. or at least, not the computers we have today. there needs to be one way, and one way only, for the computer to follow, *or* it needs some way to determine which of many possible ways it should follow, and that can't be "whatever you like" (which is essentially what kevin tells us is how the rules are supposed to work whenever asked; they work however you want them to work, not however he wants them to work). the computer has only the preferences we tell it to have, it does not reflect the preferences of the user unless the user tells it all of their preferences.

so unless every single individual user is to be expected to program their interpretation on hundreds or perhaps even thousands of minor issues that crop up, we need to figure out how to tell the computer which interpretation of the rules is "correct". as i've already noted, the one source that could declare anything officially correct is of the opinion that no one way is officially correct, and that the way you play the game is correct for you.

which is great when designing something for human use, but absolutely a nightmare when designing something for computer use.

[Prince Artemis]

step 1: teach a computer how to make sense of palladium's rules

step 2: try to stop the robot apocalypse you just started by creating an artificial intelligence and then driving it insane

(in other words... the first thing a computer program needs is a consistent way to interpret things. any character generator is basically going to get stuck at this stage, because kevin never tells anyone how he intends the rules to be interpreted so no "official" interpretation exists for basically all of the stuff that's open to interpretation. i'd love to see one, but i don't see how it could even possibly happen, since any such thing would be someone's interpretation of the rules, and that person has no authority to make their interpretation official).

EDIT: Plenty of people make sense of the rules. As for generators that don't crash making PC's & NPC's, Palladium did have their old, archaic, burn to 3 floppies version. 5th Gear Productions also had a working RUE version template [unfortunately, they were distributing it without Palladium's consent] Both worked fairly well, though I do admin that the old one from Palladium was buggy, but that is probably due in part to the limitations of programming then and/or badly written code. - NMI

Actually, this part isn't as hard as you'd think. The mock up I was using would have standard attributes for certain things and then when you picked your rcc and occ, it would auto-fill in those attributes (min/max attributes for the random generation, number of primary/secondary skills, etc) and a simple algorythm for each class file to show what skills are available for the primary skills and what skills they get for occ. The programming for a character generator for palladium isn't actually as hard as you think programming wise. It's just TIME CONSUMING.

[Shark_Force]

step 1: teach a computer how to make sense of palladium's rules

step 2: try to stop the robot apocalypse you just started by creating an artificial intelligence and then driving it insane

(in other words... the first thing a computer program needs is a consistent way to interpret things. any character generator is basically going to get stuck at this stage, because kevin never tells anyone how he intends the rules to be interpreted so no "official" interpretation exists for basically all of the stuff that's open to interpretation. i'd love to see one, but i don't see how it could even possibly happen, since any such thing would be someone's interpretation of the rules, and that person has no authority to make their interpretation official).

EDIT: Plenty of people make sense of the rules. As for generators that don't crash making PC's & NPC's, Palladium did have their old, archaic, burn to 3 floppies version. 5th Gear Productions also had a working RUE version template [unfortunately, they were distributing it without Palladium's consent] Both worked fairly well, though I do admin that the old one from Palladium was buggy, but that is probably due in part to the limitations of programming then and/or badly written code. - NMI

Actually, this part isn't as hard as you'd think. The mock up I was using would have standard attributes for certain things and then when you picked your rcc and occ, it would auto-fill in those attributes (min/max attributes for the random generation, number of primary/secondary skills, etc) and a simple algorythm for each class file to show what skills are available for the primary skills and what skills they get for occ. The programming for a character generator for palladium isn't actually as hard as you think programming wise. It's just TIME CONSUMING.

no, it is just as hard as i think, because you're making a lot of assumptions. the post above about dog boy cyber-knights is an excellent example of the kind of problem you're going to face.

just as another example: psi-stalker is (presently) a race-restricted OCC. it is *also* a race. we know that psi-stalkers can choose a number of other OCCs.

which of the abilities in the psi-stalker OCC are entirely racial, and which are part of the OCC? for that matter, do we even get to divide things so cleanly? it is, after all, entirely possible that an untrained psi-stalker might have smaller radius or skill % on several of their abilities that are tied to race, but we don't know. there is nothing in the text to give us any solid answers, although some parts are fairly obvious (for example, the requirement to eat a certain amount of PPE is obviously going to be part of the race, not the OCC). on the other hand, it might be that every ability in the list is part of a psi-stalker's racial abilities in full, and the OCC actually consists of nothing more than the skills and equipment.

so, at this point, you have a choice.

- you can decide on one thing to code into your chargen program. unless you are kevin, this is purely your opinion and has no official weight, which means you aren't accomadating anyone who has their own interpretation, making this part of your program fairly useless to those people. what's more, if anyone was to come up to kevin and ask whether the way you decided to answer that question is "the correct way", the most likely answer will be to tell you that the correct way for you is the way you want it to work.

- you can try to code in every possible variation of how it might work, allowing the person to include the abilities they think should be included, at the rate of progression they think it should improve at, and as a result anyone building this type of character with your chargen program essentially has to program it with every last one of their own preferences before they can create their character.

and that's just for one possibility.

rifts is not a game that was ever designed to be played without a human interpreting it and even modifying it entirely to suit their own needs. it is not written for a computer to use.

you can code *your* interpretation of the rules into a chargen program. that's all very well and good, but they're useless to anyone else who doesn't happen to share the exact same interpretation of the rules. there are certainly plenty of cases where you can make decisions that most everyone will agree with, but there are also many situations that are not nearly so clear-cut.

as an example that will perhaps impact more heavily on a variety of characters, what if a certain skill was added after an OCC was made, and doesn't fit with the OCC's related skills options... for the sake of argument, imagine there was a farmer OCC, and under domestic skills it included, say, cooking and sewing only (because farmers don't get OCC training in dancing, singing, etc). but wait, in the GMG, there's a gardening skill that they frankly should have, because basically their entire OCC is about gardening on a large scale. they understand every part of the process, and if anything should probably have gardening at a professional level, most likely with a bonus. so, how does your chargen program handle that? different groups will rule differently. kevin isn't giving any solid answers. so how do you resolve this? do you try and future-proof every class from here on out, and go back and add errata to every class to fit later releases?

or, maybe you think to yourself "yeah, this farmer OCC should have every domestic skill available to them". little do you know when you designed the class, though, that other books added to the domestic skills list: "bonsai", "corroboree", "floral arrangement", "go", "poetry (haiku)", and "rock painting and engraving". they are all quite frankly wildly inappropriate for your OCC, but were not part of your consideration because they may not have even existed when you made the OCC. so how do you rule on that? again, bear in mind that you have no authority to declare what is an official rule and what is not, and the only person who does have that authority has the stance that every group should make their own decisions about what is right for them. and this is a relatively clear-cut decision, comparatively speaking (although on the flip side, a farmer from the appropriate part of the world may indeed have some of those skills).

as yet another example, techno-wizards can take any mechanical skill. says so right in their OCC related skills section. but then, i just flip across to the skill section, and i find that weapons engineer and vehicle armour both have special limitations on them that they are "usually reserved for" certain characters, none of which include techno-wizards. so now we have a conflict, and there are arguments for either side of the equation. techno-wizards are often noted as doing the kinds of things these skills allow. in fact, there are TW devices in the official books that would have logically been made by techno-wizards with those skills. but the special training for those skills is specifically noted as not being available to anyone other than certain characters, and the techno-wizard is not any of those characters. in this case, we don't really have ignorance as an argument either; techno-wizards and these two skills are all in RUE. are those skills intended to be almost like a special class ability of those specific, named classes? or, perhaps, the techno-wizard normally won't have those skills, but exceptional ones might, at which point, how do we decide whether a given techno-wizard is exceptional or not?

you, the human being, are familiar with the system. you may have already decided how that's going to work for your group in the past, and if you come across it out of the blue you probably don't need much time to decide how you want it to be in your group.

but when you're writing a chargen program for general use, you have to make that decision for every group that is going to use the program, and then you need a reason for me to accept that your decision is more valid than that of any other random person on the internet.

once you've got all that figured out, then sure; coding it is tedious, but not difficult.

[Eashamahel]

That really is the entire issue boiled down. Making a character generator including everything every done in RIFTS would be time consuming, but it's not that it's complicated that is the issue. The issue is, there is no OFFICIAL solution to any one of dozens (maybe even hundreds?) of problems that can come up when making characters. Most of these are easily solved by just making a decision (Dog Boy gets 6d6 PPE, done.), but that decision isn't based on the CORRECT, official, proper way to do it. It's just a decision by a fan.

[Tiree]

The fact that Rifts, and Palladium in whole, does not use a specific formula for character creation. What I mean by this is that there is no standardized format for the following:
1. OCC's
2. MOS's
3. Skills
4. PCC's
5. RCC's

It's not that it's impossible to make a character Generator, it is just prohibitively restrictive for all the different variables.

I made an Excel Character Generator for Shadow Chronicles. I had to make changes to it drastically for the Macross Sourcebook. I practically had to recode the whole thing for the Masters Sourcebook. I had it geared up for what I believed would be a similar format for Invid Invasion, and they changed it yet again (I have decided that I will rework the OCC's because they just don't fit my interpretation of the game).

Skills: Some skills provide benefits to other skills. While some skill descriptions will state if you have this skill, it will give you a benefit. Why hasn't this been standardized? Bad Editing? Possibly. It's definitely workable and can be dealt with, so it's low priority.

[Eashamahel]

Yeah, it's not that making a character is HARD or too difficult, it's just that it requires a lot of leaps that players are expected to make, most of which we don't even realize we're making. I had a player get all the way to the "Step 5: Selecting an O.C.C. or R.C.C" step before they came over to me to tell me they didn't know what to do next. They were trying to make a Dragon Hatchling, and started at the beginning of the "Creating a Character" section of the book. Needless to say, having already rolled up their 8 attributes and their Hit Points, read all the way through the SDC and MDC section before realizing it had no bearing on what they were doing, and then reading it was time to select their R.C.C. (Dragon) while they already had their attributes ('do you just add these together?'), I realized you should never tell a first time player to just follow the instructions.

Now, the system has certainly improved since the RMB (for instance, I don't think the R:UE edition book tells players to select either an OCC OR an RCC), it still has a fair few problems just because with as many options and different books as are available, there are going to be some things that don't fit together (and as I already pointed out above, still a few issues with how RCCs and OCCs go together).

[Nomadic]

I have an inbox full of C&D letters from Alex and Kevin about the CCG I wanted to release. 2004-8ish? Can't remember when the conversation started.

They don't want one, They've never wanted one. At one point I had hope and was contacted by Alex M, but they wanted me to pay this crazy IP cost and then provide it as a product they would sale for me but prohibit outside distribution.

Snip of DB Screenshot.
http://imgur.com/Yfz25co

I have one, I use it for games, they can't stop me from private use. (But I have been banned a few times)

[Alpha 11]

I have an inbox full of C&D letters from Alex and Kevin about the CCG I wanted to release. 2004-8ish? Can't remember when the conversation started.

They don't want one, They've never wanted one. At one point I had hope and was contacted by Alex M, but they wanted me to pay this crazy IP cost and then provide it as a product they would sale for me but prohibit outside distribution.

Snip of DB Screenshot.
http://imgur.com/Yfz25co

I have one, I use it for games, they can't stop me from private use. (But I have been banned a few times)

I honestly think they are shooting themselves in the foot for doing that.