What is "Heldenfabrik"?

Heldenfabrik (German for hero factory) is a software project to support the creation and maintenance of characters in the, you guessed it, German pen&paper role playing game Das Schware Auge (Once published as "The Dark Eye" in English speaking countries).

Project Goals

The actual goal of "Heldenfabrik" is difficult to determine (usually a bad sign) as it is more of a toolbox than an end-to-end solution for its problem domain. Heldenfabrik started out as an interactive SKT (skill development cost table), moved from there to include commonly used talents and as it stands now, Heldenfabrik allows users to

• define the attributes of their character
• define the initial set of talents
• document the learning process
• have consumption of money and experience points computed automatically
• generate a ready-to-use table of all talents and their levels.

What Heldenfabrik currently does not implement: -

• Special abilities (SF) -
• Skill development constraints -
• Generation of other character sheets (main, fight, magic etc.) -
• A graphical interface

What Heldenfabrik will never be: -

• A simulation of game play rules (e.g.: combat) -
• A replacement for buying the official books**.

* Currently, Heldenfabrik is only accessible via Prexonite Script code files using a DSL-like public interface.

** The pen&paper role playing game is a copyrighted product and as such it is not clear what rules I am allowed to implement. It gets especially critical when I include a library of pre-defined skills and special abilities. As I haven't decided on a policy for explicitly available "rules" yet, libraries are not part of "Heldenfabrik" at this moment. I, however, don't see any problem with providing software that "implicitly" contains (implements) rules described in those copyrighted books.