Monsters in spreadsheet/database format

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Monsters in spreadsheet/database format
« on: September 13, 2012, 11:24:48 PM »
Is there a chance someone has the monsters in a spreadsheet or DB file? When I ran at Gen Con, I manually picked a few of the monsters and made index cards with their stats. I'd like to do a mail merge to get all of them into something like that. I'm staring at the .xml files and not finding a way to import them easily into such a thing, but the formatting looks like it should be possible.

Before I beat my head on a wall for a while trying to do this, has anyone already done it? :D

Re: Monsters in spreadsheet/database format
« Reply #1 on: September 19, 2012, 04:08:57 AM »
I haven't found anything like that. I think it'd be a great resource, especially for outputting monster data to cards. A set of monster cards for each monster setting could be super awesome.

Re: Monsters in spreadsheet/database format
« Reply #2 on: September 23, 2012, 10:57:26 PM »
It is definitely doable, just not entirely straightforward since the monsters are not completely encapsulated. Take the following example:

Quote
<p aid:pstyle="MonsterName">Goblin Orkaster   <span aid:cstyle="Tags">Solitary, Small, Magical, Intelligent, Organized</span></p>
<p aid:pstyle="MonsterStats">Acid orb (d10+1 damage ignores armor)   12 HP   0 Armor</p>
<p aid:pstyle="MonsterStats"><span aid:cstyle="Tags">Near, Far</span></p>
<p aid:pstyle="MonsterDescription">Oh lord, who taught them magic? <em>Instinct</em>: To tap power beyond their stature</p>
<ul><li>Unleash a poorly understood spell</li>
<li>Pour forth magical chaos</li>
<li>Use other goblins for shields</li></ul>

The Goblin is missing a "<monster />" wrapper that would make parsing simpler, And, while name, stats, tags, and description are encapsulated, moves are not.

Re: Monsters in spreadsheet/database format
« Reply #3 on: December 14, 2012, 08:09:18 PM »
I put all the monsters in the DW pdf into an Excel spreadsheet. I suppose I should slap a CC notice on it and upload it somewhere...

*

rohoe

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Re: Monsters in spreadsheet/database format
« Reply #4 on: December 17, 2012, 11:46:20 AM »
I posted this in the new DW community in Google+ but someone there mentioned this post.

I took my crude Excel skills and built a random monster generator based on the monster creation rules in DW. It is not perfect but it does produce some interesting results. I know it is not exactly what you are looking for but since it is related I thought I would share here as well. Feel free to tweak hack or share.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/11251537/DW%20random%20monster.xls