Very good and helpful suggestions. I'll take a look at PCGen, although its focus on D20 makes it unsuitable for some of my uses.

In terms of limited goals... I was thinking that it might make sense to try doing the project as tools-up development; namely, create an RPG description file by hand first, then create a tool to read, display, and edit said file, then do the same for the character files, setting files, etc.

I'm coming at this from hobbyist levels... where would I find info on correctly writing an RFC for the project?

In terms of limited goals... I was thinking that it might make sense to try doing the project as tools-up development; namely, create an RPG description file by hand first, then create a tool to read, display, and edit said file, then do the same for the character files, setting files, etc.

At minimum, I would consider the goals for 1.0 to be:

• RPG description file format parser and one RPG format file completed. Probably for something like Paranoia, with fairly simple character-attribute relationships.
• Character parser set up, to read and write character files and display onscreen.
• Character entry system works well enough to enter in a character from a sheet.

Does that sound reasonable?

while (<DATA>){foreach (split (' ', $_)){ $bub = reverse $_;print "$bu
+b ";}};print "\b.\n";
__DATA__
tsuJ rehtonA lreP rekcaH
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