(I will be responding initially to your response, Tiefling. Please read the whole post before responding. I explain myself a little better after babbling for a few minutes. :-)

I have read the Daft Adventure thread, and I've also written similar programs myself (back in Apple BASIC). This was actually my first program over 100 lines, back in the day.

However, given your responses, I wonder if you'd read everything I wrote. Yes, I originally said:

"Why?", you might ask. Well, you talk about a dice-rolling function called dice(). Then, you talk about a modifer() function. As someone who plays D&D, these, to me, instinctively seem as if they belong in the same place. This is because they both deal with ability scores.

However, I then said that both RPG::D&D::Character and RPG::Dice would be needed. That implies that dice() would be located in a non-D&D spot.

However, I don't want to start a flame-war. This project is obviously something dear to your heart and I apologize if you felt that I was insulting your intelligence or your design capabilities. I was merely attempting to humbly offer up some ideas of my own.

Now, onto the project!

The basic functionality you're probably going to need involves (at least) the following areas:

• Character/NPC/Monster Generation
• Skills
• Magic (both Arcane and Divine)
• Combat (both mudnane and magical)
• Items (both mundane and magical)
• Map Generation

Note that this is from an extremely high level. There is no mention of how things are adjudicated. From a DM/player perspective, this is what the game is all about - making a character, choose skills/magic, and then running around a world. Occasionally, you might have to fight stuff.

Every single action you take from this high a level should call some method contained in another module. There are several reasons for this:

• It makes your high level very instinctively obvious. Any new DM can, given a well-defined and documented API to your modules, create his/her own high-level programs.
• It makes changing game systems very easy. You are creating RPG::D&D::* right now. However, by that very package nomenclature, RPG::Cthulhu::* is very possible. If you leave out all implementation details from the top level, switching systems is almost trivial.
• It makes designing the system much easier. You don't have to remember that there is a 1% need to roll dice at the manager level. You'll know that all implementation details are hidden from the top level. You just need to have the appropriate module adjudicate itself.

Now, we don't know exactly how these modules will go about doing their thing. In fact, we don't even know if they will be modules or classes. (RPG::D&D::Character may very well be a class - I find it easier to think of a PC or monster as an thing that knows how to do stuff versus a set of methods to be run on a data structure you have to maintain.) Each module will have an API (set of methods that other modules know about) and a mandate (what it takes care of for you). Once you have sketched this out, it becomes very simple to flesh out the skeleton.

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