New Character Cards & Online Database!

I am happy and proud to announce the new Knight Realms Online Card System! Over the past few months, the system (codenamed "Eodra") was under heavy development by Joseph "Valentine Graye" Hines, along with help from Brian Hahn, and a crack team of beta testers and data entry goblins.

There's currently almost 1,200 PCs in the old DB, most of which haven't been played in years. In order to keep things simple and sane, we're only moving active PCs into the new system - if you played at Week in the Life (and turned in your card), your card will be entered into the new system, and your card at the June event (or the next one you attend) will be in the new format. If you haven't been to KR since before Week in the Life (or you forgot to turn in your card), your old card will be waiting for you, and it will get moved to the new system when you turn it in at your next event. (The old DB will be kept on standby, just in case.)

The new layout isn't too terribly different from the old one, but there's a few notable exceptions:

1) Skills are automatically grouped, and sorted, according to type, rank, and alphabetically. This means that skills will always be in the same place on every card (Deflect comes before Disarm, etc.). Skills of a similar nature are sorted together (the Entry / Escape, Disguise, and Pick Locks series of skills), and Lores and Languages have their own areas. Master Lists also are grouped each in their own area, for easy reading.

2) Instead of each purchase of a skill having its own line, a skill will appear once, with a group of bubbles below it. This saves space once you get 3 or more of a skill, since it will only take up 2 lines on the sheet. As you get above 5 uses of a skill, a new line of bubbles will appear. (So if you have 20 parries, that's 5 lines of text - Parry and 4 rows of bubbles - instead of 20 lines, or even 10 lines of double use.)

3) Schools of spells, prayers, etc. can collapse on your card, as you fill them in. So if your card starts to get full, it will automatically adjust to say "All Earth Spells" or "All Herbal Recipes." instead of listing 12+ lines of them.

4) The Bank and SP areas will have separate columns for additions and subtractions.

5) "Life Events," such as Resurrections and Reanimations, are now tracked as skills with a date on them, so you'll have a record of when you passed through the focus, etc. (For now, all prior events have a date of "Record Start" since we can't track backwards through 15 years of KR.) Life Tags are no longer present on the sheets - instead, the person doing the resurrection or reanimation will mark it off on the target's card when they complete the process. (This also helps prevent tags being taken when the person is reanimated, etc.)

And now, the big part - You will be able to see your characters online! You'll be able to log on, see your PC, and make yourself notes (Medical Status, and a simple Memo system such as "Learn Deflect this event" or "Talk to Erdrick about becoming a Vassal"). We will attempt to populate your email address (which doubles as your login) if we know it for sure, otherwise we will ask you to fill it in on your sheet at the next event you attend.

cards.knightrealms.com/

You will NOT be able to print your own card, or edit it, online - only the Card Officer or a KR Staff member can do that. All skills will always appear in full online - they won't collapse like on your sheet, since they don't need to fit on a piece of paper, so you will always see all the skills you have, along with their build cost.

The new system will also track things like how many points are invested in the Healing Focus or Arcane Prism, who has the Fence skill, a general spread of races, classes, levels, and other metrics that will allow the Storytellers and Staff to better tailor the Knight Realms experience for everyone's enjoyment. (This will not be public, of course, but if you're a Storyteller, we'll work on getting you the metrics.)

All of this will be documented on the Website itself, along with a sample card, within a month.

The Card System will continue to improve over time as we focus on new ideas, metrics, and feedback - please be patient as we work on implementing these. If you have suggestions you'd like to see in the system, please send feedback to charactercards@knightrealms.com and webmaster@knightrealms.com, and we'll discuss it and see how best to implement it!

Thank you, and welcome to the future of Knight Realms!

During the entry process into the new system, all cards were audited automatically - this was by nature of the fact that the new system was checking the skills as we put them in. Any errors found on cards were resolved in the favor of the player - if you came up with extra build, you got to keep it. If you came up short some build, you gained build until you were at your old Unspent Build total, so no one lost anything (build or skills, unless there was an illegal skill - see below).

If an illegal skill was on your card, it was removed, along with a note for why it was dropped, and the build refunded. One of note, because it was on so many cards, was Lit: Draconic - it is not its own Literacy, but is assumed to be a part of Lore: Sith, which you get when you open the Sith list (similar to how you get Literacy: Magic when you open Lore: Magic, etc.). Anyone who spent build on Literacy: Draconic has the build back, and the skill removed from their card - the literacy is considered a part of the Lore skill.

So if you didn't put your e-mail address on your WITL card, you won't be able to access it online until after the June cards are uploaded, yes?

Mostly, yes. I will try to reach out to people to get email addresses later on this week / early next week.

Just curious about how people whom only come once in awhile will be dealt with? (myself included)

Your old card will be waiting for you. You will play at that game with the old format card. When you turn it in, write your email address on the card legibly.

Then your character will be input into the new system and you will get an email telling you how to login to see your card between games.

This sounds really awesome. I'm very excited to be able to look at my card between events, to help me plan out where I want to go with him.

Thank you Joe. And thank you everyone for doing this.

I worship all of you for doing this amazing job.

I just got a chance to log in to my character sheet from online and its incredibly easy to read and follow. I'm impressed and thrilled with this update, thanks Joe and Brian!

If I know your email address, I'll add it in automatically over the next few days, as time permits. I'll be making a general post later this week to get more people's addresses - I just want to ease in in case we run into any major issues.

Please note: Updates from Week in the Life may not be logged yet! Don't panic!

Hi, my email account is linked to my KR forum account, but does that work with the online card system? And thank you for doing this, this is an awesome new feature for the game!

this sounds like its going to be EPIC! Its really gonna help me shape my character card into what I want it to be will be great!

Cannot even fathom how much work this must have been - thankyou so much guys! If you could use another pair of hands to work on it, give me a poke.

The two systems aren't linked, because I am (painfully) aware of how many email addresses on the forums are bad/ wrong / old, and how many people have multiple accounts.

Goggs wrote: Cannot even fathom how much work this must have been - thankyou so much guys! If you could use another pair of hands to work on it, give me a poke.

Thanks for the offer. I'll keep it in mind if I find something I need help with. PM me with your skill set (or catch me in June and we can geek out).

If you want in on the Card System, do the following:

1) You MUST have been at Week in the Life. If you weren't, you're not in the new system yet.

2) Send an email to webmaster@knightrealms.com with the subject "Card System"

3) Body MUST contain your OOG name, in full. I assume nothing.

4) You can NOT offer to help for someone else. I've known some Husband / Wife PvP stuff where if they saw each other's cards, blood would flow. Your OWN email address only, please!

As I was looking at my card, I noticed my bank account was awfully low, looking back at my card from WITL, I noticed that I am 50 gold shy of what I should have.
Now, my question is this: who do we go to to resolve card issues with the new system? Is it still Jason?

Now, my question is this: who do we go to to resolve card issues with the new system? Is it still Jason?

Yes. charactercards@knightrealms.com

However, if you see something like a misspelling of a skill name, a skill that wraps funny, a skill that is inconsistent in its placement or any other formatting issue with the sheet (not the contents of the sheet, just how it is displayed) you can bring those up to me at development@knightrealms.com

Joe H.

As I looked over my card I noticed that my firsr arcane sphere has (5) next to it. As a mage's first sphere is free, was 5 build charged to me?

Looking at my card again, i noticed something similar. Sacrament is free, Purification is free, which I recieved when I learned Cleric, but both Life and Light (one of which was paid for) have 5 next to them. I was told when I picked up Priest, I got to choose an additional domain for free. IS this true, and the 5 is just a mistake? Or did this change?

Silverbow Patriarch wrote: As I looked over my card I noticed that my firsr arcane sphere has (5) next to it. As a mage's first sphere is free, was 5 build charged to me?

Blanket answer without looking at your card. If you see a number in parenthesis after a skill then the build is charged to you. The new system doesn't rely on people to do math anymore... it also shows its work. So these extra charges were just likely oversights made during data entry. Send a note to Jason, he will get it fixed.

Since the cards have already gone to print these will either need to be corrected by hand for this weekend or if the problems are extensive we can print an updated card.

Just a couple of key exceptions to the visible work rule. Professions. The left most is your free profession. Every other profession listed that does not show a build cost, you spent 10 on. If it cost you other than 10 build it will show the amount. The total spent on professions is listed at the end of the line.

Similarly for Literacies and Lores. If a Literacy or Lore does not show a cost then it cost you 1 build. Again a grand total for Literacies and for Lores is shown appended to the header for each.

Rayven wrote: Looking at my card again, i noticed something similar. Sacrament is free, Purification is free, which I recieved when I learned Cleric, but both Life and Light (one of which was paid for) have 5 next to them. I was told when I picked up Priest, I got to choose an additional domain for free. IS this true, and the 5 is just a mistake? Or did this change?

There are two questions here. One is a rules question about characters with both Cleric and Priest and the number of free domains they get. I cannot answer that. After that has been answered we can see to correct any mistakes made on your card. Default position is that your old card is "right" and we correct things in your favor. So if we compare your old to your new and see that the cost of that domain was zero before and is five now we'll either change the cost of the domain to zero on your new card or you will get 5 build added to make up the difference.

I missed the WitL event, but made it to the past June 2013 event. So... how long should I wait for my card to be entered into the system so I can view it?

The cards are entered gradually, over time between events (a few a night). No guarantees are given other than it will be in the system before the next event.

You'll get an email when your account is active, prompting you to log in for the first time.

Just a general question - how soon after an event should we expect to see the updated information from the prior event? So for example, should we already be seeing the updated sheets from the June event?

Same as above - there's no set schedule, as they are entered over time. In general, they will be done a few days before the event (so we have time to print them), but no hard deadlines are set for completion, other than the event itself.

Just a quick heads up. The Character Card Officer (Jason) will be putting a post tomorrow to address your concerns. Thank you for your patience.

Hey everyone, Jason here. With the introduction of the new card database system, I have been receiving a lot of questions and concerns about individual cards. While I would love to help each and every one of you with these issues, there is a significant amount of time between events where I am *not* in the process of updating cards. As a personal deadline, most, if not all cards, are usually completed by the end of the Sunday immediately prior to the event. In most cases, errors on cards can be relayed to the through the email system, Charactercards@knightrealms.com, or by sending a PM to me here on the boards. If it is something you feel warrants more discussion than just an email, feel free to contact me by PM or chat on Facebook, if it is before 10pm I am more than likely somewhat available to help you with the issue.

Do keep in mind, this is still a new system that is being improved constantly with the help of your feedback to myself and the development crew!

Thanks!