tenebrous-dicebot/README.md

matrix-dicebot

This is a fork of the axfive-matrix-dicebot with basic support for the Chronicles of Darkness 2E Storytelling System, with future plans to extend the codebase further to support variables and perhaps character sheet management. It also contains various fixes, uses the Matrix SDK for connectivity, and has a Docker image.

Usage

To use it, you can invite the bot to any room you want, and it will automatically jump in. Then you can simply give a dice expressions for either the Storytelling System or more traditional RPG dice rolls.

The commands !roll and !r can handle arbitrary dice roll expressions.

!roll 4d6
!r 4d7 + 3
!r 3d12 - 5d2 + 3 - 7d3 + 20d20

The commands !pool (or !rp) and !chance are for the Storytelling System, and they use a specific syntax to support the dice system. The simplest version of the command is !pool <num> to roll a pool of the given size using the most common type of roll.

The type of roll can be controlled by adding n, e, or r after the number, for 9-again, 8-again, and rote quality rolls. The number of successes required for an exceptional success can be controlled by s<num>, e.g. s3 to only need 3 successes for an exceptional success.

Examples:

!pool 8     //regular pool of 8 dice
!pool 8n    //roll 8 dice, 9-again
!pool 8ns3  //roll 8 dice, 9-again with only 3 successes for exceptional
!pool 5rs2  //5 dice, rote quality, 2 successes for exceptional

Running the Bot

You can run the bot by creating a bot account, building the dicebot program (either from this repo, and creating a config file that looks like this:

[matrix]
home_server = https://'matrix.org'
username = 'thisismyusername'
password = 'thisismypassword'

Of course replacing all the necessary fields. Then you can run the "dicebot" binary pointing at that, and it will log in and hum along and do its thing.

You can also just run it on the command line with the dicebot-cmd command, which expects you to feed it one of the command expressions as shown above, and will give you the plaintext response.

Docker Image

The dice bot can run in a minimal Docker image based on Void Linux. To create the Docker image, run docker build -t chronicle-dicebot . in the root of the repository.

A typical docker run command should look something like this:

VERSION="0.3.0"
docker run --rm -d --name dicebot \
-v /path/to/dicebot-config.toml:/config/dicebot-config.toml:ro \
-v /path/to/cache//:/cache \
chronicle-dicebot:$VERSION

The Docker image requires two volume mounts: the location of the config file, which should be mounted at /config/dicebot-config.toml, and a cache directory to store client state after initial sync. That should be mounted at /cache/in the container.

Properly automated docker builds are forthcoming.

Future plans

The most basic plans are:

• To add support for simple per-user variable management, e.g. setting a name to a value (gnosis = 3) and then using those in dice rolls.
• Perhaps some sort of character sheet integration. But for that, we would need a sheet service.
• Automation of Docker builds.
• Use environment variables instead of config file in Docker image.