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Filling Out Chronicles

Quickstart

There is a quickstart chapter available if you want to dive right in and get some quick results.

Filling Out a Single Chronicle

To fill out a chronicle, you will basically need to things to start:

  1. The ID of the template to use for filling the chronicle. Details can be found in this section, but when in doubt or you just want to get this going, simply use the following:
    • pfs2 for Pathfinder 2
    • sfs for Starfinder
    • Pathfinder 1 is not yet supported
  2. An empty chronicle to be filled. This should be in PDF format and consist of only a single page. For information on how to create such a file if you have purchased and downloaded a scenario PDF file from Paizo, read the section on how to extract a chronicle PDF.

Everything set so far? Good! Then we can get serious now...

To fill out a chronicle, you have to call pfscf with the fill command. The call in general looks as follows: 

pfscf fill <template> <infile> <outfile> [<param_id>=<value> ...]

And here is an example on how an actual call could look like: 

pfscf fill pfs2 s103_blank.pdf s103_bob player=Bob char="The Bobbynator" societyid=123456-2001 xp=4

Worked so far? Great, you've created your first filled chronicle using pfscf! But if something did not go as expected, weird error messages coming up or the resulting PDF looks somehow wrong, then please have a look at section Troubleshooting.

Now you probably want to add some more stuff than just the things shown in the example above. To get the complete list of supported values for a specific chronicle, please call pfscf template describe <template>. This will display a list of all the supported parameters that you can use to fill out your chronicle. If you use a specialized chronicle template, e.g. template pfs2.s1-06 from above, instead of the more generic templates like pfs2, you might get additional options, e.g. for striking out specific boons or other scenario-specific content.

Filling Out Multiple Chronicles

To fill out multiple chronicles in one go, e.g. to create all chronicles for a single game session, a batch mode is included. Using this mode is (I hope) rather easy and consists of two steps that are described below.

Create a CSV File Out of a Chronicle Template

First you have to create a CSV file (CSV: Comma-separated values) for the chronicle template that you want to use. If you do not yet know which chronicle template to use, have a look at this section.

CSV was selected here because then you can then easily use other programs like Excel or LibreOffice Calc to open this file and modify it. If you have one of the listed programs, chances are good that all you have to do is double-click on the CSV file and the correct program will open up automatically. Of course it is also possible to modify the CSV file with any texteditor of your choice.

You can create a CSV file for a specific scenario with the pfscf batch create <template> <outputFile> command. 

$ pfscf batch create pfs2.s1-06 mySession.csv

The resulting CSV file will contain entries for all parameters supported by the selected chronicle template, like player name, society id and scenario-specific boons if they are already supported. It includes columns for up to 7 players, but you can easily add or remove columns here.

If you want to have some parameters already prefilled, you can provide additional arguments during CSV creation: 

$ pfscf batch create pfs2.s1-06 mySession.csv event="PaizoCon" date=2020-09-12" gm="J. Doe" gmid="123456"

Creating Filled Chronicles From a CSV File

So now you have already created a CSV file that contains information about your players, and now want to use that to fill out chronicles, one for each player? Great, thats what I'm talking about! For this there is the pfscf batch fill command, or short pfscf b f. The complete command with arguments is pfscf batch fill <template> <csv_file> <input_pdf> <output_dir> [<param_id>=<value> ...]. An example call looks as follows:

$ pfscf batch fill pfs2.s1-06 mySession.csv s106_blank.pdf outputDir
Creating file outputDir\Chronicle_Player_1.pdf
Creating file outputDir\Chronicle_Player_2.pdf
Creating file outputDir\Chronicle_Player_3.pdf
Creating file outputDir\Chronicle_Player_4.pdf
Creating file outputDir\Chronicle_Player_5.pdf
Creating file outputDir\Chronicle_Player_6.pdf
Creating file outputDir\Chronicle_Player_7.pdf

This would then create one file per player in the specified output directory. In the example, you would have files outputDir/Chronicle_Player_1.pdf to outputDir/Chronicle_Player_7.pdf. Chronicles will only be generated if at least one value is set in the CSV file for that player.

Finding the Right Chronicle Template

To find the right template for your chronicle, you can basically do two things: Display the complete list of supported templates, or use the builtin search function to search for a specific template

Display list of templates

To display the complete list of supported templates, execute command pfscf template list (or short: pfscf t l) 

$ pfscf template list
List of available templates:

- pfs2: Pathfinder 2 Society Chronicle
  - pfs2.quests: PFS2 Quests
    - pfs2.q01: Quest #01: The Sandstone Secret
    [...]
  - pfs2.s1: PFS2 Season 1: Year of the Open Road
    - pfs2.s1-00: #1-00: Origin of the Open Road
    - pfs2.s1-01: #1-01: The Absalom Initiation
    [...]
  - pfs2.specials: Specials
    - pfs2.littleTrouble: Little Trouble in Big Absalom
- sfs: Starfinder Society Chronicle

Search for template

To search for a specific template, you can use the command pfscf template search <search terms> (or short: pfscf t s <search terms>). This will display all chronicle templates where all of the terms appear in the template description and template id. The search is case-insensitive. 

$ pfscf template search star pfs2
Matching Templates:
- pfs2.s1-09: #1-09: Star-Crossed Voyages
- pfs2.s1-24: #1-24: Lightning Strikes, Stars Fall
- pfs2.s1-23: #1-23: The Star-Crossed Court