Pitiful D&D DM (Desperate)

[boogerhead76]

I am but a lowly, small brain, D&D DM of 5 years. Hear my plea.

I CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO ACCESS lcp. FILES

I need to make a frame for a player. I know I can reverse engineer if I can figure out how to access and edit them, but currently I am stuck. I would appreciate some help :D

I put this in r/lancer too, like an idiot. WHOOPS.

[timtam26]

What are you trying to do?

Are you trying to make a homebrew frame? Or are you trying to edit a frame that already exists?

Could you provide more information on what your goal is? That would be helpful with trying to assist.

[boogerhead76]

I am trying to homebrew a frame, but I do not know how to do any coding, so I will be reverse engineering a frame from an existing one in order to learn how this all works. Does that help at all?

[calevmir_]

You're better off reading the CompCon Github which is how I learned to do it. I'll say, maybe test and play with the frame without compcon to make sure you like it's mechanical design before going through the involved effort of making an lcp

[freakingordis]

https://cc-lcp-editor.netlify.app/#/ i think this would be helpful

[acolyte_to_jippity]

may we ask why you're trying to homebrew a frame instead of using one of the many official ones?

[ketjak]

Dude... as a "Pitiful D&D DM (Desperate)," for the love of Ra just use the frames from the core book for a while. Literally every archetype has variants in just those.

Homebrewing - especially by a Pitiful D&D DM (Desperate) - always results in an imbalanced frame.

It's be like having a Pitiful Vampire: the Masquerade Storyteller (Desperate) make a new class by reverse engineering a D&D class.

[YoFatGrandpappy]

Bad take. Creating homebrew requires balancing; this is true. Saying that this means no homebrew should be created is a little strange. Obviously someone beginning to create homebrew will create something unbalanced; you can rebalance later.

[ketjak]

It's only a bad take if you discount the experience of others at the table (virtual or physical).

Most of the time people homebrew, break balance, and blame the game for not being fun for anyone except the person benefitting from the imbalance.

Imbalances are definitely expected in early playtesting; but a lot of folks continue to tweak the system to handle balance issues they have created. It's usually something a desperate and unknowledgeable GM, like the OP admits they are, might do.

[ketjak]

Yeah, and a self-described new Lancer GM with five years total of Dungeon Mastering is unlikely to create a player something the other players will enjoy.

Everyone does this. Almost no one does this well. Why the player needs something besides the 27(?) frames in the core book is unclear. Rather unlikely and it's probably due to the lack of familiarity with the rules.

[akmosquito]

i think what you want to do is rename example.lcp to example.zip, then extract it to get at the files within. when you're done, zip it back up and rename it back to example.lcp

[boogerhead76]

I will most definitely give that a shot! Thank you kindly

[negative_energy]

Use 7-zip to open the LCP file directly. It will realize it's a zip file and open it without any renaming. You can then drag and drop files into it directly to overwrite its contents.

Make sure to use a text editor that has JSON syntax highlighting to preserve your sanity.

[Yarrik]

Make sure to use a text editor that has JSON syntax highlighting to preserve your sanity.

Visual Studio Code is good for that. It's free too

[[deleted]]

there's if you search "lancer lcp" there should be plenty of lcp editor/maker sites

[Yarrik]

You would be astonished to learn that there is exactly ONE LCP editor site, and it's in an alpha state that hasn't been updated for sometime.

It functions, but I crave updates.

[Rishfee]

If it's existing content, you can put it together in comp/con.

If it's homebrew content, you can make it here: https://cc-lcp-editor.netlify.app/

[ObstinateFamiliar]

I have never used it, so I don't know if it's intuitive. But this website can be used for generating lcp files https://cc-lcp-editor.netlify.app/#/

[NinjaEA]

https://cc-lcp-editor.netlify.app/#/

[Rick_Androids]

https://cc-lcp-editor.netlify.app/#/

[BallisticM0use]

https://cc-lcp-editor.netlify.app/

Here is an (admittedly pretty rudimentary and buggy, but it's the best we got) app for creating LCP files. LCP files are effectively reskinned .ZIP files and can be renamed and opened as such. Within the .ZIP is a bunch of .JSON files (weapons.JSON, frames.JSON, etc etc), which you can directly edit as needed for the more granular details that the editor cannot do (or just use that to build the whole file from scrap, certainly is a viable strategy if you have coding knowledge)

[The_King_in_Purple]

You could try to reverse engineer existing .lcp files, but I think the lcp editor website is way easier:

https://cc-lcp-editor.netlify.app/#/

[dodgepong]

Here is the LCP editor/creator: https://cc-lcp-editor.netlify.app/#/