Dawnsbury Days

Dawnsbury Days

Not enough ratings
How to create mods
By Dawnsbury Studios
How to create mods and how to upload to the Steam Workshop
   
Award
Favorite
Favorited
Unfavorite
Types of mods
There are four kinds of mods in Dawnsbury Days:
  • Custom portraits and custom portraits with custom ring. You can subscribe to custom portraits using the Steam Workshop or you can add them manually to your game in the CustomPortraits and CustomPortraitsWithCustomRing subfolders in the main game folder. You can then use these portraits for your heroes.
  • Custom encounters. You can subscribe to custom encounters or even entire encounter groups using the Steam Workshop or you can add them manually to your game in the CustomMaps subfolder. That subfolder also contains instructions on how to create your own custom encounter.
  • Custom adventure paths. You can subscribe to custom adventure paths using the Steam Workshop or you can add them manually to your game in the CustomMaps subfolder. That subfolder also contains instructions on how to create your own custom adventure path. An adventure path is a string of encounters interspersed with rests, level ups and downtime.
  • Custom code mods. You can modify Dawnsbury Days by adding additional ancestries, classes, feats, items, variant rules and more with code mods. You can subscribe to these mods using the Steam Workshop or add these manually to your game by downloading them into the CustomMods subfolder. Note that these mods have full privileges on your computer so you should only download code mods from sources you trust. Dawnsbury Days will also produce a warning the first time you load a new code mod from the Steam Workshop. Instructions on how to create these mods are in the CustomMods subfolder as well as on GitHub[github.com].

To open the game folder and see these instructions, right-click Dawnsbury Days in Steam, then select Manage and then Browse local files.

In addition to sharing mods on the Steam Workshop, you can share them also on NexusMods[www.nexusmods.com].
How to create custom encounters
To create custom encounters or adventure paths, follow the steps in the readme file in the folder "CustomMaps" in the game's main folder.

Alternately, you can watch this video guide:
How to create new character options
To add new ancestries, backgrounds, classes, feats, spells or other player options, you'll need to write C# code. Follow the guidance on my GitHub repo[github.com] for a step-by-step guide.

Alternately, you can watch this video guide:
How to upload to the Steam Workshop
You can upload custom portraits, custom encounters and encounter groups and code mods to the Steam Workshop so that other players can easily subscribe and play with that content.

To do so, download the game, then right-click the game in Steam, choose Manage, then Browse local files, then follow the step-by-step instructions in the readme file in the 'Steam Workshop Uploader' subfolder.
Licensing
If you want to share your mod with others, such as on the Steam Workshop, and your mod contains content that you only have permission to distribute through the Open Game License or the through the ORC License, you must distribute a copyright notice alongside your mod. To do so, create your own HTML file based on the OGL template[github.com] or the ORC template[github.com], and add that file into the root folder of your mod (just outside the folder CustomMods).

See the subfolder "Steam Workshop Uploader" in the game main folder for a text file that explains more details on this.

If you need help with this, feel free to join the #mod-support channel on the Dawnsbury Discord server to ask for advice.
Do not upload AI-generated content
Portraits, maps, encounters and code mods created with the assistance of generative artificial intelligence are not allowed on the Dawnsbury Days workshop.
Where to get support?
You can get support with all types of mods in the #mod-support channel on the official Discord server[discord.gg].

If you're creating a code mod, you may also find the GitHub repository[github.com] helpful: it contains conceptual documentation as well as example mods.

You can find more examples of code mods on JoeZeiler's GitHub[github.com] and on Danni's GitHub[github.com].
3 Comments
Zagaroth 27 Aug, 2024 @ 6:11am 
Fair, and yes, I was thinking of things like character options. :)

I poke around with mods on Civ6 so I am fairly familiar with the .xml setup there, but they seem to have everything setup to run off of .xml from the beginning, as the core civilizations and such are all present as xml files.
Dawnsbury Studios  [author] 26 Aug, 2024 @ 1:35pm 
You can create encounters and campaigns without any programming! I show how to do this in the video embedded in the guide.

You do need to create a programming project in order to develop new character options such as new spells or feats. I acknowledge that it would be more approachable and maybe there would be more mods if it was possible to create such mods with just .xml files.

But it would be significant extra work to both create and maintain, and it's unfortunately not possible for me to allocate those resources to it.
Zagaroth 25 Aug, 2024 @ 3:40am 
Hmm, I have a thought/request, though I acknowledge I do not know how much work it might be to implement.

Modding would be a lot more approachable if modding could be done via xml files instead of needing to create a programming project and learning how to code.

I poked around and saw that you do have an xml file, but from my browsing it does not look like I could create a complete mod from the example entries there.