timeslot: Monday, 7th April 2025, 14:00-15:30, Room W1
max numbers of participants: 10-20
tags: web

Tired of rolling low on the “Find a Game” check? Ready to banish scheduling dragons and party mismatches once and for all? In this talk, we’ll venture into the world of web scraping with Scrapy to automate your quest for the perfect D&D campaign. We’ll gather live game listings from a popular D&D website, store them in a structured format, and filter by personal preferences—time slots, party size, roleplay-to-combat ratio, you name it.

You’ll learn how to harness the power of Python to drastically cut down on time-consuming forum scrolling and instead focus on the truly heroic part: playing the game! We’ll dive into:

• 🕷️ Scrapy Basics: Quickly setting up spiders to crawl and collect data from D&D game forums
• 🗃️ Data Processing: Storing your scraped data in user-friendly formats (JSON, databases)
• 🏹 Custom Filtering: Crafting tailored filters to discover campaigns that match your schedule and playstyle
• 🏰 Real-World Examples: Ethical considerations, dealing with dynamic sites, and best practices for data collection

By the end, you’ll have the tools and know-how to wield Scrapy like a legendary magical artifact—clearing away tedious searches so you can focus on rolling crits and crafting unforgettable adventures!

Level up your D&D life—one scrape at a time.