#roll20 compendium

Want to pit characters against each other in a social struggle to get what they want without giving up what they hold dear? DramaSystem by Pelgrane Press may be just the roleplaying system you're looking for - and the core rules are available for free on the Roll20 Compendium! We sat down to talk with our Scrum Master, Stephanie, who first began assembling this Compendium back in October for Hacktoberfest. We're also releasing the Hillfolk Card Deck on Roll20, an add-on which can be used to bring new twists to your narrative with the simple flip of a card.

Get the Hillfolk Card Deck before March 12 at a special launch price of only $7.99 USD!

Roll20: What drew you to the idea of bringing DramaSystem onto Roll20?

Stephanie: Over the summer, Steve (Roll20's Lead Developer) mentioned that he wanted to play a game with DramaSystem. I'd played it before and liked it, so I offered to GM the game. It was intense. We played a scenario from The Hillfolk called "The White Dog Runs at Night" about a 1920s bootlegging criminal family. The characters were at each other's throats the whole time.

Roll20: That seems fitting for a game called DramaSystem.

Stephanie: Yeah, the framework puts everyone in contention. The game is geared toward interpersonal relationships, and there's always a reason characters don't want to give in to each other. Very seldom do you have truly heroic characters in DramaSystem because everyone is caught in a dichotomy of who they should be. It's called their dramatic poles. If you want to be heroic, your opposite pole is "self-serving." But players gain Drama tokens by doing a thing their character doesn't want, such as making an emotional concession, so there's a constant push and pull. 

Roll20: So you were playing for a couple of months and then decided to bring the system to Roll20? What inspired that?

Stephanie: Within Roll20 there was a desire to bring more systems onto the platform. Any system that has an SRD (Editor's note: SRD means "System Reference Document," an open source set of rules for tabletop game systems) is a system that we could conceivably put up, and our goal was to eventually open up Compendium editing directly to publishers. But we didn't want to make it so complicated that only a programmer could do it. I felt I was a good person to do this because I came at it with newbie eyes. When I came across something that made me say, “I don't understand why it's like this” or “how do I do this,” I could go to the development team and ask "okay, why don't we fix that?" And as I learned this process, I also updated the Building Compendium Wiki page to make it easier to follow.

Roll20: You basically did your own test-run of Compendium creation so the process could be opened up for game publishers. What are the benefits of that?

Stephanie: There are plenty of publishers who just want their ruleset out there. They want people playing their game, and they can put out an SRD to let people experience the system. Being able to have that system available online with Roll20 so players can easily drag and drop or look up rules... that's huge. They can also sell add-ons and modules through the Marketplace. Quite frankly, indie game designers - we NEED a broader revenue base. Lots of us were using Google+ to talk to each other and now that's closing down. We're keenly aware that having all your eggs in one basket is a scary thing.

Roll20: You're a developer yourself?

Stephanie: I've worked on several games and published several games. Threadbare RPG is the one that I published on my own.

There’s nothing threadbare about these adorable dinosaurs Stephanie knitted for her gaming group! 

Roll20: So from your perspective, opening up the Roll20 Compendium for publishers is both a security thing and a growth thing?

Stephanie: It's absolutely a growth thing. If you're an indie game designer and you are just doing it as a hobby, that's awesome, but if you really didn't want to grow, you wouldn't make the next thing. Even if you're perfectly happy with your success so far, some part of you wants to do something new and different and change or you wouldn't make another game. The whole point is you're constantly expanding what you want your imprint to be. Roll20 is yet another vector you can use for expanding where you are, where people can find you and buy your stuff. And honestly, the revenue stream is nice.

Roll20: Do you think this opens up new space in the indie TTRPG scene?

Stephanie: Yes. The answer is yes. There are so many cool ideas we could play with. I don't think I'm the right person to design this, but I'd like to see a game about social media and the way it connects! You could use a Compendium to represent the rules in that non-linear way. And for games with a lot of rules and number-crunching, Roll20 does the math. People like me who aren't math-heads are just gonna be able to jump in and play.

Roll20: Anything that you would like to see happen for Compendiums now that you've finished the DramaSystem?

Stephanie: I'm a Pelgrane fan girl so I'm going to talk up more of their games for a minute. I would love to see Gumshoe and would like to have a TimeWatch character sheet. That's something that interests me personally. 13th Age would also benefit from all the drag and drop stuff. Lots of people in the 13th Age community already play online. When you have a system like that which doesn't have a lot of centralized local places to play, you have to run your games online. That's where your community is. Then there's the Hillfolk Card Deck coming out.

Roll20: Right, Pelgrane is releasing the Hillfolk Card Deck on Roll20. It's a good supplement for DramaSystem games like your bootlegging crime family.

Stephanie: Yeah, the Hillfolk deck uses standard playing cards and Pelgrane is making a specialized version available on Roll20;. The specialized deck still has regular card stuff, like aces and queens, but the top and bottom have different emotional stakes or scene elements written on them and you can rotate the card depending on what you need. If you wanted to add an element to a scene or create an emotional conflict, you deal out the card and flip it one way or the other. It's good inspiration; it keeps things lively. And you can bring it into lots of different games.

The Hillfolk Card Deck in action! One side offers emotional goals for your scene  (“Seek attention”), while the other provides practical complications to spice up a scene (“A stranger appears”). On Roll20, you can easily add them to any game and draw new cards with the click of a button!

You asked, and we answered! The D&D Player’s Handbook has arrived on Roll20, featuring complete integration with the Charactermancer, Roll20’s official character builder. Select your races, classes, equipment, and spells for complete and instant automation every step of the way!

(( NOTE: The Player's Handbook has now returned to its regular price of $29.99USD. This is the permanent price, and it will not go on sale again! To celebrate this long-awaited launch, we’re offering the Player’s Handbook at a special launch price of only $19.99 USD until July 5 at 10 A.M. PDT! After that, this Compendium will return to its regular price of $29.99 USD, so make sure you grab it today. ))

With your purchase, you’ll be able to quickly search and find everything from the Player’s Handbook right inside Roll20. The Player’s Handbook also integrates directly with the Charactermancer, Roll20’s official character builder! Select any race, class, background and details from the Player’s Handbook and build any character in moments. Get a preview from our new Charactermancer trailer!

Not only will you immediately be able to use it in the Charactermancer, but you can activate our new Compendium Sharing feature in your Game Settings to share the Player’s Handbook with friends in your games! See the Roll20 Wiki for details.

Included in Roll20’s complete adaptation of the Player’s Handbook:

All information on races, classes, equipment, spells, rules and lore available at your fingertips, both in-app and out.

Use the Charactermancer to select any race, class, background, equipment, spell and detail from the Player’s Handbook to quickly build a character.

Instantly drag entries from the Player’s Handbook into your game as a handout to share with your players.

Drag equipment and spells from the Player’s Handbook directly onto your character sheet, populating instantly with necessary information such as item weight and spell details.

Bonus: Player’s Handbook Character Asset Pack. Customize your character using the official art from the Player's Handbook! Over 70 tokens are included, as well as matching art handouts where available.

Charactermancer

Today’s update to Roll20 makes it easier than ever to join tabletop games thanks to our brand new, built-it character creation and modification tool. Meet the Charactermancer! As shown in this video, it will guide you through the rules of your chosen system to create and edit your character in minutes. And since it integrates with our fully-featured virtual tabletop, you’ll be ready to start your adventure as soon as you’re done!

The Charactermancer walks you through how to build a character!

Roll20 remains committed to providing you with a system agnostic platform for your tabletop games, and the Charactermancer is no exception. It is powerful enough and flexible enough to support any system, and we will soon be adding more. In fact, here’s a sneak preview of a certain system that is in the works...

Sneak Preview! Official support for this system (and more) will be added Soon™.

Starting right away today, however, you can use the Charactermancer in your own games to make a first level Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition character! The SRD rules have already been integrated and will continue to be available to all users for free, as always. Additional features (like the ability to level up your characters) are also in the works!

If you want more than the SRD, you can also purchase supplemental rules through the Roll20 Marketplace. We will be adding future support for Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, and the Charactermancer already supports the entire D&D Player’s Handbook. Oh, hang on: did we not mention that yet?

THE DUNGEONS & DRAGONS PLAYER’S HANDBOOK IS NOW AVAILABLE ON ROLL20!

We had a lot to say, so we made a separate blog post about that. We recommend you read it! The Player’s Handbook is available at a special launch price of $19.99 USD until July 5 at 10 A.M. PDT, after which it will return to its regular $29.99 USD forever so… act fast. ;)

Compendium Sharing

Want to share your rulebooks around the virtual table here on Roll20? Well, now you can thanks to a brand new feature called Compendium Sharing! Go into your Game Settings and turn on “Share my compendium with players” to give all your players automatic access to all the rules, items, spells, and more for any Roll20 Compendium you’ve purchased in the ruleset of your choice.

Share your purchased Compendiums with other players in your games! See sharing rules below.

The number of games where you can share compendiums, and the number of players you can share with, is based on your subscription level. We want to make sure licensed content here is safe from being exploited beyond the intended personal use, so we have set the following limits:

Free Users: Free users may purchase any compendium. They may only share their purchased compendiums with one active game that contains no more than themselves plus 5 players (6 total).

Plus Subscribers: Roll20 Plus subscribers may purchase any compendium. They may share their purchased compendiums with three active games that contain no more than themselves plus 10 players each (11 total per game).

Pro Subscribers: Roll20 Pro subscribers may purchase any compendium. They may share their purchased compendiums with five active games that contain no more than themselves plus 15 players each (16 total per game).

And more!

We went under the hood and made a bunch of useability improvements for this update to make your life on Roll20 easier. We also added a new mechanic to our dice rolls, to help support more systems in this wide, wide world of tabletop design! These updates include:

Character Vault Update: Increased usability for Roll20’s Character Vault, which allows users to transfer their favorite characters easily between games.

Wiki Repaint: Updated design for the Roll20.net Wiki which helps players learn about the tools and features of Roll20.

Text Editor Improvement: Enhanced, reliable editing features for forum posts and in-game text windows such as Handouts and Character Bios. Note: See our update about the text editor here. 

New Dice Matching Mechanic: New logic for the QuantumRoll dice engine supports dice matching mechanics (explained further in our earlier blog post).

First, because I know you’re waiting with great anticipation, the Charactermancer Update is going to go live to Roll20 users a week from today on June 26th. 

Today we pushed live to the Development Server another set of Charactermancer improvements for Pro users to test in the last week. Included among these improvements were:

Casting Ability in Stat selector: Your casting ability, as well as recommended stats from your class choice, now appear in the stats bar in the Abilities tab.

Going back and forth in top navigation: You can now bounce around in the top navigation. 

Validation in the review slide: The review page now shows your choices and highlights if you are missing any required information. You cannot apply changes until you have filled in all required information. 

Store race/subrace and class/subclass in character sheet: Subrace and Subclass are stored as attributes in the 5e OGL sheet. This is a future-looking addition for the charactermancer.

Several of these changes were requests from this feedback period, so thank you for participating in this testing phase. If you’re a Pro subscriber and would like some more information on other bug-related fixes to the Charactermancer, see here.

Now for the fun part... WAIT, that’s NOT ALL...

Roll20 Compendium, Looking for Group, and the Impending Launch…

I’m not sure how easy this is to tell from the outside-looking-in, but the Update of Holding is huge (more info here and here). Every time we get done with one of these big named updates, we promise ourselves “we’ll go smaller next time,” and then accidentally end up getting excited about doing something(s) bigger. This update we’ve exceeded 85,000 lines of new code already!

The Update of Holding-- including Roll20 for iPad and Roll20 for Android-- launching very soon...

...but beyond that, we wanted to have a look at the Compendium element of the update. Hit the jump for more...