Roll20 Compendium

[summerdown]

I saw a graphic saying the Roll20 compendium would be available from 1st May. Has it been delayed?


Also, I've never seen a Roll20 compendium. Does anyone know what the functionality will be? For example:

• Will the core rules allow some sort of guided interactive character generation / lifepath? Or is it more like readable text of what's in the rulebook?
• Will the Central supply catalogue allow item drag and drop onto character sheets? Eg so a PC can buy a gun and drop all the stats in ready to use?
• Will High Guard allow individual spacecraft to be added to roll20 in ways that form actionable ship characters? Eg with buttons to shoot the turrets, a calculation of power, etc?
• If the books come with art, and I drop that art into a game, does it count against my storage allowance, or is it essentially "free?"

 

[Alasdair090]

Going by other compendiums on roll20 and from what Coryphon has indicated here are the few answers I can put out some of them are guesses until its out, for the last one question if you purchase it from roll20 it does not count against your storage.

For the second question looking at the character sheet you should be able to drag and drop equipment on to your character sheet and the stats will be ready to go.

I guessing at the third question but think the sheets will be there for the ships already and able to click on turrets/sensors and such and the dice will roll since that is how it is for ships that you add to the game yourself.

The first question I do not see a guided interactive character generation available right now since its only Coryphon and maybe MadBeardMan working on getting the character sheet and the compendium working right now (and doing a damn great Job) that will probably come later if at all. If you want to play with an interactive character generator you can get RPGSuite that for free you can roll up a human and the basic careers and can add other races and careers for a charge. I play around with it all the time.

As for the compendium just want to tell Mongoose I am checking it seems like every hour to see if it out so I can give you more of my money, my weekly game in 15 hours.

 

[summerdown]

for the last one question if you purchase it from roll20 it does not count against your storage.

This is really helpful - thank you

guessing at the third question but think the sheets will be there for the ships already and able to click on turrets/sensors and such and the dice will roll since that is how it is for ships that you add to the game yourself.

I hope so. If the ship sheets are available, it will be top of the list for me to buy because it would make ad-hoc space encounters so much easier.

 

[Alasdair090]

As I check constantly on roll20, the compendiums are now for sale on Roll20.

 

[Terry Mixon]

As I check constantly on roll20, the compendiums are now for sale on Roll20.

By compendiums, it’s the CSC, High Guard, the core book, and Spinward Extents?

 

[Alasdair090]

Yeah all 4 of them.

 

[MadBeardMan]

It was meant to be 'selling' on 1st May - which we asked them to do, but they were out last Friday (the person who could unlock), sorry about that.

 

[summerdown]

It was meant to be 'selling' on 1st May - which we asked them to do, but they were out last Friday (the person who could unlock), sorry about that.

Any chance you could expand on what the content is?

I put some questions above - but I'm particularly interested in High Guard, and whether it would let me drag ships into play and have them functional.

For background, there's a tab on the character sheet that makes a starship a playable character, with sections for power and for turrets, etc. I've already made one, but it was a fair bit of work and since my players will be spending a lot of time in space I may need to do this multiple times.

If High Guard has the ability to create ship "characters" ready to play, with art included and all stats already set up, with the ability to click on weapons, etc, it would be exactly what I need.

Could you confirm if this is the case?

 

[Coryphon]

Hi All,

Thank you all for your interest in the compendiums.

To address your questions from the top!:

- Will the core rules allow some sort of guided interactive character generation / lifepath? Or is it more like readable text of what's in the rulebook?

No, within Roll20 character building as such is done using a character sheet system called a 'Charactermancer' that has to be specifically coded per game ruleset (obviously!). This is highly complex and there are no plans to do this at present. It is more like readable text from the rulebook with hyperlinking for ease of navigation (e.g. see page xxx in the book is now a hyperlink).

Will the Central supply catalogue allow item drag and drop onto character sheets? Eg so a PC can buy a gun and drop all the stats in ready to use?

Yes! All armour, weapons and equipment have been created as (what I call) 'data pages' which are effectively all the attributes that make up an item which correspond to the character sheet fields, so yes, all this can be drag'n'dropped into the character sheet and it auto-populates the fields, creating new repeating rows as necessary. The Core Rulebook weapons, armour and equipment are also implemented in this way.

Will High Guard allow individual spacecraft to be added to roll20 in ways that form actionable ship characters? Eg with buttons to shoot the turrets, a calculation of power, etc?

I'm afraid not at the moment. The spacecraft are more complex with things like multiple mounts having multiple weapons for example. In the character sheet this is easy-ish to model (repeating rows), but 'data pages' are just flat lists of attributes. HOWEVER I think it is possible to do and I have it as a Feature Request, and given your absolutely valid point about fiddliness I will look into it!

Also, I am not entirely sure the Ship sheet is currently fit for purpose for proper combat. It's ok as just a simple ship record with locker and crew etc., but I think it may require a re-work, which will require me to do some research as I'm not familiar with the space combat rules myself (despite having transcribed them!!! )

If the books come with art, and I drop that art into a game, does it count against my storage allowance, or is it essentially "free?"

No, they're free as Alasdair090 kindly responded to above

I will keep an eye on this thread and respond as quickly as I can,

Best regards,

~ Coryphon ~

 

[summerdown]

Yes! All armour, weapons and equipment have been created as (what I call) 'data pages' which are effectively all the attributes that make up an item which correspond to the character sheet fields, so yes, all this can be drag'n'dropped into the character sheet and it auto-populates the fields, creating new repeating rows as necessary. The Core Rulebook weapons, armour and equipment are also implemented in this way.

That's great. Exactly how I hoped it would work.

I'm afraid not at the moment. The spacecraft are more complex with things like multiple mounts having multiple weapons for example. In the character sheet this is easy-ish to model (repeating rows), but 'data pages' are just flat lists of attributes. HOWEVER I think it is possible to do and I have it as a Feature Request, and given your absolutely valid point about fiddliness I will look into it!

Ah, that's a pity. I didn't realise it would be so difficult. For some reason I wasn't imagining drag and drop for the ship pages, but more a set of characters in a folder that I could simply duplicate. Like, if an adventure came with NPCs, each one might be pre-written onto a character sheet.

The character sheet is great. It's certainly been working for us so far. I haven't put the ship part through any paces yet, though - just typed the data in. Any improvements for space battles would be really welcome - but even as it is, we're really enjoying using it for PC and NPC characters

 

[Coryphon]

Hey summerdown,

Thank you I think improving space combat is going to be popular functionality…

Hmmm…pre-gen spacecraft characters…Genius idea! Why in tarnation didn’t I think of that?! And, I think there may be a way of auto-generating them from the spacecraft html pages… To the Compendium Cave!

Thanks again,
~ C ~

 

[Alasdair090]

To the Compendium Cave!

I have always wanted to have a cave I could go into to get away from the family sometimes. Lucky dog.

 

[Alasdair090]

I got the compendiums and have been playing around with it but wanted to give everyone a heads up, since Mongoose is a British company make sure when searching the compendium that you use the British spelling on some words like ArmoUr and not armor as it will not find it when searching for combat armor.

 

[MadBeardMan]

Ah the minor differences in our languages - the opposite has got me in Chaosium's Pendragon - a game set in Mythic Britain and yet Armour is spelt Armor.

 

[Alasdair090]

I was testing out more with the compendium and under careers it just shows agent and when clicking on it to open getting page not found, same with aliens just shows Aslan and page not found also.

 

[Coryphon]

I was testing out more with the compendium and under careers it just shows agent and when clicking on it to open getting page not found.

Thanks, I’ll take a look

 

[Alasdair090]

Thanks, I’ll take a look

Feel like I am taking all your time today Coryphon and making you work hard, but thanks in advanced.

 

[Coryphon]

Feel like I am taking all your time today Coryphon and making you work hard, but thanks in advanced.

No problem ;-) Heading to bed soon as I’m on uk time, good to squish these asap!

 

[Coryphon]

I was testing out more with the compendium and under careers it just shows agent and when clicking on it to open getting page not found, same with aliens just shows Aslan and page not found also.

This is now fixed

 

[Jongar]

Hi All,

Thank you all for your interest in the compendiums.

To address your questions from the top!:

- Will the core rules allow some sort of guided interactive character generation / lifepath? Or is it more like readable text of what's in the rulebook?

No, within Roll20 character building as such is done using a character sheet system called a 'Charactermancer' that has to be specifically coded per game ruleset (obviously!). This is highly complex and there are no plans to do this at present. It is more like readable text from the rulebook with hyperlinking for ease of navigation (e.g. see page xxx in the book is now a hyperlink).

Will the Central supply catalogue allow item drag and drop onto character sheets? Eg so a PC can buy a gun and drop all the stats in ready to use?

Yes! All armour, weapons and equipment have been created as (what I call) 'data pages' which are effectively all the attributes that make up an item which correspond to the character sheet fields, so yes, all this can be drag'n'dropped into the character sheet and it auto-populates the fields, creating new repeating rows as necessary. The Core Rulebook weapons, armour and equipment are also implemented in this way.

Will High Guard allow individual spacecraft to be added to roll20 in ways that form actionable ship characters? Eg with buttons to shoot the turrets, a calculation of power, etc?

I'm afraid not at the moment. The spacecraft are more complex with things like multiple mounts having multiple weapons for example. In the character sheet this is easy-ish to model (repeating rows), but 'data pages' are just flat lists of attributes. HOWEVER I think it is possible to do and I have it as a Feature Request, and given your absolutely valid point about fiddliness I will look into it!

Also, I am not entirely sure the Ship sheet is currently fit for purpose for proper combat. It's ok as just a simple ship record with locker and crew etc., but I think it may require a re-work, which will require me to do some research as I'm not familiar with the space combat rules myself (despite having transcribed them!!! )

If the books come with art, and I drop that art into a game, does it count against my storage allowance, or is it essentially "free?"

No, they're free as Alasdair090 kindly responded to above

I will keep an eye on this thread and respond as quickly as I can,

Best regards,

~ Coryphon ~

Mongoose could create a Campaign (for sale of course) with ships as NPC characters. Players who bought the campaign could then use the Transmogifer (excuse spelling if I guessed wrong) to move the ship from the purchased game to their game. Adding some NPCs with snazzy tokens, maps, etc would add to the value to the consumer.