Custom Compendium

Kenton said: Hello all. I was able to talk a bit about this in the Community Roundtable last night ( will be available on YouTube here soon ), but wanted to fill you all in here, as well. A "Custom Compendium" is not just one feature, but a bunch of features working together. Some of those are built into the Character Sheet and the Compendium Tab (that's how Drag & Drop works for sheets). Some of the work that's needed has been underway with things like the enhancements on Character Sheet rendering  and the way we serve our character sheets. That work creates the "less crunchy" bits that make the Compendium Tab and Pages work. Dragging & Dropping, integrating homebrewed content into a Charactermancer, and the like are dependant on the work mentioned above, but also requires the data added in a very specific way. We need to make adding that data more tolerant. We need to open the Compendium software able to provide the data to multiple games and other areas. The good news is that a team is spinning up focused specifically on this area of the software. I don't have any timeframes to commit to, however I'm glad to share the progress we have made. Great, any news since then? Can you get it to work for 5e? Id love to get in on a Beta Test or just the Publisher's Software.

I don´t know why you guys even bother.  Roll20 is clearly not interested in rolling out this feature, likely due to all the legal problems they would start having with their major content creators. And since selling their stuff is a major source of income for roll20, it is a simple calculation: A few users more creating custom content (and getting higher tier subscriptions) is not worth losing the money from content sales. This feature will with a high likelihood simply never exist. 

+1000 I mean you're not wrong. However that type of thinking is short sighted. Homebrew is where other vtts are killing roll20. I don't like ddb but at least over there you can add on homebrew stuff that includes UA items and have it work for your campaign. Not fight for everything. A custom compendium would be useful for people that run strictly homebrew inclusive campaigns. Maybe even partner with joints that encourage creator content. Accessibility=increased revenue. 

I don't see where there would be legal issues with a homebrew compendium provided the content is gated to that user or game. Given the price of most content on the marketplace today it would be more efficient (for me) to purchase material from creators vs trying to code it all in (myself) so I'm not sure I agree with the notion that the creators selling on roll20 marketplace would suffer. If the concern is people making homebrew content available on the marketplace then yes, I agree, there could be copyright issues and there would need to be very careful monitoring of the content being made available there. As King K noted above, D&D Beyond lets me set up my own homebrew content if I want to do the work. They also don't support 3rd party material which means if I wanted to use DDB for a Midgard campaign I have to suffer through a ton of work which I'm not willing to do. I'm much happier to purchase it on roll20 and that's where I'll run those games. If having access to homebrew compendium means I pay some small additional fee, I would strongly consider it. I will also continue to purchase packages from creators like Kobold Press so I don't have to do the work myself.

Kenton said: Hello all. I was able to talk a bit about this in the Community Roundtable last night ( will be available on YouTube here soon ), but wanted to fill you all in here, as well. A "Custom Compendium" is not just one feature, but a bunch of features working together. Some of those are built into the Character Sheet and the Compendium Tab (that's how Drag & Drop works for sheets). Some of the work that's needed has been underway with things like the enhancements on Character Sheet rendering  and the way we serve our character sheets. That work creates the "less crunchy" bits that make the Compendium Tab and Pages work. Dragging & Dropping, integrating homebrewed content into a Charactermancer, and the like are dependant on the work mentioned above, but also requires the data added in a very specific way. We need to make adding that data more tolerant. We need to open the Compendium software able to provide the data to multiple games and other areas. The good news is that a team is spinning up focused specifically on this area of the software. I don't have any timeframes to commit to, however I'm glad to share the progress we have made. This was 8 months ago, and nothing has been said since then. If you really want people to believe that progress is being made, at this point, regular updates are a requirement.

Just adding my +1's worth here. I really do hope we can get customisable compendiums in the not to distant future

+1 A deeply wanted feature

Take my vote

The progress on this feature is such a genuine disappointment. At this point, the frequency I find myself back on this thread is almost once a year. Every time, there is no progress, only vague promises. The fact that this is a trend for most features was worrying and is now tiring. 

Shockingly I search for a solution to my problem only to find yet another giant thread here and the roll20 team ignoring it. 

+1

TTRPGs are based on unique and interesting experiences, the fact that we have not had a Homebrew/Custom compendium is actually appalling. This should have been implemented before the Compendiums of payable content, Now that they force us to pay for books to add to the compendium how can they allow us to add stuff we want ourselves, and still charge us for official content? only when you solve this problem will you ever see progress on homebrew, Could limit the number of custom items/spells/abilities to prevent people from just adding multiple books worth of content?

Weeks and months and years of users asking for something, Roll20 promising to look into it, but no substantive follow-up. Business as usual, I see.

+1

Pity.

I'm cancelling my pro subscription until this is implemented 

+1

+100

+1000000 and more it's deeply frustrating that r20 is one of the few sites that exist that allow TTRPG to be done virtually and they continue to cater first to individuals who can provide profit and not the userbase's desires - the amount of things requested by users is substantial and deeply disappointing when one sees how ignored they all are. i don't care about a r20 podcast, or the new book released that is $40 USD; i care about features i can implement for my homebrew. still, here is to hoping we are one day heard, especially now that other VTTRPG options are cropping up

+1 Would love to add homebrew content to the Compendium.

+1  There are so many fun homebrewed spells I would like to put into my own little compendium.

+1  Currently evaluating other options like DNDBeyound for this exact feature. Don't want to switch, but we use so many homebrewed items and spells it starts to get a gamestopper here.

Isso ia salvar Muitoooooo tempo e expandiria muito oque da pra fazer no roll20. This would save a lot of time and expand a lot of what you can do in roll20.

I moved to LegendKeeper.com for my custom adventure compendium.

+1

+1

+1 I am also looking at alternate VTTRPG for this and many other reasons. Roll20 is stuck in the past and is crawling slowly forward whereas competitors are racing ahead. TBH if I hadn't invested so much on Roll20, I would have left some time ago. With the income received by all the subscribers, we really need to be seeing roll20 2.0 now.

Casting my vote to say I'd love to see an option for Custom Compendiums...I know its been in the works for a long time - but just being a squeaky wheel! :)

+1 for this feature. It's sad that we've waited six years and it's still not implemented.

+1

+1 would be really useful!

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+1 I'm seriously considering dropping my subscription for Foundry or Fantasy Grounds over this. I've been waiting for this since i first made an account on Roll20, 10 years ago.

+1  I'm preparing a game with a german translation of DnD for my group and I don't even mind translating & entering all the spells manually. But I just realized that I need to do this for EVERY Character and NPC. Whenever I want a character or enemy to be able to cast "Cure Wounds" I need to manually type in the whole spell. This is disheartening ... :( 

+1 The drag & drop features of the current compendiums are worthless when you're playing a game in a different language than English, since you have to translate everything manually. The lack of translations to multiple languages outside of character sheets is my current main problem with this platform and others VTT.

+1

Roll20 blatantly ignoring this while it keeps adding the most useless features ever is starting to get old....I have several books owned here and have being a paid subscriber for years now, but still, starting to consider moving my game to another place.

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In our most recent blog post we talked about being more transparent, and I’m here to tell you: at long last I’m moving the status of this thread to Researching. I know a lot of you have been waiting for this set of features for a long time, and I want to assure you that we are researching it, considering our options, and breaking down the work to get this onto the roadmap. TTRPGs are a collaborative, transformative community, and we want to support you better in the future with tools that tackle your primary issues. I don’t have a timeline right now, but I can promise that whatever comes first will be a small step, then another step, and another. Here’s what I see those issues as (not in any particular order): You (as a GM) cannot easily share with yourself within your game (i.e. you have to copy+paste into fields every time you want to add a spell you’ve created to another monster). You (as a GM or content creator) can’t easily share created content from your game to people outside of the game. Features you’ve come to expect from the Roll20 compendium, like Charactermancer functionality, drag-and-drop, and searchability on the VTT don’t work with your created content. Here are the issues on Roll20’s side: Data entry to the compendium is complex and laborious, both in bulk and one-off. Each system (game, for example Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition) has its own data structure that impacts implementation here. We care a lot about being system agnostic, and we don’t want to leave our indie creators and international use cases behind. There are other considerations, but those are the bulk of what constituted “obstructed.” However, we’re committed to solving some of our technical debt on the compendium (and already have been behind the scenes, resulting in projects like compendium sharing on the web ). Some of you will be hearing from me in the coming weeks as I do more user research. Thank you for your feedback thus far as we work to get a well-understood definition of the problems here, and I will continue to read every post in this thread.

+1

Ashton said: Here’s what I see those issues as (not in any particular order): You (as a GM) cannot easily share with yourself within your game (i.e. you have to copy+paste into fields every time you want to add a spell you’ve created to another monster). You (as a GM or content creator) can’t easily share created content from your game to people outside of the game. Features you’ve come to expect from the Roll20 compendium, like Charactermancer functionality, drag-and-drop, and searchability on the VTT don’t work with your created content. I thought I should post that those issues aren't what I experience at all, and probably don't apply to anyone playing a game system that doesn't have a compendium at all. Let's say I build a rule system into a game so that I can copy that game and have the rules available to players who are unlikely to own the books.  Then later, I realize I am missing something, had a copy/paste error, etc.  After editing a handout or creating a new one, I need to now use the transmogrifier to update that handout, or introduce the new handout, in every game using that rule set.  If there is a new handout, then that may require updating other handouts (table of contents, cross links from other topic related handouts, etc.).  For people in my situation, drag and drop isn't likely to ever happen unless it becomes super easy to update the character sheet to allow that sort of functionality.  What would be nice is simply a central database to update and have that rule set available for all games that use it.  Custom compendiums would also need to be able to be segregated from each other by game system.  I really wouldn't want my Palladium Fantasy 1E rules in a session of Ex Novo.

Here’s what I see those issues as (not in any particular order): You (as a GM) cannot easily share with yourself within your game (i.e. you have to copy+paste into fields every time you want to add a spell you’ve created to another monster). You (as a GM or content creator) can’t easily share created content from your game to people outside of the game. Features you’ve come to expect from the Roll20 compendium, like Charactermancer functionality, drag-and-drop, and searchability on the VTT don’t work with your created content. Wow, sounds great! After so many years now this topics gets momentum :)  Not only within a single game, it needs to be available for all existing and new games created for same system (e.g. if I have three ongoing D&D 5e games I would like to see it shared and available on all three games. Anyway, You made my day !

Ashton said: In our most recent blog post we talked about being more transparent, and I’m here to tell you: at long last I’m moving the status of this thread to Researching. This was posted by Kenton literally a year ago: "The good news is that a team is spinning up focused specifically on this area of the software. I don't have any timeframes to commit to, however I'm glad to share the progress we have made." Now, a year later, after no other comment, you are saying essentially the same thing. I like Roll20 and want to believe you. At this point what is necessary is to keep us updated. I know it's going to take time, but as the small steps are taken it's important to keep letting us know what is being done. Otherwise the fear is that in a year someone is going to appear saying this same thing yet again.