Allow Sheet Authors to make Custom sheets

At the moment, I'm responsible for the Silent Legions and L5R 4e sheets - two sheets I would love to go back to working on. However, on my current budget, going Pro to access that feature, and then putting in X amount of hours into the HTML/CSS to make them work properly, that is simply not an option. I would love to be able to contribute to this community more, but as my situation is right now I can't justify that.  Allowing current sheet authors to continue working on their sheets without charging them for it seems like it would be entirely beneficial to the community as a whole.

Reviving this post because I was about to post the same suggestion. If Sheet Authors are not GMing a campaign, they're basically paying Roll20 to create content for their website. There is one or two community-made options for it but it doesn't support repeating fields. Maybe Sheet Authors could get limited access to Custom Sheets on a single campaign where only they can join.

I have seen several times that people have requested a change/improvement to a character sheet and then said "I'd do it myself, but I'm not paying for the privilege". Allowing Free users to contribute and test their changes would be entirely beneficial. It might even lead to increased sales: My original reason for getting Pro no longer really stands, but the ability to make custom changes to character sheets to fit my own homebrew is largely what keeps me paying now. I only descovered that because I could play around with the sheets and change things.

Yeah, I have a boatload of stuff to do to my current sheet, (AD&D 2E), some improvements to make to my second sheet (Hero Kids) and I've been working on two new sheets (Nobilis 3e and SMD100) not to mention putting in fixes for 6-7 sheets that aren't even mine, but got abandoned by their creators some time ago. I've cancelled my sub because I have a real life to attend to, and while I don't mind spending my free time contributing to the community, I can't justify paying a company for the priviledge of doing their work for them, increasing their sales and community strength, and getting nothing but a bill every month and that 'warm, fuzzy feeling' for helping out. I get not wanting to give away custom sheet access or API access, but for those of us that do the bulk of the work (Roll20 made sheets compared to community made ones is a 1%/99% ratio) (Likiwise, the vast majority of API scripts are made by the community) we shouldn't have to pay to keep doing the bulk of the work on this front. I understand that Roll20 has other problems to work on, but this is like asking for volunteers to help you and then charging them an overhead so you can justify turning the lights on/running the AC/putting gas in the tank. It's morally bankrupt if nothing else. TL:DR +1

There would need to be some sort of vetting process in place for to verify sheet authors. Maybe something simple such as "Has this person submitted a character sheet to the Roll 20 repo and was it accepted into the One-Click library?". Otherwise users might start claiming to be sheet authors but really they just want to be able to copy-paste other people's sheets for free.

Well, we all have the titles here :), so our accounts are already marked as Sheet Authors. It would still require a little more work from Roll20 so people don't submit bogus sheets. But that work could likely be avoided if Sheet Authors had Pro on a single campaign that cannot invite players. But that would likely require a lot more code...

For anyone who's not a Sheet Author, this is also in your best interest, as sheets will be able to get more updates!

Well, I'm not a sheet author YET, but I'm working in an AD&D 2E sheet primarily for my own game reasons. If you're working on a sheet, sure I say see if there's a way for the sheet author to log in, work on his/her sheet, and fiddle with it in a test environment. I don't see how that could be anything but positive. Allowing for much more CSS customizability would be great as well, but I'm still exploring the limits of that.

I think it would be a good idea, it would help to keep more of the sheets in development and would bring in more people to play when more sheets where accessible. The "Sheet Author" tag should be enough to get this, and see the risks(of minimal in loss of revenue) really small compared to the benefit of more comprehensive and better character sheet selection. Having some guidelines for those who work through the sheet submissions and separate those  Even if sheet authors where given this ability, it would still be a huge difference between Free, Plus, and Pro. If this is still only seen as a potential loss of revenue by Roll20, here are a few suggestions that removes revenue risks from Roll20's POV :  Only give a limited # of games with "custom sheet(author)" option to authors , perhaps only one or two, so they would essentially only have enough "custom sheet" games for sheet development  Limit # of players in the "custom sheet (author) " games to one or zero , so they couldn't be used actual games, but still could bring in one other user to test/help code the sheet Only grant this right temporally , a few months for the first good submission, and add more time when the sheet author have contributed more, to weed out inactive or former sheet authors Only grant this to Sheet Authors who have been Pro at some point I'm sure some combination of the ideas above could be achieved to reach a solution that would make this happen. And I know it's possible to selectively give out plus/pro to users based on campaign tags,  mentioned in this thread . Will put down money for one month of pro soon, to more efficiently work on sheets, and I hope I could keep working on what I have after the subscription instead of continuing wit my shots in the dark without the "custom sheet"-option.

I think my suggestions above details how this could be made without giving unfair advantage to sheet authors, restricting it in any (or all) suggested ways.

+1 I'am a web developer, main & only author for a french game, pro member since nearly one year ... I dont have much time to play anymore but i'am still updating the sheet for the community and need a pro account for that... Andreas J. said: Limit # of players in the "custom sheet (author) " games to one or zero , so they couldn't be used actual games, but still could bring in one other user to test/help code the sheet maybe not a goog idea, I appreciate when the players can freely join my custom game to "beta test" before updating. But limit to 1 game with custom sheet is a good idea !

Kaias C. said: maybe not a goog idea, I appreciate when the players can freely join my custom game to "beta test" before updating. But limit to 1 game with custom sheet is a good idea ! Sure, I agree, but I was trying to give example how Roll20 could implement this in a way that this suggested feature couldn't be used for having "free" custom sheet games. Ideelly there wouldn't be any restrictions, but as they haven't approved this idea, I present suggestions that could make it a win-win for them(and for sheet authors).I don't like all my suggested restrictions, but feel they should be mentioned as possible ways to smooth out "waht-if"'s regarding the suggestion.

This suggestion came to mind again, after some miscommunication resulted in problems with a sheet recently .

I'm not sure why this suggestion has so few upvotes as it really converns every sheet author here. If I could I would spend all my upvotes on this suggestion. But to be honest: Roll20 would have to get by a significant loss of money because I think that a lot of sheet authors would cancel their pro account if they could maintain their character sheet(s) without it (I definitively would) and would get nothing in return besides hours of work to apply restrictions and rules because of that new situation. But it would be beneficial to the community, as some authors already pointed out and maybe that sorta counts too. And thanks to Andreas J. for mentioning this suggestion.

Loki said: But to be honest: Roll20 would have to get by a significant loss of money because I think that a lot of sheet authors would cancel their pro account if they could maintain their character sheet(s) without it (I definitively would) [...] To my understanding, this would affect an extremely small group of user (active sheet author who only use Pro accounts for working with sheets), and the minimal loss of revenue for Roll20 would be greatly outweighed by the benefit of more sheet authors being able to work with the sheets. And as I detailed earlier in the thread , there are several ways that this could be narrowed down to mitigate any problems, and limit this to active sheet authors who already have worked on/created sheets instead of having this completely open.

Now with the Custom Sheet tool incoming, this might be worth revisiting.

Specifically, if the custom sheet sandbox is made availiable to all users this would effectively solve this discussion. As far as I can see on the dev server, there is no way to invite anyone to a custom sheet sandbox, making them unsuitable for play. If that carries over as-is, I'll be satisfied.

Andreas J. said: Now with the Custom Sheet tool incoming, this might be worth revisiting. Now that the Character Sheet Sandbox is available, I'd suggest to make the sandbox available to every Sheet Author. It would mean that the user would have had Pro subscription at some prior point, or been credited by enough contributions otherwise, making it a reasonable permanent account feature for Sheet Authors, if giving access to it for everyone feels like too much. Alternatively, do this for Plus subscribers who have the "Sheet Author" tag.

+1 to this. Just signed up for pro specifically to make a sheet. It'd be great if I wouldn't have to resubscribe every time I wanted to test any changes/updates.

I also want to contribute to the community character sheets, but in order to do so effectively, I need to be able to test the sheets that I modify. As it stands right now, I cannot do this without paying for a pro account. A very big reason for why I've paid for a Plus account is because I wanted the storage space/dynamic lighting features for a GURPS campaign. I probably would not have done this if I had tried out roll20 and discovered that there was 0 character sheet support for GURPs - but can get it from Fantasy Grounds or Maptool for free (after a one-time purchase in FG's case). The idea of having to pay more to contribute to something that adds a huge value to the whole of Roll20 as a service seems backward to me. Imagine how much better the community sheets could be if developing them wasn't gated? Imagine how much more incentive non-technical players would have to pay for roll20 if the community sheets improved more easily. TL:DR; Roll20 has everything to gain and nothing to lose for adding a separate, "dev only" access to custom character sheet testing, in a game that only the GM is allowed access if he does not have a pro account.

There is a GURPS character sheet, and it is actively maintained.

+1 I love the idea. We also have to take into account the more people working on the same sheet the more unwanted changes we will all be forced to receive. And we might also get into a situation where one person adds things and the next person removes it. This can still happen now, but because only pro members can work on sheets it is less of an issue. I think being able to use a custom sheet in your game should be free so you can built your own version of a sheet for your game without affecting anyone else (currently only pro members can do this). And then to submit sheet changes to the github repo for roll-out to everyone, there should be some vetting process. For instance anyone that has already worked on a sheet and did major changes to it gets to vote, you need a certain number of positive votes for change to be accepted. 

Andreas J. said: If this is still only seen as a potential loss of revenue by Roll20, here are a few suggestions that removes revenue risks from Roll20's POV :  Only give a limited # of games with "custom sheet(author)" option to authors , perhaps only one or two, so they would essentially only have enough "custom sheet" games for sheet development  Limit # of players in the "custom sheet (author) " games to one or zero , so they couldn't be used actual games, but still could bring in one other user to test/help code the sheet Only grant this right temporally , a few months for the first good submission, and add more time when the sheet author have contributed more, to weed out inactive or former sheet authors Only grant this to Sheet Authors who have been Pro at some point Some good points! They can even add advertisements to these free pages with custom sheets? If you a pro member no ads, if you a free member loads of annoying adds :D

GiGs said: There is a GURPS character sheet, and it is actively maintained. Right, and I can't contribute to its development without paying for Pro, which is the problem :)

Tratz said: GiGs said: There is a GURPS character sheet, and it is actively maintained. Right, and I can't contribute to its development without paying for Pro, which is the problem :) Ah I see. That makes sense.

I really don't understand why do we have to pay to do their job at creating new sheets. Many people decide on not using Roll20 because it doesn't have the sheet for a particular game.  I recently decided to learn and make a sheet for a game I like and doesn't have a sheet here. Since I will not pay a Pro account just for that, I made it entirely in the dark, just following the docs. It took me an extra amount of work to make it like this. And, of course, after I pushed it on GitHub and it was published on production, the sheet had some problems. Now I have to wait another whole week just to push the fixes and see them applied. I refuse to pay the platform to do their job. And as things are right now, I don't intend on working on any other sheet. It's just not worth it...

I agree, it really shouldnt be this way. As suggested earlier in the thread, the new Custom Sandbox would be the perfect way to solve this. You cant play games in a sandbox, because only the GM can connect to it - you cant have players. So, the only thing you can use it for is building and testing sheets. So just give all users, including free ones, one Custom Sandbox. Then anyone can contribute to or design sheets, and people don't have to pay for the privilege of helping roll20.

Yes, I don't even need to have players or test it on a real game. Just having somewhere to be able to test the sheet by myself would be enough.

I think this is a thing they never properly re-evaluated since character sheets where implemented 5 years ago. Originally I'd assume it was a Pro feature and there where no lists of available sheets, and then quickly there where a handful of official sheet available to everyone, and eventually it transformed into a situation where there are a massive number of community-driven character sheets maintained in the repo, and editing editing them wasn't just a thing for those who want to customize exting sheets for their personal games. This should have been changed years ago, but now when the Sheet Sandbox exists, it should be a minimal amount of work to at least selectively grant access to the feature. Pretty sure the number of people who have a Pro account on Roll20 only for sheet development is minimal, and creating this would be a net-gain for Roll20, where people would be more easily able to work on the community sheets, while still requiring Pro for those who wants to use custom sheet in their games.

GiGs said: I agree, it really shouldnt be this way. As suggested earlier in the thread, the new Custom Sandbox would be the perfect way to solve this. You cant play games in a sandbox, because only the GM can connect to it - you cant have players. So, the only thing you can use it for is building and testing sheets. So just give all users, including free ones, one Custom Sandbox. Then anyone can contribute to or design sheets, and people don't have to pay for the privilege of helping roll20. This makes a whole lot of sense, I never even realised that there was a situation with custom sheets to begin with.

I still agree wholeheartedly with this thread. When I asked about why the sandbox wasn't opened to everyone so we could have more sheet authors, the response I got was something akin to..."We can't handle more influx in sheet submissions with the team we have..." Controlling/monitoring/approving/whatever the sheets on the GitHub process takes people and if that increases more, it may cause a delay in the publishing process... Honestly, I think I'm ok with a delay if it means more people could help with sheets...I'll add the question to the Roundtable forum... :) EDIT: Question submitted for the round table.

I did wonder if that was the case, Finderski. Making the sandbox available to all could make sheet submissions skyrocket, and many of them might be of the sort that roll20 wants to discourage (e.g. simple copies of sheets with a few minor changes for homebrews). I would say the solution would be to have a bigger staff handling the sheet submissions, but  I can see why they wouldnt be keen on that!

GiGs said: I did wonder if that was the case, Finderski. Making the sandbox available to all could make sheet submissions skyrocket, and many of them might be of the sort that roll20 wants to discourage (e.g. simple copies of sheets with a few minor changes for homebrews). I would say the solution would be to have a bigger staff handling the sheet submissions, but  I can see why they wouldnt be keen on that! I could totally see this being a problem if there's an influx of entirely new character sheets, but each existing sheet is probably maintained by one person who makes the pull request after a new build is ready to go. There could be some sort of limit on how often these primary maintainers get to do a pull request. Or...everyone could just wait their turn as roll20's staff works as fast as they reasonably can.

GiGs said: I did wonder if that was the case, Finderski. Making the sandbox available to all could make sheet submissions skyrocket, and many of them might be of the sort that roll20 wants to discourage (e.g. simple copies of sheets with a few minor changes for homebrews). I would say the solution would be to have a bigger staff handling the sheet submissions, but  I can see why they wouldnt be keen on that! On this point, more than one of my suggestions from 2 years ago still apply to migrate this problem: Andreas J. said: Only give a limited # of games with "custom sheet(author)" option to authors , perhaps only one or two, so they would essentially only have enough "custom sheet" games for sheet development  Limit # of players in the "custom sheet (author) " games to one or zero , so they couldn't be used actual games, but still could bring in one other user to test/help code the sheet Only grant this right temporally , a few months for the first good submission, and add more time when the sheet author have contributed more, to weed out inactive or former sheet authors Only grant this to Sheet Authors who have been Pro at some point I'm not sure to what degree limiting this to only those who have the "Sheet Author" tag is still a good idea, but pretty sure it's better that giving it to everyone and completely opening the floodgates. If expanding access to this feature would risk multiplying manifold the amount of submissions(from the current doubled amount compared to before the pandemic), it's possible that the increased workload of the repo maintainer could be migrated with things like: Giving preferential treatment to community/peer-reviewed Pull Requests (i.e. someone have checked the PR and given an approval) Giving a limited number of community contributors "triage" level access to the repo, granting them the options to open/close PRs/mark as duplicates, assign issues/labels, make PR review request.

Tratz said: GiGs said: I did wonder if that was the case, Finderski. Making the sandbox available to all could make sheet submissions skyrocket, and many of them might be of the sort that roll20 wants to discourage (e.g. simple copies of sheets with a few minor changes for homebrews). I would say the solution would be to have a bigger staff handling the sheet submissions, but  I can see why they wouldnt be keen on that! I could totally see this being a problem if there's an influx of entirely new character sheets, but each existing sheet is probably maintained by one person who makes the pull request after a new build is ready to go. There could be some sort of limit on how often these primary maintainers get to do a pull request. Or...everyone could just wait their turn as roll20's staff works as fast as they reasonably can. Something to keep in mind is that once a sheet is released, there isn't any sort of lock on who can submit pull requests for that sheet.  Anyone with an idea for a change to the code can get on github and learn to submit changes to sheet code.  I have noticed several times where someone added some change to a sheet they wanted (which I can only assume worked for them), but it removed data (or access to that data) in games other people were running that used features that got cut in the update.  And this can happen without any sort of warning for the sheet users.  At this point, it is mostly considered courteous to put warnings on sheets of any major changes or to be sure updates don't mess with sheet attribute names or visual access to them.  But there is no way to enforce that behavior. I'm not sure what Roll20 could really do about that.  Unless they actually spend the time to visually inspect and test every code change, they can only go by their automated checks and the notes submitted by the person submitting the update.  The more community sheets that exist, the less likely it will be for Roll20 to be doing any sort of intensive, individual checks.  Since the code is hosted and managed on a different site, I'm not sure there would even be a way for them to easily limit who submits code for a specific sheet, or even know which github user name matches up to a Roll20 user name. Sometimes it is good for anyone to be able to push an update to a sheet.  Recently, there have been at least 2 fairly simple community sheet problems I have seen posted to the forums that someone figured out and submitted a fix.  So just limiting who can post updates to individual sheets isn't necessarily a great solution either. I don't have any answers, just pointing out that like just about everything, the situation (or solution to it) isn't simple.  I am just glad there is an avenue for custom sheets.  As rudimentary as mine are, I wouldn't be here if custom sheets weren't possible.

Kraynic said: Tratz said: GiGs said: I did wonder if that was the case, Finderski. Making the sandbox available to all could make sheet submissions skyrocket, and many of them might be of the sort that roll20 wants to discourage (e.g. simple copies of sheets with a few minor changes for homebrews). I would say the solution would be to have a bigger staff handling the sheet submissions, but&nbsp; I can see why they wouldnt be keen on that! I could totally see this being a problem if there's an influx of entirely new character sheets, but each existing sheet is probably maintained by one person who makes the pull request after a new build is ready to go. There could be some sort of limit on how often these primary maintainers get to do a pull request. Or...everyone could just wait their turn as roll20's staff works as fast as they reasonably can. [...] Anyone with an idea for a change to the code can get on github and learn to submit changes to sheet code.&nbsp; I have noticed several times where someone added some change to a sheet they wanted (which I can only assume worked for them), but it removed data (or access to that data) in games other people were running that used features that got cut in the update.&nbsp; And this can happen without any sort of warning for the sheet users.&nbsp; At this point, it is mostly considered courteous to put warnings on sheets of any major changes or to be sure updates don't mess with sheet attribute names or visual access to them.&nbsp; But there is no way to enforce that behavior. I'm not sure what Roll20 could really do about that.&nbsp; Unless they actually spend the time to visually inspect and test every code change, they can only go by their automated checks and the notes submitted by the person submitting the update.&nbsp; [...] Yeah, this is hugely problematic. Each sheet should have a maintainer who is the source of authority for all changes and code reviews, prior to submitting a pull request to roll20. How it would work is: Maintainer has a repository for a character sheet. It could be a clone of <a href="https://github.com/Roll20/roll20-character-sheets" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Roll20/roll20-character-sheets</a>, with their own sheet appended to it. Contributors make pull requests to the Maintainers repository, who audits and reviews the changes. When a maintainer is happy with a new build, they submit their changes to roll20. It's the community who is doing the work to build these sheets, it may as well be the community who moderates and approves them.

Tratz said: Yeah, this is hugely problematic. Each sheet should have a maintainer who is the source of authority for all changes and code reviews, prior to submitting a pull request to roll20. How it would work is: Maintainer has a repository for a character sheet. It could be a clone of <a href="https://github.com/Roll20/roll20-character-sheets" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Roll20/roll20-character-sheets</a>, with their own sheet appended to it. Contributors make pull requests to the Maintainers repository, who audits and reviews the changes. When a maintainer is happy with a new build, they submit their changes to roll20. It's the community who is doing the work to build these sheets, it may as well be the community who moderates and approves them. This is actually not appropriate for roll20. The devs have deliberately and intentionally created a system in which no one can claim authority over a given sheet, except for the roll20 devs themselves (and then, only by virtue of the fact they own the github).&nbsp; The success of the sheet repository is in fact entirely due to this.&nbsp; Sheet maintainers come and go, and this kind of thing is a major problem for volunteer projects. Sheet maintainers are volunteers, they aren't being paid to do X hours a week, and so life events come up that are more important so their roll20 work gets put on the back burner for a few weeks or moths. Or they lose interest and start seeing the work as a chore and gradually drop off entirely. There is no way to avoid this, and the roll20 system is set up to work despite that. The fact that anyone can drop in and make changes to any sheet ensures that there is a low-friction environment for keeping sheets maintained. It's not dependent on any particular volunteer staying motivated. If someone sees a sheet is lacking, they can simply jump in and push improvements.&nbsp; Also, when you have a volunteer project when volunteers are given power, there is inevitable conflict as egos interfere. Roll20 has been very subtle but very explicit in undermining attempts by volunteers to seize control over a sheet. When people have submitted contradictory changes to a sheet, roll20 have not taken sides on which should be used. They have explicitly not chosen to support the people who have done the most work on the sheet, they have simply pushed back and forced the conflicting submitters to come to agreement between themselves. Everyone is on an equal footing. And while this can create some problems, it is a net good thing. So there are no officially approved maintainers for sheets (except for the By Roll20 sheets) and this by design. I cant see that ever changing.

GiGs said: Tratz said: Yeah, this is hugely problematic. Each sheet should have a maintainer who is the source of authority for all changes and code reviews, prior to submitting a pull request to roll20. How it would work is: Maintainer has a repository for a character sheet. It could be a clone of <a href="https://github.com/Roll20/roll20-character-sheets" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Roll20/roll20-character-sheets</a>, with their own sheet appended to it. Contributors make pull requests to the Maintainers repository, who audits and reviews the changes. When a maintainer is happy with a new build, they submit their changes to roll20. It's the community who is doing the work to build these sheets, it may as well be the community who moderates and approves them. This is actually not appropriate for roll20. The devs have deliberately and intentionally created a system in which no one can claim authority over a given sheet, except for the roll20 devs themselves (and then, only by virtue of the fact they own the github).&nbsp; The success of the sheet repository is in fact entirely due to this.&nbsp; Sheet maintainers come and go, and this kind of thing is a major problem for volunteer projects. Sheet maintainers are volunteers, they aren't being paid to do X hours a week, and so life events come up that are more important so their roll20 work gets put on the back burner for a few weeks or moths. Or they lose interest and start seeing the work as a chore and gradually drop off entirely. There is no way to avoid this, and the roll20 system is set up to work despite that. The fact that anyone can drop in and make changes to any sheet ensures that there is a low-friction environment for keeping sheets maintained. It's not dependent on any particular volunteer staying motivated. If someone sees a sheet is lacking, they can simply jump in and push improvements.&nbsp; Also, when you have a volunteer project when volunteers are given power, there is inevitable conflict as egos interfere. Roll20 has been very subtle but very explicit in undermining attempts by volunteers to seize control over a sheet. When people have submitted contradictory changes to a sheet, roll20 have not taken sides on which should be used. They have explicitly not chosen to support the people who have done the most work on the sheet, they have simply pushed back and forced the conflicting submitters to come to agreement between themselves. Everyone is on an equal footing. And while this can create some problems, it is a net good thing. So there are no officially approved maintainers for sheets (except for the By Roll20 sheets) and this by design. I cant see that ever changing. This is disappointing to hear, but I understand completely. Being an "open source person", I guess I'm optimistic about communities being independently responsible. Projects can change maintainers if they need to, but I suppose that's just as hard for roll20 to keep track of as more people hammering them with pull requests. Oh well!

Tratz said: This is disappointing to hear, but I understand completely. Being an "open source person", I guess I'm optimistic about communities being independently responsible. Projects can change maintainers if they need to, but I suppose that's just as hard for roll20 to keep track of as more people hammering them with pull requests. Oh well! An actual open source community could be responsible, with a community of committed members. The roll20 repo isn't like that: it's hundreds of separate completely independent mini-projects, and there's no community there of hundreds of users working together on the same thing and developing a shared sense of community.&nbsp; Many people who make submissions to the roll20 repo just jump in and make some changes to one sheet, maybe over a few weeks, and then vanish. There's only a few sheets that have committed maintainers that work over months and years-&nbsp; and all of those will fall into periods of inactivity too. It's just too fragmented a project to work with the idea of appointing maintainers. Roll20's been very canny in the way they built this system. They've learned lessons from other open source projects and built a system that is not dependent on any particular volunteers, and will survive as people come and go.&nbsp; If there'd been some appointment process at the start where people had to seek approval before they made sheets, the repo would never have grown to the size it is. The biggest most popular sheets would still have been made, but many of the less popular and niche sheets would probably never have gotten made.&nbsp;

GiGs said: Tratz said: This is disappointing to hear, but I understand completely. Being an "open source person", I guess I'm optimistic about communities being independently responsible. Projects can change maintainers if they need to, but I suppose that's just as hard for roll20 to keep track of as more people hammering them with pull requests. Oh well! An actual open source community could be responsible, with a community of committed members. The roll20 repo isn't like that: it's hundreds of separate completely independent mini-projects, and there's no community there of hundreds of users working together on the same thing and developing a shared sense of community.&nbsp; Many people who make submissions to the roll20 repo just jump in and make some changes to one sheet, maybe over a few weeks, and then vanish. There's only a few sheets that have committed maintainers that work over months and years-&nbsp; and all of those will fall into periods of inactivity too. It's just too fragmented a project to work with the idea of appointing maintainers. Roll20's been very canny in the way they built this system. They've learned lessons from other open source projects and built a system that is not dependent on any particular volunteers, and will survive as people come and go.&nbsp; If there'd been some appointment process at the start where people had to seek approval before they made sheets, the repo would never have grown to the size it is. The biggest most popular sheets would still have been made, but many of the less popular and niche sheets would probably never have gotten made.&nbsp; I really appreciate you sharing your experience with this challenge. Thanks for taking the time to share it :)

I finally gave up and paid for a Pro subscription. However I would still like this being implemented. For me all I need is access to the Custom Sheet Sandbox. No need for full on custom games with multiple players. Just the Sandbox is enough!

Tratz said: GiGs said: There is a GURPS character sheet, and it is actively maintained. Right, and I can't contribute to its development without paying for Pro, which is the problem :) Tratz, you can contribute in a way to the GURPS character sheet (I am referring to the one simply named GURPS). I am one of 2 people who have been maintaining and will be maintain this sheet. You can contribute by sending your ideas, and any code you have written, to us - use this thread:&nbsp; <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/6616836/gurps-sheet-number-1-thread-1" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/6616836/gurps-sheet-number-1-thread-1</a>. &nbsp;We will gladly look over any ideas, suggestions or code you have - we are happy for any input. Besides all that, I too like the idea of some sort of compensation for those that maintain a sheet - perhaps if they make a minimum of 4 updates a year, then the following year they get free Pro. JMHO.

I'd love to get into helping with character sheets but I aint pay 11 bucks just so I can help YOU make money. FFS if you can't get yourself to give only the testing-bed to free users, at least offer a symbolic $1 "subscription" per year, for "sheet authors".

Odrson said: I'd love to get into helping with character sheets but I aint pay 11 bucks just so I can help YOU make money. FFS if you can't get yourself to give only the testing-bed to free users, at least offer a symbolic $1 "subscription" per year, for "sheet authors". I agree with you here. It's kind of ridiculous that roll20's success is largely built on fan-created sheets, but the fans have to pay a lot to make them.

I don't have the skills to create sheets, but they are one of the major aspects of VTT that make or break a game. I have been running games on Roll20 since around 2013, I have GM'd 18 games over&nbsp; 1757 hours, and every time the character sheet is something that either helps or hinders. What I do not understand is why sheet authors are 1) having to pay to create content for Roll20 and 2) why TTRPG companies aren't more involved. In the past two years of the pandemic online gaming has only increased, every single publisher should be considering how they can make their game more accessible.&nbsp; At the very least, have an easier way to discover who makes what sheet and support them via Patreon, Buy Me a Coffee, or whatever. In today's climate of social visibility of workers, working conditions, satisfactory compensation, Roll20 should really do better in not taking advantage of their users, players, and volunteer sheet creators.

I'm simple I would like just the sheet change a little as in for games that I'm homebrewing. As the currency is not the same type.

I find this quite relevant for me right now. I'm letting my subscription lapse, and it has nothing to do with sheet authorship. I would love to continue supporting the SWSE sheet, but that's simply not going to happen now. I also doubt that there are many sheet authors who are Pro primarily because of the opportunity to use the Custom Sheet Sandbox.

My husband has plus, we can't afford or justify paying for pro. But I am a programmer, and I want to work on character sheets. When he DID have a pro account, I made him a sheet for a game he was making, and it was wonderful to have the ability to do so. But now with a bunch of other friends doing such things, and me having a ton of free time, I am unable to assist because I can't TEST the code I'm writing. PLEASE open up the sheet sandbox! If not for free, then for plus! I don't CARE about running a game with a custom sheet, I just want to help MAKE them. DX

Kitanya said: My husband has plus, we can't afford or justify paying for pro. But I am a programmer, and I want to work on character sheets. When he DID have a pro account, I made him a sheet for a game he was making, and it was wonderful to have the ability to do so. But now with a bunch of other friends doing such things, and me having a ton of free time, I am unable to assist because I can't TEST the code I'm writing. PLEASE open up the sheet sandbox! If not for free, then for plus! I don't CARE about running a game with a custom sheet, I just want to help MAKE them. DX If you sign up for the BEACON project you can get a special role here on Roll20 that allows you to develop character sheets for free!&nbsp;<a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/11818065/calling-all-sheet-developers/?pagenum=1" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/11818065/calling-all-sheet-developers/?pagenum=1</a>