Categories(aka folder structure) for Character Sheets

Once I have a template, It should be fairly easy to create a new character sheet for each and every creature type in my game. This way I can easily take advantage of the new token action bar. The only issue then, is the character sheet list would just be one massively long list. Although, I thought I saw somewhere that character sheets might now be linkable, is that the case? That might be a temporary work around, if I just create a sheet and have it have links to all of the creaturs of it's type. For instance, all of the creatures in a cave might be "Cave Name" -> under it "Creature Name". Thank you!

Bryan, you can tag character sheets and then select them via the search bar. There's also an icon next to the bar that will list all tags and the number of items under the tag. It updates quickly so you can just type the first couple of letters and it will filter (i.e. "np" will show all characters tagged with "npc"). You can put multiple tags so you can quickly filter by multiple categories, for example, you could have a goblin and wolf with individual tags by creature type and level, plus individual encounters where you use those monsters. That way if you want to show all goblin creatures, you can type "goblin", but if you want all monsters for encounter 3, you can type "enc3" (or whatever you use). Either way I rarely have to use tags in game because my monsters are linked to tokens (the Represents Character function) with default tokens, so I can just shift-double-click on a token to open its character sheet. They already stated that they aren't going to implement a "folder" style function since tags accomplish the same thing but with more flexibility. Hope that helps!

They do seem to love their tags. Well guess I can adapt to that. Problem is remembering all of the tags. That's where I seem to have trouble. Searching is nice and all, but just more we poor GM/DMs have to remember ("oh what did I tag that as again...."

Like I said, click the icon next to the search bar. It'll show all your tags and you can select them individually like folders. Pretty much same thing, just more versatile. Only thing you can't do is make subfolders (which arguably makes things hard to find on its own...). Good luck.

Bryan K. said: They do seem to love their tags. Well guess I can adapt to that. Problem is remembering all of the tags. That's where I seem to have trouble. Searching is nice and all, but just more we poor GM/DMs have to remember ("oh what did I tag that as again...." I agree it's painful, especially with the art library since it searches through tons of other stuff I might havenanmed all of a specific shaped room with "room" "corner" and n00bishly "L" but man of those will give me a gazillion unrelated things making it sometimes easier to just have a bunch of pages devoted to things like rooms, townfolk, monsterous humanoids, monsters, etc to copy/paste out of. Jacquesne J. said: Like I said, click the icon next to the search bar. It'll show all your tags and you can select them individually like folders. Pretty much same thing, just more versatile. Only thing you can't do is make subfolders (which arguably makes things hard to find on its own...). Good luck. Sadly, that little tag is not on all of the search boxes (not art for sure)

Tags accomplish an important task that folders can't...multiple categories. For example, lets say I have some outdoor tiles. I tag all my outdoor tiles with "Outdoor". Then I have several roads. I add the tag "Road". Now lets say I'm looking for an outdoor road. With tags, I can type "outdoor road" in the search bar and only get outdoor roads. What if these were folders? Now I have to go into my "Outdoor" folder, then into "Roads." Same thing right? What if I'm just interested in roads? With tags, I can type "road" and all my roads, including those outdoor roads, show up. With folders I'd have to go into the outdoor folder. What if I forget where I put that particular road I want? Is it in outdoor? Dungeon? City? It's also redundant...do I make a "road" folder for each category? So Outdoor has a roads folder, as does dungeon and city? That's three "road" folders, with potentially a bunch of similar types of roads separated by arbitrary rules. Is that cobblestone road outdoor? What about city? You may be able to find it in a dungeon, or a cavern... Tags solve that issue. They offer a ton of flexibility, at the cost of a tiny bit of memory...not much more than you'd use in a complex folder structure. Tags can do things folders can't. Folders can't really do anything tags can't, other than linear subcategories. Which is why I doubt they'll ever implement folders rather than tags. That being said I wouldn't be surprised if they implement tagging in more areas (like the Jukebox) and with the tag list functionality in more places (like the art library). But I wouldn't count on a folder structure being implemented any time soon. Sorry.

Jacquesne J. said: Tags accomplish an important task that folders can't...multiple categories. For example, lets say I have some outdoor tiles. I tag all my outdoor tiles with "Outdoor". Then I have several roads. I add the tag "Road". Now lets say I'm looking for an outdoor road. With tags, I can type "outdoor road" in the search bar and only get outdoor roads. What if these were folders? Now I have to go into my "Outdoor" folder, then into "Roads." Same thing right? What if I'm just interested in roads? With tags, I can type "road" and all my roads, including those outdoor roads, show up. With folders I'd have to go into the outdoor folder. What if I forget where I put that particular road I want? Is it in outdoor? Dungeon? City? It's also redundant...do I make a "road" folder for each category? So Outdoor has a roads folder, as does dungeon and city? That's three "road" folders, with potentially a bunch of similar types of roads separated by arbitrary rules. Is that cobblestone road outdoor? What about city? You may be able to find it in a dungeon, or a cavern... Tags solve that issue. They offer a ton of flexibility, at the cost of a tiny bit of memory...not much more than you'd use in a complex folder structure. Tags can do things folders can't. Folders can't really do anything tags can't, other than linear subcategories. Which is why I doubt they'll ever implement folders rather than tags. That being said I wouldn't be surprised if they implement tagging in more areas (like the Jukebox) and with the tag list functionality in more places (like the art library). But I wouldn't count on a folder structure being implemented any time soon. Sorry. Even within the journal/character section. It's only on the search box. Making a new character?... good luck remembering the less common/more obscure tags ;). I can see the potential, & definitely agree tags have advantages over folders yes... but if we don't talk about the places we think need improvement, developers have a harder time deciding what the community in general does. I personally have little use for lighting effects & a few other things I dob't use, but if people don't discuss their problems with those things, I'd never even guess they existed.

I personally find tags a pain to use. I tend to work visually, and having things put in folders helps me tremendously finding said thing again. Tags may work for some people, folders for others (If I look at my NPC character sheets and see a big mess, even if they're all taged, I still find it cumbersome.). On one hand, I don't see why having the option to create folders should be put aside because some people manage to do it with tags. On the other hand, if it's impossible (or very difficult) to create said folders, I could understand why developers don't want to waste time on it.

I think I agree with Camille, getting folders would be very nice and make things a bit easier on folks who don't like tags. (personally I prefer to make use of a combination of the two irl) +1, so it's clear.

There was developer discussion on this a couple months ago. Pretty much everything in Roll20 uses the tagging system for organization. There are only two ways I can really see this working. The first is "tag folders." In other words, each tag you create makes a new folder, then if you "open" one of those folders you see everything that has the first tag (or folder) plus "subfolders" of additional tags. For example, if you had several assets with the Outdoor tag, and then some additionally with the Road tag, plus some with the Rubble tag, in your main view you'd have three folders: Outdoor, Road, and Rubble. If you "opened" the Outdoor folder, you'd have a list of all assets with only the Outdoor tag, plus two subfolders: Road and Rubble. If you opened Road you'd see all assets with the Road and Rubble tags. The other option is to just allow folder creation within the asset lists. To maintain the current tag system, just leave everything in the "root directory" (don't create any folders). Add a "New Folder" button to the bottom of the list and you can drag and drop assets into those folders. If you use the tag search bar, the folders disappear and it shows everything with the appropriate tags. This allows you to have the organization of folders and the utility of tags. Both options would require some serious reworking of the sidebar code I believe. I think the first option would be the easiest from a programming standpoint (it's basically some graphics on the current system) but the second option would probably fit what people are looking for the best. I personally prefer the tag system because it allows me to quickly find stuff I want in categories. For example, if I want to create a 4e D&D encounter on the fly (for example, my players decided they're going to just sleep in the middle of the undead crypt with nobody on watch...) it's nice to be able to set up the encounter without having to remember which folders I put in the right combination of monsters. With tags, I can type "Lvl3 Undead Soldier", find a monster or two, then change Soldier to Artillery, add in some ranged monsters, and maybe add a brute, all with the right monster type and level. What if I don't want them to be all undead? I can just remove that tag and get a bigger list of what's available. Could I do this with folders? Sure. But it takes a much longer time to open up my Lvl3 folder, then the undead subfolder, then the soldier folder, then back out of the soldier folder to the artillery folder, but wait! I don't care what type it is, so now I have to look through my animal (subfolder wolf? snake?), human, aberration, demon, devil, goblin, kobold, etc. folders to find the right monster, rather than have a list of everything right there. Folders are useful when you're looking for a particular asset and no other. This is handy for setting up a game before the players show up. But when you're in the middle of the game and you want to change things up a bit tags are, in my opinion, the vastly superior option for organization. If you use a simple, consistent method for naming categories you'll be able to find whatever you're looking for much more quickly than trying to search through directory trees. Interesting sidenote...this is exactly the logic behind Windows 8 removing the Start Bar. When Windows 7 introduced the Search Bar in the Start Bar, Microsoft found that most users never bothered with the folders anymore...they would just start typing the name of whatever they wanted until it showed up, then they'd hit enter or click it. The main reason this failed with Windows 8 is that half the stuff people wanted to search for didn't show up in the new search (since programs left over from upgrading weren't integrated) but it was based on how people used the program. Directories with a ton of subcategories are inefficient when you know what you're looking for. That being said I hope that add folders as an additional organization option for players. It may be handy if you're just trying to browse what options you have and aren't looking for anything in particular. As long as it doesn't interfere with tags (which I doubt they'll change) I'm all for it. I'd encourage you to give tags another try, though. They really do make things easier in the long run.

Jacquesne J. said: There was developer discussion on this a couple months ago. Pretty much everything in Roll20 uses the tagging system for organization. There are only two ways I can really see this working. The first is "tag folders." In other words, each tag you create makes a new folder, then if you "open" one of those folders you see everything that has the first tag (or folder) plus "subfolders" of additional tags. For example, if you had several assets with the Outdoor tag, and then some additionally with the Road tag, plus some with the Rubble tag, in your main view you'd have three folders: Outdoor, Road, and Rubble. If you "opened" the Outdoor folder, you'd have a list of all assets with only the Outdoor tag, plus two subfolders: Road and Rubble. If you opened Road you'd see all assets with the Road and Rubble tags. The other option is to just allow folder creation within the asset lists. To maintain the current tag system, just leave everything in the "root directory" (don't create any folders). Add a "New Folder" button to the bottom of the list and you can drag and drop assets into those folders. If you use the tag search bar, the folders disappear and it shows everything with the appropriate tags. This allows you to have the organization of folders and the utility of tags. Both options would require some serious reworking of the sidebar code I believe. I think the first option would be the easiest from a programming standpoint (it's basically some graphics on the current system) but the second option would probably fit what people are looking for the best. I personally prefer the tag system because it allows me to quickly find stuff I want in categories. For example, if I want to create a 4e D&D encounter on the fly (for example, my players decided they're going to just sleep in the middle of the undead crypt with nobody on watch...) it's nice to be able to set up the encounter without having to remember which folders I put in the right combination of monsters. With tags, I can type "Lvl3 Undead Soldier", find a monster or two, then change Soldier to Artillery, add in some ranged monsters, and maybe add a brute, all with the right monster type and level. What if I don't want them to be all undead? I can just remove that tag and get a bigger list of what's available. Could I do this with folders? Sure. But it takes a much longer time to open up my Lvl3 folder, then the undead subfolder, then the soldier folder, then back out of the soldier folder to the artillery folder, but wait! I don't care what type it is, so now I have to look through my animal (subfolder wolf? snake?), human, aberration, demon, devil, goblin, kobold, etc. folders to find the right monster, rather than have a list of everything right there. Folders are useful when you're looking for a particular asset and no other. This is handy for setting up a game before the players show up. But when you're in the middle of the game and you want to change things up a bit tags are, in my opinion, the vastly superior option for organization. If you use a simple, consistent method for naming categories you'll be able to find whatever you're looking for much more quickly than trying to search through directory trees. Interesting sidenote...this is exactly the logic behind Windows 8 removing the Start Bar. When Windows 7 introduced the Search Bar in the Start Bar, Microsoft found that most users never bothered with the folders anymore...they would just start typing the name of whatever they wanted until it showed up, then they'd hit enter or click it. The main reason this failed with Windows 8 is that half the stuff people wanted to search for didn't show up in the new search (since programs left over from upgrading weren't integrated) but it was based on how people used the program. Directories with a ton of subcategories are inefficient when you know what you're looking for. That being said I hope that add folders as an additional organization option for players. It may be handy if you're just trying to browse what options you have and aren't looking for anything in particular. As long as it doesn't interfere with tags (which I doubt they'll change) I'm all for it. I'd encourage you to give tags another try, though. They really do make things easier in the long run. Look at gmail, the place where the concept of tags really got it's start (to most people at least) I still have inbox, sent, drafts, spam, etc to save me the trouble of having to place all those tags manually. /recently, they even took it a step further and added tabs (folders by another name in this context) for "primary", "social", & "promotions", with options for adding "forums", and "updates" as well. Just because tags are often more powerful & flexible, they are not always best. Both folders and tags are good at doing some things the other does poorlybased on the goal/needs. I wouldn't be at all surprised if inbox/spam/drafts/etc are all just tags with some code to apply them at the server and give the appearance of folders in the web interface/imap/etc connections