If I Wanted To Take Over A Sheet, How Would I Do It?

Hello. I'm not actually a coder, but I've been in the tech industry long enough that I can get by a little. I don't think I could design a sheet from scratch, but I found code versions on github of the L5R sheet and I've been playing with them to see if I could puzzle out how to make basic functionality changes (such as adding a flat bonus to a skill). I've been successful so far. So, if I wanted to take over at least enough to fix some of the sheet's basic problems, like hardcoding certain fields that need to be editable due to school techniques, how would I go about doing that? The sheet seems to be abandoned, but I think SOMEONE is doing commits on it. IIRC, the translation tab hasn't existed since the original author stopped supporting the sheet. And someone updated the preview recently. That might just be Roll20 staff doing basic cleanup, though? I don't know. Anyway, I wouldn't be able to dedicate a huge amount of time to it, but right now I think no one is working on it, so that would be a step up.

In my experience, it's best to try and contact the sheet's author(s) and explain what you would like.  If you don't get a timely response, the next step is to make the changes yourself.  I would also recommend making a post of your proposed changes and offer a test game for the community to test your changes and give feedback.  Rule number one, don't break the sheet. ;-p

You can see who's made changes to the sheet by clicking "History" in GitHub. (The commit history is also available from the GitHub client, and can be seen from the command line with git log .) In the L5R sheet, you can see commits from: DealerUmbra (original author) rileydutton (Roll20 staff) Eagoyle (single commit, correcting a minor error) saethone (single commit, adding rolltemplates) AmishNinja / Sean OLoughlin (single commit, correcting a minor error) pjbehr87 (Roll20 staff) CoalPoweredPuppet (single commit, correcting a minor error) RhOmicron (many commits, incl. most recent non-staff modifications, this past April) Shadowritter (initial translation support) sheet.json only gives credit to Nick R. and Calle. A for authorship, and doesn't include the roll20userid field which could be used to go directly to their profile page to send them a PM. Nick R. is probably   Nick R. Calle. A is probably   Calle A. As for protocol for making changes, give a best-effort attempt at getting into contact with the sheet's author(s). In this case, I would especially recommend trying to get into contact with whoever RhOmicron is. Unless you're more successful at figuring out which Roll20 user is linked with the GitHub user account than I was in the past few minutes, the best way to contact them might be asking in the character sheets forum. Alternatively, you could @mention them in  an issue on the Roll20 character sheets repo (RhOmicron has issues disabled on their fork of the repo) and they should get a notification of the message, or you could send a pull request to  RhOmicron's fork of the Roll20 repo, instead of sending it to Roll20 directly.

Thanks. Calle told me they were cool with it. I made a new project with a readme asking RhOmicron to contact me and then transfered ownership to them. That should alert them.

All right. Calle gave me permission. I assigned RhOmicron a new project with a readme with my email asking them to contact me and they haven't. I also asked them to contact me on the forums. I don't think they are going to contact me. I feel like I've done my due diligence at this. Do you agree? If so, what's my next step? I know I can start a thread for users to discuss and test, and I can handle that part. I'm more curious about the protocole and technical aspects on the backend.

Hi Robert, Just to let you knwo that I am all for a clean-up of this sheet. I did the french translation through the roll20 tool, but it surely can use some attention.

Hello Robert, I have been in contact with you through PM's, but I would like to chime in here as well. I would very much like to aid in the renovation of the L5R sheet. I would love to play some games as well. I am a Digital Designer, so I can surely help with the aesthetic side of the sheet. And would love if you could include me in the plans! Thank you very much!

See, that's great to hear, because while I technically do CSS at work, my CSS is actually <censored>. :)

Sent you my email.

So how do I actually take over the sheet. I mean mechnically what's the process for taking over publishing it?

Robert D. said: So how do I actually take over the sheet. I mean mechnically what's the process for taking over publishing it? Have you already looked at the instructions on the roll20/roll20-character-sheets repo on Github?

Thanks. So basically I just clone the repository for the existing sheet, make my changes and submit a pull request. That seems simple. I'll make a thread for the sheet first and get community buy in. Thanks.

I was going to say fight the current "authors" but I see others already responded. Though really anyone who wants to take over pathfinder just has to defeat me in single combat. I have no fighting training and am over 40 so it will be easy. I'll probably run screaming. Vince was a Marine though so watch out!

I've got your back Chris.  ;-p

Yeah, I've spoken to as many as the people who have worked on it as will respond. :)