Custom Compendium

Modnar Wylde said: Wait... how does that differ from games that do this with Image library or handouts that copy paste copyprotected issues,  Nolan? Isn't it really more or less the same exposure you already have with such content. I agree that its a subscription service though I agree. People are asking for their own personal database editor that lets them create custom compendium entries that are searchable and draggable. This is licensing wise no more different than handouts and images from people.

Modnar Wylde said: Wait... how does that differ from games that do this with Image library or handouts that copy paste copyprotected issues,  Nolan? Isn't it really more or less the same exposure you already have with such content. I agree that its a subscription service though Due to how much usable information is in a Compendium, it's ripe for abuse. We've already had a few people attempting to use the API to share source books, and we anticipate similar attempts here. As such, we'll need to figure out how to protect against this sort of abuse before we make such a feature available. We're a way's out from an attempt, though.

Nolan T. J. said: Modnar Wylde said: Wait... how does that differ from games that do this with Image library or handouts that copy paste copyprotected issues,  Nolan? Isn't it really more or less the same exposure you already have with such content. I agree that its a subscription service though Due to how much usable information is in a Compendium, it's ripe for abuse. We've already had a few people attempting to use the API to share source books, and we anticipate similar attempts here. As such, we'll need to figure out how to protect against this sort of abuse before we make such a feature available. We're a way's out from an attempt, though. As long as there's no way to import/export compendium info, I still don't really see the problem, because then there is no way to share things between different accounts.

Right now we are unable to share data through transmogrifying, whether it is handouts, tokens or others. As long as it's made the same way, I do not see any problem with it. Now, if you say that through the functionality of the compendium, a player adds to their character sheet information that is only available in published adventures, then that is extremely unfair. If a custom compendium is implemented I will most probably be adding information from official books that I own but have not purchased from Roll20 to facilitate the game for my players (not to mention different language compendiums). A player could take that character to their vault and add it to someone else's game but this could be said of the current system too. If you fear that people will be using scripts to rip information off from browsers then again it is unfair. Currently, it is possible to do that to handouts and export entire adventures and modules through tampermonkey and bookmarklets. In fact, I can do data transfers through the custom compendium of one of your competing products into Roll20 with tampermonkey, but there is no need for it because we have the amazing transmogryfier. My point is that you either make security absolute to the point where all of our current features are locked because of fear of piracy or you implement it with the same security as the other features that we have, with the transmogrifyer being the prime example of how to handle it. Sorry for the tone, but I just can't buy your statements, at this point I would gladly accept a "we just don't want to spend resources on this yet" than a "security reasons" that can be debunked by anyone reading this.

"We don't want to spend resources on this yet, because the involved security reasons." We've taken a DRM lite touch in everything we do by conceptualizing to properly foresee use cases. That'll be the same here.

tumbs up from me, i think this would be a great addition 

Yeah, this would significantly help out my game. Voted

Any news on this feature? As a GM the ability to create my own homebrew compendium that I can share with my players would be extremely useful!

Nolan T. J. said: "We don't want to spend resources on this yet, because the involved security reasons." We've taken a DRM lite touch in everything we do by conceptualizing to properly foresee use cases. That'll be the same here. Just a question Nolan since you have declared this a not yet does that explain why it is still open for votes? or Should this be closed until the team can spend the resources not that you have to answer im just curious a bit. 

Can we at least get the ability to create an EMPTY (public) compendium for games that are not D&D? I'm trying to play Symbaroum on Roll20 and it is HARD beyond necessity! Just let someone create an empty compendium with entity structures for monsters, characters, objects, spells, etc (if you ever used MapTool, I'm talking about the property sets in frameworks, with autocalculating values), so that I can add it to my game. After that, read these properties and render a form that I can fill with my stuff to create my private compendium. This would also allow macro/script creators to build on a shared framework. Roll20 is really great, but the disjointness in the entities is really proving for games that are not D&D. PS: character sheets do some of this, but they're difficult to create (I can't do it, I don't know html and css) and (at least for Symbaroum) they're really lacking. Also, you can't have multiple character sheets. My biggest gripe with character sheets is that they entangle the data and visualization layer , which is a BIG nono in IT. Compendium would be your data layer (input via form, persisted as structured data), Character Sheets would be your visualization layer (which could be opened to multiple visualizations, since it is now just simple html and css). I can see the simplicity of this implementation: add html and css (2 text files) to each entity type in the compendium. I think I'll make a post about this in the suggestion subforum (if I can, still a noob here).

My two cents: If someone's going to pirate source books and then dump them into a custom compendium, they've already pirated the source books.  So long it's not possible to mass distribute custom compendiums, it's not going to be a viable way for pirates to share pirated materials, that's what torrent sites are for.  Roll20 is never going to be a good resource for pirates to share materials. As someone that has my own books that A) aren't available for purchase on Roll20 and B) I'm not going to re-purchase on Roll20 because that's crazy talk, custom compendiums would allow me to share materials for players in my games to more quickly create characters and easily reference rules, spells, and items.  It's nice to do things like drag and drop class features onto a character sheet so a player (or GM running a baddie that has class levels) can just look at the sheet and see what the character can currently do without cross referencing anything.  It's something I do already without the compendium for my own character sheets. I really, really don't think a custom compendium that forbids users from using copyrighted materials for the purposes of running their games is going to be helpful.  That's not going to play nice at all with systems like GURPS which could really benefit the most from having a compendium, since those sorts of systems most often need a GM to homebrew and pare down choices into a custom "source book" for their game so as to not overwhelm their players.

Or other systems like Palladium Books, whuch like GURPS, is designed to have cross-setting characters & enemies. Helmic said: My two cents: If someone's going to pirate source books and then dump them into a custom compendium, they've already pirated the source books. So long it's not possible to mass distribute custom compendiums, it's not going to be a viable way for pirates to share pirated materials, that's what torrent sites are for. Roll20 is never going to be a good resource for pirates to share materials. As someone that has my own books that A) aren't available for purchase on Roll20 and B) I'm not going to re-purchase on Roll20 because that's crazy talk, custom compendiums would allow me to share materials for players in my games to more quickly create characters and easily reference rules, spells, and items. It's nice to do things like drag and drop class features onto a character sheet so a player (or GM running a baddie that has class levels) can just look at the sheet and see what the character can currently do without cross referencing anything. It's something I do already without the compendium for my own character sheets. I really, really don't think a custom compendium that forbids users from using copyrighted materials for the purposes of running their games is going to be helpful. That's not going to play nice at all with systems like GURPS which could really benefit the most from having a compendium, since those sorts of systems most often need a GM to homebrew and pare down choices into a custom "source book" for their game so as to not overwhelm their players.

Let’s get this done, already. Let subscribers have a private compendium that is non-sharable outside of their account. Part of the magic of gameplay is having homebrew creatures, items, and spells. In 35 years of gaming, I have never been involved with an RPG that didn’t have some level of homebrew action.  If if that seems too daunting, add a feature where custom items can be created outside of the compendium using stock information. It would be somewhat limiting, but maybe a good first step. Creating my own creatures, spells and such is the ultimate goal, but I think many of us could be placated for a while with the ability to create new magic items and weapons. 

Additionally, it would be nice if marketplace creators would be able to make a custom compendium for the add-ons or modules they create so the custom items and spells can be dropped onto a character sheet.

If I understand the announcement right, the latest resource book for DND5E is only coming out after a rework of the compendium system. I guess the changes being done there might also open a way to add custom/home made compendiums too. We'll see when it's done. :)

Dadino said: Can we at least get the ability to create an EMPTY (public)&nbsp;compendium for games that are not D&D? I'm trying to play Symbaroum on Roll20 and it is HARD beyond necessity! Just let someone create an empty compendium with entity structures for monsters, characters, objects, spells, etc (if you ever used MapTool, I'm talking about the property sets in frameworks, with autocalculating values), so that I can add it to my game. After that, read these properties and render a form that I can fill with my stuff to create my private compendium. This would also allow macro/script creators to build on a shared framework. Roll20 is really great, but the disjointness in the entities is really proving for games that are not D&D. PS: character sheets do some of this, but they're difficult to create (I can't do it, I don't know html and css) and (at least for Symbaroum) they're really lacking. Also, you can't have multiple character sheets. My biggest gripe with character sheets is that they entangle the data and visualization layer , which is a BIG nono in IT. Compendium would be your data layer (input via form, persisted as structured data), Character Sheets would be your visualization layer (which could be opened to multiple visualizations, since it is now just simple html and css). I can see the simplicity of this implementation: add html and css (2 text files) to each entity type in the compendium. I think I'll make a post about this in the suggestion subforum (if I can, still a noob here). Wasn't this already added a few years back? OGL systems should already have this option. <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Compendium#Building_A_Compendium" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Compendium#Building_A_Compendium</a>

Fenrir said: Dadino said: Can we at least get the ability to create an EMPTY (public)&nbsp;compendium for games that are not D&D? I'm trying to play Symbaroum on Roll20 and it is HARD beyond necessity! Just let someone create an empty compendium with entity structures for monsters, characters, objects, spells, etc (if you ever used MapTool, I'm talking about the property sets in frameworks, with autocalculating values), so that I can add it to my game. After that, read these properties and render a form that I can fill with my stuff to create my private compendium. This would also allow macro/script creators to build on a shared framework. Roll20 is really great, but the disjointness in the entities is really proving for games that are not D&D. PS: character sheets do some of this, but they're difficult to create (I can't do it, I don't know html and css) and (at least for Symbaroum) they're really lacking. Also, you can't have multiple character sheets. My biggest gripe with character sheets is that they entangle the data and visualization layer , which is a BIG nono in IT. Compendium would be your data layer (input via form, persisted as structured data), Character Sheets would be your visualization layer (which could be opened to multiple visualizations, since it is now just simple html and css). I can see the simplicity of this implementation: add html and css (2 text files) to each entity type in the compendium. I think I'll make a post about this in the suggestion subforum (if I can, still a noob here). Wasn't this already added a few years back? OGL systems should already have this option. <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Compendium#Building_A_Compendium" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Compendium#Building_A_Compendium</a> Yeah, but Roll20 is very picky about the authors for this and the systems. I offered at some point to do a compendium for Eclipse Phase, which isn't just OGL but actually Creative Commons, and they said there weren't interested in Eclipse phase related things -.-

We need a private compindium that is game specific and can be shared to the other players.&nbsp; Do it like DNDBeyond.&nbsp; Make it a part of the ProSubscription and allow the private comp to be shared. Done and Done.&nbsp; Will people create full books, probably.&nbsp; You can't stop it all.&nbsp; But if it can ONLY be shared in that game and not GIVEN... That seems pretty straight forward.

Are Homebrew Compendiums something that is being worked on or is it just a pipe dream? I know it would be incredibly useful to my games if i could drag and drop the variety of items ive made for my players with out having to retype it over and over again.&nbsp;

When people are saying a non shareable compendium, what do they mean? I would need to share a custom compendium that I would create from scratch with my players in my game I created it for. Without allowing my players to say drag and drop or search for an item, I don't see much value. If I could share it and make their non tech lives easier, then it's definitely worth being a Subscribed feature. But also, a creator would need to be able to include their compendium in their games. I sometimes spool up a separate game for a one shot. I don't want to have this locked to a single game I've created either. It's like when I DM a game at home.

wish they would just do items/weapons/armors at the very least!!&nbsp;

vince p. said: wish they would just do items/weapons/armors at the very least!!&nbsp; and Spells I am tired of type in spells over and over. I create my own magic spells and items for my PC's and this is getting old fast have to recreate all the time.

+1

I love this idea.&nbsp; Im not seeing "security issues" yeah, some people will copy books they own into the compendium... and others will copy books they dont own... but you shouldnt assume theft. * Only allow Pro subscribers create compendiums. * You cant share or import a compendium into other peoples games. * Only GMs can import into their own games.

I still don't get what the concern is. If they can't share them publicly, what's the difference to buying content from the Marketplace which you can share with your group or passing a book around the table?

Jeremy R. said: I still don't get what the concern is. If they can't share them publicly, what's the difference to buying content from the Marketplace which you can share with your group or passing a book around the table? ^^ THIS I had a physical copy of Volo's Guide and when it came out one of my players bought it for me as the DM so I didn't have to keep inputting all the information manually.&nbsp; Then it turned out that I still had to manually drag out entries to share with the players for PC races. Is the concern that someone will start an open game and have all the books to use for players?

If this functionality existed, I would develop my 5e OGL compatible setting material here. Since it doesn't, I won't.

Discodecepticon said: I love this idea.&nbsp; Im not seeing "security issues" yeah, some people will copy books they own into the compendium... and others will copy books they dont own... but you shouldnt assume theft. * Only allow Pro subscribers create compendiums. * You cant share or import a compendium into other peoples games. * Only GMs can import into their own games. This sounds like a reasonable way to implement this and prevent content theft. +1 to that suggestion!

Discodecepticon said: I love this idea.&nbsp; Im not seeing "security issues" yeah, some people will copy books they own into the compendium... and others will copy books they dont own... but you shouldnt assume theft. * Only allow Pro subscribers create compendiums. * You cant share or import a compendium into other peoples games. * Only GMs can import into their own games. +1

I'm working on a completely homebrewed character sheet and what I really would like is some way to add "reference data" of my own content to character sheets.&nbsp; I haven't actually played with one of the existing compendiums, but I gather you can do something like drag a longsword into the equipment list and it populates the fields in the repeating section?&nbsp; Anyway, that's what I'm looking for.

I would love to see this just for dungeon world. It's annoying to have to manually enter custom moves into all my players sheets.

So wtf is the major malfunction here? After years, why haven't we been able to do this?

I think there is an opportunity for Roll20 to increase subscription levels by implementing custom compendiums. Allow the free account the ability to create one private compendium. The plus account gets maybe 3 to 5, and the pro account maybe 10. Use the same sharing rules in game that you have now for licensed compendiums. For a custom game maybe allow public compendiums after approval from Roll20 to insure no licensed material is posted.

This would really help me alot with adding spells that aren't in the SRD. Having to add homebrew spells individually every single time I want to make a spellcaster with that spell is pretty tedious.&nbsp;

Honestly, I'm making a TTRPG system with some friends and I'd love to be able to have a monster manual in roll20 for easy lookup and testing. This needs to happen, I'm just wondering what the issue is here, considering the thread is 2 years old and 2 years ago it was said to be on the list.

Why not just let us add more types of entities to the Journal than just characters and notes?&nbsp; The largest folder in my game is already Bestiary for obvious reasons.&nbsp; Why not let us make Spells in there as well?&nbsp; Or items?&nbsp; Or feats?&nbsp; Wouldn't that suffice?&nbsp; I can't see how the spells from, say, the Player's Handbook would be any more special than creatures from the Monster Manual.&nbsp; I have 171 homebrew spells in my game because it's a magic-heavy setting, and I really &nbsp;wish I didn't have to re-enter water whip every time I gave it to an NPC. This would mean everything falls into the same category as existing creatures do.&nbsp; If you're reasonably confident in the way the transmogrifier&nbsp;handles creatures, why not let the same apply to other entity types?

Seriously, this would be such a Quality of Life improvement for those of us that create custom...well...everything.&nbsp;

+1Ill just add my few cents to this.&nbsp; I believe this would be a good idea for people that run Homebrew (like myself).&nbsp; At least give the power to make custom Items.&nbsp; I've been toying with Legendary and Cursed items lately and i would love an easier way to add it in game.&nbsp;&nbsp;

+1 I am currently running a Cyberpunk 2020 game which would benefit&nbsp;IMMENSELY with a compendium system which would allow me to input data once and then be able to drag and drop it into existing&nbsp;characters sheets, especially with making NPC mobs and opponents. Right now I have to manually input&nbsp;every item I can into a "generic npc", duplicate it then delete the items I'm not going to use.&nbsp; At this point, I've&nbsp;given up and just have&nbsp;npc's&nbsp;on a separate document to save time setting up the adventure. Which eliminates every automated feature for roll20.

I have 50+ characters in my game, 40 of them generic npc, and 300+ handouts. I would like to have some of these in a compendium, to keep the journal more organized and the loadtime at a minimum.&nbsp;

Are there anyplan's on adding Xanathar's Guide To Everything? You've got a lot of DnD 5e players here, and it'd be very helpful.

Hi, Andre. We announced this in the Early 2019 Roadmap - Xanathar's will be coming by the end of January. Andre The Mage said: Are there anyplan's on adding Xanathar's Guide To Everything? You've got a lot of DnD 5e players here, and it'd be very helpful.

That's very interesting, as idea

We're very interested in Custom Compendiums. However, there are several issues preventing us from implementing them right away. The largest blocker is how difficult it is to add data to the compendium. There is a secondary issue of preventing this from becoming a piracy-focused tool. We're currently improving data entry to make this process less difficult in coordination with 3rd party developers who would like their systems here in Roll20. Once we've streamlined that process, we'll solve certain data storage and sharing issues before development can begin. An initial plan for Personal Compendiums would include: User will have many Systems (to keep one game system from interfering with unrelated rule sets) Systems would have Categories (Bestiary, Class, Weapon, Spells, etc) Categories would have Entries

kenton h. said: We're very interested in Custom Compendiums. However, there are several issues preventing us from implementing them right away. The largest blocker is how difficult it is to add data to the compendium. There is a secondary issue of preventing this from becoming a piracy-focused tool. We're currently improving data entry to make this process less difficult in coordination with 3rd party developers who would like their systems here in Roll20. Once we've streamlined that process, we'll solve certain data storage and sharing issues before development can begin. An initial plan for Personal Compendiums would include: User will have many Systems (to keep one game system from interfering with unrelated rule sets) Systems would have Categories (Bestiary, Class, Weapon, Spells, etc) Categories would have Entries The piracy thing has been mentioned before, but I've never heard an example of how this is possible. Could you elaborate? What is the difference between someone adding all of the content to handouts? I think people look at Custom Compendiums for use in their own games, or is there a concern that the format is too easily distributable? I think people just want a game where they can add their own entries. I, personally would love to be able to add homebrew content to the 5e Compendium.

kenton h. said: We're very interested in Custom Compendiums. However, there are several issues preventing us from implementing them right away. The largest blocker is how difficult it is to add data to the compendium. There is a secondary issue of preventing this from becoming a piracy-focused tool. We're currently improving data entry to make this process less difficult in coordination with 3rd party developers who would like their systems here in Roll20. Once we've streamlined that process, we'll solve certain data storage and sharing issues before development can begin. An initial plan for Personal Compendiums would include: User will have many Systems (to keep one game system from interfering with unrelated rule sets) Systems would have Categories (Bestiary, Class, Weapon, Spells, etc) Categories would have Entries This is criticism based on what you requested under "examples of quality moderator replies". I bear no ill-intention towards this and this is purely aimed at further improving the quality of user to developer relationships. The above post does not address the main problems that this thread is facing. First, your answer does not debunk, deny, counter or clarify what has already been said in this thread. The threat of piracy has been brought up before, but we have not received any valid methods or reasoning as to why it is an obstacle when compared to the current systems of uploading images and text to your own game. Second, power users already know you have a method of inputting data and creating custom compendiums. At least I know from what I saw with BurnBryte, which is a home made compendium given access permissions or copy and pasted to each available user. This tells us the following: You have a UI to create compendiums You have the methods of inputting data through said UI (otherwise the staff responsible for populating it would need specialized knowledge) You have methods of giving permissions and/or moving compendiums as desired. I do not know which format you use for compendiums, but I would have to assume either XML or JSON, based on what comes up in the search and how your filtering works in the in-site browser. Though I am not a whole lot of a specialist in this field, this brings us to the next problem. You can't fool those that know. Many power users will be able to understand from your responses that you have other motivations as to why custom compendiums are not happening, despite the technological foundations already existing. Perhaps your sales of official sourcebooks will dwindle, perhaps you wish to monetize utility. Regardless of what they are, my personal recommendation would be to come out clean and instead ask us, the users, as to what a better way to carry your motivations are. I understand this is a hard thing to do, but this is the minimum required to recover lost faith in the suggestion forums.

And concern for loss of $ from folks perhaps purchasing less material from the Marketplace is not applicable to many systems where there are no modules or specific material (nor likely ever will be), and some where if you're lucky, there may be a handful of token packs &amp; a few dozen maps that are of use for a game setting.&nbsp;

This is absolutely a must have feature, the quality of life improvement over the current methods of sharing homebrew content would be a thousand fold. We've come a far away, but there is yet so much that can be improved upon. The sad excuses so far does not make hopeful though.