Multi-Module Mashups

I'm running my players through a mashup of the first four D&D Adventurers League modules, but they're all written as modules rather than add-ons so... it makes it hard. What's the state-of-the art of mashing modules together? As an aside, is there a reason that people are writing modules rather than add-ons? As a consumer, I can't see any benefits to a module over an addon. Are there any?

I can't give any official answer (because I honestly have no insight), but I would guess that it is largely to protect users from themselves. Modules are huge. Many of them stretch the capabilities of Roll20 to the edge. I can very easily imagine the number of frustrated users, who, having finished an addon of Curse of Strahd, add an instance of Dungeon of the Mad Mage to the same game. It would just break, causing unhappy customers and stressed out staff trying to fix the issues. I can agree that it seems odd to release the AL adventures as modules though, I would not have thought they were big enough to warrant that. There may be other concerns involved.

Hey Keith, thanks for the response. I appreciate you taking the time. If anyone from roll20 is listening, and if Keith's suppositions are correct, I'll say this: "protecting people from themselves" is a perennial source of pain for software users. If there are meaningful limits, roll20 should expose and enforce them and allow people to make conscious decisions about the content of a module. If you don't, you just end up with people coming up with workarounds - as I will - that are frustrating in of themselves, and with reduced user engagement - I'm looking at fantasy grounds as an alternative.

Where would you draw the line? Roll20 has similar blocks to prevent loading unwieldy graphic or audio files. If those were removed, the number of users trying to run a 5gb map in their browser window would skyrocket, their game would break, they would complain, Roll20 would need to fix manually, causing frustration from the user, work hours from the dev team and generally leave a bad impression from the number of public complaints. At some point you need to institute caps. That limit will be different for every single user since there are innumerable variables, so a limit of one giant module per game doesn't sound unreasonable. Again, this is all assuming my theory is right. I wouldn't risk the farm on that. :)

There have to be limits; clear, meaningful limits. And you want to be open and transparent about them. Individual files need a size limit. You tell people what it is. Then you reject files above that size. You point people at tools to reduce file sizes or, preferably, perform the downsizing for them. There has to be a limit to the number of files in a game. You tell people what that is. You tell people how many assets are in a module. You allow people to upload or import files up to that point. If the limit is X, they have Y and a module contains more than (X - Y) you tell them what these numbers are and give them tools to offload files to stay under the limit. This leaves users safe, roll20 has no project-by-project repair work to do and people can manage things with clear constraints. At the moment there's no clarity on what or why. People can load assets into projects until they break and then they have to seek help. Or they're like me, blocked from pulling entirely manageable numbers of assets into a game by protections put in place for other scenarios. Being transparent about constraints also creates opportunity. Downgrading assets might well be a feature that only happens for Pro account users, or perhaps for subscribers to an additional service. Or, perhaps Pro and Plus users get different amounts of game storage and file limits.

I would have answered this in a different way from the above.  The answer is the Character Vault. This is Roll20's intended and implemented, available solution for running multiple modules. Try the character vault. Move characters from one module, to another module in another game table. Second answer is Transmogrifier. Transmog is a Pro feature, you are a pro. Use Transmog to combine sub-sections of modules ("Hey I really need that one town from Big City Heist, to use in the new game of Dungeon Under The City"). This is also easy, available in Roll20 now, and is intended to resolve the problems mentioned in the 1st post. These aren't really workarounds, these are existing tools in Roll20 that accomplish the purpose that you wanted, without making crashes more likely.

Well then, the limit is 1 module per game. One module works for the vast majority of users. Two modules likely breaks the performance for most users. Don't know what else to say, given that whole conversation is based on a mere guess by a bystander (me). Gold has given the expected work flow, though.

Hey Gold, thanks for trying to help me out. The Character Vault is what I've got to work with, and often that's often what I do. This time, the modules are linked - parts 1, 2 and 3, and I've tried using the Transmogrifier, but it kinda throws away all carefully curated structure. Not the end of the world, but.. irritating.

Hey Keith. Having been researching this subject - which revealed thousands of repeats of exactly this conversation, and the fact that roll20 created addons to solve the problem, one module per game does not work for all users. I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to write and trying to help me out, though.

Rob said: Hey Keith. Having been researching this subject - which revealed thousands of repeats of exactly this conversation, and the fact that roll20 created addons to solve the problem, one module per game does not work for all users. I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to write and trying to help me out, though. Ha! I've enjoyed the conversation, and I think it's funny that so many others have. Now that we have the ability to delete entire folders of content at one swoop, it does make addons much easier to manage at any rate.

Rob said: Hey Keith. Having been researching this subject - which revealed thousands of repeats of exactly this conversation, and the fact that roll20 created addons to solve the problem, one module per game does not work for all users. I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to write and trying to help me out, though. People end up making games that get so large the servers can't really handle them.  Some of the published modules already are about as large as they want to allow things to get, I think.  This is based on seeing a couple threads 2-3 years ago where people were trying to copy their game.  The game was larger then DotMM (at least I think that was the comparison, it has been a while) by at least twice, and the server was timing out during copying.  There is a suggestion somewhere in the suggestion forums to get the size of each campaign disclosed, so you might track that down and add your vote/comment to it.  I suppose that would be the first step to finding out what amount of data usually starts causing problems.  Just being told how much data is a problem won't be of any use until we actually know how big (data wise) our games are. The other thing about combining modules is that if there are any characters, handouts or maps named the same, it is possible they will overwrite each other.  Sometimes you may not care if it overwrites, but it also might not be something you want to happen.  Even if they don't overwrite each other, you can't be sure which one will be chosen if you make a handout or character bio link to a handout or character name that has multiples.  Multiple characters with the same name can confuse macros also. Anyway, just a few things to think that would go into combining everything/anything.

Kraynic said: The other thing about combining modules is that if there are any characters, handouts or maps named the same, it is possible they will overwrite each other.  Sometimes you may not care if it overwrites, but it also might not be something you want to happen.  Even if they don't overwrite each other, you can't be sure which one will be chosen if you make a handout or character bio link to a handout or character name that has multiples.  Multiple characters with the same name can confuse macros also. I would choose to handle this by having it append the name or initials of the module to the name of the character/handout/map. So you have Townhall and Townhall, now one is Townhall DOTMM and the other is Townhall DIA, and this automatically happens in the conversion process to any potential overwrites. Even better, allow the GM to determine what is appended to any overlaps in the new addition. Now the overlapping Townhall is Townhall Session B or Townhall Sam's game or Townhall Code Blue or Townhall B, whatever the GM desires. Obviously when I transfer files and there is a potential overlap in Windows, it is possible to make them append numbers instead of overwriting. Then, replace the arbitrary limit of 1 module lest someone break something possibly, with a hard set in stone data limit, you can only have one gigabyte in a game before it begins to slow down so much it's unusable, etc, you can have no more than 10000 images, you can have no more than 500 pages, whatever. While I have never wanted to combine two modules, I can see how, in a hobby fed into by the desire to choose your own adventure, someone could reach a mondo campaign of the scale where they'd desire two modules to play with. It's not exactly like playing two video games at the same time. A campaign setting is something that can be personally picked and chosen from. You might want this town and that castle and also that other dungeon crawl because you made up a handful of links and now it works, even though it wasn't in the Grand Plan. Improvisation is the name of the game. Anything that limits that, is going to drive some people away. Someone who reaches the limits of Roll20 is going to want a more powerful tool. I suppose that might be some of the other VTTs, so, ultimately Roll20 has to either compete or make something better if their competitors offer that kind of functionality. Chances are good, on the other hand, that other VTT will have some other problem that drives you nuts. It might be hard, and it might take a lot of money before they can fund the investigation into how to code this without breaking everything. The only other solution I can think of is if they actually pre-combined some popular module combinations to be purchased as a set which can be used in one game. Then any overlaps could be debugged beforehand, and it can be limited to modules small enough to combine easily. These could be purchased or made available freely to anyone who has those modules both purchased. Not the drag and drop that people might want, but possibly the most easily created solution.

The thing is, they've already built the mechanism for doing it: addons. Many modules such as Ghosts of Saltmarsh, Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, and Tales from the Yawning Portal come as addons, today. (To be precise, W:DH comes as a module and 4 addons). So, you can do what I'm asking for today, you just can't do it consistently.