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Roll20: Broken by design -- user model and program model

November 16 (1 year ago)

Edited November 16 (1 year ago)

Figuring out how to link tokens to players last night brought an old essay to mind: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/11/figuring-out-what-they-expected/

(Spolsky was nobody then. Now he is quite rich, having sold stackoverflow.) His point is that the program needs to work the way users would expect it to work. That is *not* the way tokens work with characters.

First, you can have a many-to-one relationship, which is utterly confusing. Logically, a character should only be on one map at a time.

Second, you have to both link the character sheet to the token, *and* the token to the character, which is bizarre. One should imply the other.

Third, the UI is confusing (which is bad). Tokens *both* have a context menu, and a set of icons (e.g., the gear), and you have to use both and know what is where. If you are going to have menus, menus should be able to do what "shortcut" icons do.

Having come from AboveVTT (and already questioning that), I can only say... it was significantly easier to learn, and far more discoverable. Roll20 is clearly the older, more stable product (which is why I came), but... Ugh. UI needs a lot of love.

November 16 (1 year ago)

Not being able to have multiple tokens controlled by a single character sheet would make a GM's job quite unwieldy. If I have a party of 12 goblins I don't want to have 12 individual goblin character sheets cluttering up the journal. Likewise, pre-placing player tokens on different maps helps to speed up encounters especially when an encounter spans multiple maps.

As for linking tokens to character sheets, I suppose it depends on the character sheet? With the D&D for 5E by Roll20 sheet, it is one-step process.

Adam C. said

First, you can have a many-to-one relationship, which is utterly confusing. Logically, a character should only be on one map at a time.

Second, you have to both link the character sheet to the token, *and* the token to the character, which is bizarre. One should imply the other.

Third, the UI is confusing (which is bad). Tokens *both* have a context menu, and a set of icons (e.g., the gear), and you have to use both and know what is where. If you are going to have menus, menus should be able to do what "shortcut" icons do.



November 16 (1 year ago)

Edited November 16 (1 year ago)
Gold
Forum Champion

I see the perspective you're coming from, not wrong, but the upside is ----

once you learn how Roll20 does this, it works ok. There is some internal logic. There are some games with some use-cases for having "a" character on multiple maps. In roll20 you (the GM) have the power to configure it.  Sure the UI of the configuration is not intuitive, it is clunky at times, but once you get familiar with the options (and especially once you engage with PRO sub and API mod scripts) it gets wildly easier. With !token-mod Mod Script you can do a lot of this type of config really really fast and consistent. 

Again i'm not saying philosophically that they've done it the best way. I'm just advising that as a PRO power-user, you're likely to learn the workarounds and tricks to navigate this GUI yourself, a lot faster than the time it's going to take for Roll20 to completely re-do everything so that it makes sense intuitively. 

Also they are gradually and steadily making progress in the area of UI lately (this past 1 year), so who knows, maybe your Comment will come to fruition soon afterall. 

November 16 (1 year ago)

You don't have to implement it as 12 different character sheets in a journal. Go look at how it works in AboveVTT. Essentially, every created token can represent a unique monster. It links back to the DNDBeyond Character sheet.

I don't disagree that there are edge cases to be handled, but you should start by handling the modal cases well, in a way that makes it easy to learn. Roll20 fails hard there.

No question that in the near term, I have to work with what Roll20 is now. What the long term is, I don't know. Roll20 had a head start, but I think there will be more competition, and their awkward UI may become a competitive disadvantage. Or maybe they will fix it.

I am not really inclined to spend a lot of time becoming an expert in Roll20 scripting. Only so much free time, and software development is my day job.

November 16 (1 year ago)

I understand (and even agree with) your points on the non-intuitive nature of Roll20, and that's particularly bad for the casual player.  The learning curve for new players can be quite painful.

Having said that, as a DM, being able to have characters on multiple maps is a plus since i can set up the party position in advance and just switch to the map quickly as far as the player's perceive events, where differences between the two maps (eg a road vs a 1-wide rope bridge) don't allow a simple cut/paste of the whole group onto the new map in their existing marching order.  I use this feature multiple times per gaming session.

And the many to one nature of tokens is important for representing NPC/Monster opponents, where they're essentially identical other than hp. It is a little confusing to not link token hp to sheet hp when everything else is linked, but it's a very useful mechanic.

Much of Roll20's cruft is, I think, because it evolved over time and has never been rationalized back into a consistent design (in part because that would break a lot of things, like scripts, used by experienced players and DMs).  But the current development activities don't seem to be afraid of breaking things, and while I'm often a vocal complainer when they do, if the end result is more intuitive, I can't really say they were wrong to do so (just wish they'd found a smoother transition). Tokens, and related things like token condition markers, could definitely use improvement, as you can see from the sheer number of suggestions related to tokens on this forum.

November 17 (1 year ago)

Edited November 17 (1 year ago)

But isn't that the "many to one" relationship that you found confusing?  Being able to have several individual tokens link back to one character is also how it works in Roll20.

Adam C. said:

You don't have to implement it as 12 different character sheets in a journal. Go look at how it works in AboveVTT. Essentially, every created token can represent a unique monster. It links back to the DNDBeyond Character sheet.

November 17 (1 year ago)

Edited November 17 (1 year ago)
Gold
Forum Champion

The Mod Scripts of Roll20 (formerly called "API") will be All the more-so easier with your software experience as it is, I bet, Adam. 

You don't need to write, code, author the Roll20 scripts! They are already written and created by the community, with some of the Top contributors being The Aaron, and keithcurtis (and others).

There is a library of pre-written scripts that you install to your game with "the 1-click" feature.

Only slightly more complex (you got this!), is Copy-Pasting prewritten scripts (called "snippits") that people posted on the Forums which are not yet authorized in "the 1-click". 

Both the 1-click and Snippits are suppppper easy for someone with your apparent interests and skills. No coding required. It's almost nearly plug-and-play. They are your friend. Especially since you're already PRO account, and already GUI-focused.  This is nothing against your points where Roll20 can do better & differently, this is coming from a place of trying to open more doors for you as a fellow VTT master. 

The only thing you need to learn after installing 1-click Mods (or snippits) is the !Command-word for the config menu of that script.  

It's usually one of these, and it will tell you for sure in the README, 

!script-name help
!script-name menu
!script-name --help
!script-name --menu

I really think you'd enjoy it, and use your existing expertise to learn this in a few minutes/hours, which will make your game control more powerful and quicker from then onwards.

By the way i am not a representative of Roll20 at all, i'm more of a power-user that wants to encourage others to take maximum advantage of what exists, and to grow the overall Roll20 Mod Scripts userbase. 

The fun part is absolutely going thru The 1-click for these Mods (pre-written scripts) and seeing which ones are useful offers for your gameplay style. It's like a kid in a candy store. 

Adam C. said:

I am not really inclined to spend a lot of time becoming an expert in Roll20 scripting. Only so much free time, and software development is my day job.




November 18 (1 year ago)

No. Having multiple tokens that represent multiple monsters makes sense... if anything, Roll20 makes that harder than it should be, by automatically linking them. Because multiple monsters *aren't* the same character, they are instances of the same character "cookie cutter", potentially with different numbers of hitpoints or names.

My criticism is of having multiple tokens (across multiple maps) that represent the same character, which is confusing and, in practice, messy. Sure, there might be edge cases where a character for some reason should be on multiple maps at the same time (although I think it's rare), but that could be handled by more elegantly than having to copy tokens to each map.

Rick A. said:

But isn't that the "many to one" relationship that you found confusing?  Being able to have several individual tokens link back to one character is also how it works in Roll20.

Adam C. said:

You don't have to implement it as 12 different character sheets in a journal. Go look at how it works in AboveVTT. Essentially, every created token can represent a unique monster. It links back to the DNDBeyond Character sheet.




November 18 (1 year ago)

We see things differently. :)

Gold gave you a good overview of some of the option avaiable here. I hope you find a way that works for you.

Adam C. said:

No. Having multiple tokens that represent multiple monsters makes sense... if anything, Roll20 makes that harder than it should be, by automatically linking them. Because multiple monsters *aren't* the same character, they are instances of the same character "cookie cutter", potentially with different numbers of hitpoints or names.

My criticism is of having multiple tokens (across multiple maps) that represent the same character, which is confusing and, in practice, messy. Sure, there might be edge cases where a character for some reason should be on multiple maps at the same time (although I think it's rare), but that could be handled by more elegantly than having to copy tokens to each map.

Rick A. said:

But isn't that the "many to one" relationship that you found confusing?  Being able to have several individual tokens link back to one character is also how it works in Roll20.

Adam C. said:

You don't have to implement it as 12 different character sheets in a journal. Go look at how it works in AboveVTT. Essentially, every created token can represent a unique monster. It links back to the DNDBeyond Character sheet.







November 18 (1 year ago)
D G.
Pro

Having tokens across maps are needed under specific cases. Some have been mentioned already like prepositioning Party and Monster positions. I know in my case i use it for the Teleport API. 

November 18 (1 year ago)

I for one don't consider these to be edge cases, either, since I and at least 3 other GMs that I know use this capability in every session of every one of our games. In a typical 4 hour game session I'll use anywhere from 1 to 4 maps, all with preposition tokens.

NPCs pulled from compendium normally have their tokens set up as linked to their character sheet except for hit points, which are preset but not linked. When I first started GMing on Roll20 I made the mistake of linking the hp too; I learned that lesson quickly.

D G. said:

Having tokens across maps are needed under specific cases. Some have been mentioned already like prepositioning Party and Monster positions. I know in my case i use it for the Teleport API. 




November 22 (1 year ago)
Pat
Pro
API Scripter

There is one thing that Roll20 could do to make things easier - allow instancing of tokens from character sheets that use images from the Marketplace. That's the major holdup that means having to pre-copy tokens to other pages for Teleport. If tokens could be instanced, then they could be *truly* teleported (destroyed on the exiting page, reproduced on the target page) 

November 23 (1 year ago)
Gauss
Forum Champion


Adam C. said:

No. Having multiple tokens that represent multiple monsters makes sense... if anything, Roll20 makes that harder than it should be, by automatically linking them. Because multiple monsters *aren't* the same character, they are instances of the same character "cookie cutter", potentially with different numbers of hitpoints or names.

Hi Adam C.,

Just to clarify, the way Roll20 is set up is to allow one character sheet for many NPCs. Yes, it makes the PC side of it a bit harder to set up, but the NPC side works great as a result. 

Example: 
You drop an 10 Orcs on the table. All 10 Orcs use the same Character. However, they can have different HP, names, etc. in the token. 

IF you are running into cases where changing the HP on one Orc changes the HP on another Orc, that means the tokens are set up incorrectly. The HP bars are linked to the Character and they should not be. 

The way it works: 
Unique characters are one token per Character, with all the bars linked to the Character sheet. 
Non-unique characters (such as Orcs) are many tokens per character, with at least some of the bars (such as HP) NOT linked to the Character sheet. 

This allows flexibility for both systems, without weighing the system down with one character sheet per non-unique NPC. 

December 17 (1 year ago)
Roll20 Dev Team
Pro
Marketplace Creator

Thanks for the suggestion!

After 30 days, Suggestions and Ideas with fewer than 10 votes are closed and the votes are refunded to promote freshness.

Your suggestion didn't build the right momentum this time, but feel free to submit it again! We find that the best suggestions describe the problem you are having, and the solution you want. You can learn more about the process of making suggestions on the Roll20 Wiki! More details can be found here.