Roll20 uses cookies to improve your experience on our site. Cookies enable you to enjoy certain features, social sharing functionality, and tailor message and display ads to your interests on our site and others. They also help us understand how our site is being used. By continuing to use our site, you consent to our use of cookies. Update your cookie preferences .
×
Create a free account

Can D&D 2024 content be usable with the old D&D sheet?

Score + 16
So first, the purpose of this post is not to attack the new D&D 2024 sheet.  I think it has a lot of potential once they get it to a point where it can function properly and have all the benefits of the old sheet.  The problem is, I run seven weekly D&D games and none of my players (nor I) want to use the new D&D sheet because it just doesn't work as well as the old sheet.  We have to copy/paste all the content into the old sheets to be able to play with the new content and I don't feel like that's acceptable.  I really want to support roll20, but there's no point in buying any of the 2024 material if it doesn't work with the 2014 sheet.  Is there any chance that roll20 will make the new content compatible with the old sheet for the time being?  Maybe later when the new sheet has reached the level of functionality the old sheet possesses, we can justify using it.  But right now, the lack of API support, lag, lack of basic functionality, and just broken options make the new sheet unusable in my opinion. Again, I love roll20 and love the potential of the new sheet. But it's just not at a place where I can use it and I really want to continue to support roll20 by buying all the books, but can't justify doing so if the functionality isn't linked to a sheet I (we) can use.  It would be smarter for me to just buy the PDFs and copy/paste the data into the old sheet. Thanks for listening and great work on the new jumpgate stuff! =)
I totally agree 👍
From what I've read, the D&D 5E 2014 by Roll20 character sheet is 12 years old and has been updated, patched and tweaked so much that it's simply not possible to incorporate the 2024 changes into it without a complete re-write. Instead of doing that using the old sheet architecture, Roll20 has decided to create the new sheet using a more modern one (called Beacon). For various reasons that I personally don't understand (because writing software is not part of my skill set) it's not going as well as planned.
1736900499

Edited 1736900760
Gauss
Forum Champion
I can speak a little bit to the difficulty with Beacon, as an outside non-programmer who has been involved in discussions with those that are programmers.  I am told that it is very powerful and flexible in the way it does things on the back end. But it is all "behind the curtain" and not exposed to Roll20.  Thus the main issue, Roll20 was built on customizability. Want to do something? We have a macro, script, or some other way for you to do that! So the Roll20 Devs have to build a bridge between Roll20 and Beacon to enable things like macros, scripts, etc. to customize the sheets the way folks expect.  And that is on top of the usual issues with working with a new technology and a brand new sheet that had a timeline forced  on it   by an outside party. 
I doubt the 2014 sheet could be updated to handle the new content in a cost-effective manner.  However, as someone who runs a 2014 campaign today, and would like to gradually add 2024 content, without forcing an entirely different, and to my mind less easy to use, sheet on my players, I'm going to throw in my +1 anyway. I do recognize that Roll20 had to implement the new sheet under time pressure and finishing that work has got to be where their focus is for now.  But longer term, it would be great if they did something more format-compatible with the 2014 sheet as an alternate sheet, or if they could somehow find a way (unlikely as it is) to support the old sheet with the new content.
I think the new sheet is more intuitive (assuming it worked bug-free), but it has way less customizability.  One thing that drives me crazy is that when I ask players to link things like spell descriptions, the new sheet only links about half the information leaving out things like range and components...