[Questions] Roll20 Roundtable Hour #1 - Q1 2017

The Roll20 Roundtable Hour is a place for our users to meet up with us in a live format, ask questions, and get some insight into the inner workings of Roll20. View the announcement post  here . To help us prepare in advance for the show, please share your questions below -- remember keep it brief and keep it civil, please review the  CoC to ensure you post by the rules of the site. Users are limited to 2 short questions each and we ask that you start a new reply for each of your questions to help us organize all of your responses. Any questions not answered in the live roundtable will be addressed in this thread by our staff before the next roundtable event. If you find a question in this thread that you really want us to answer live, please quote it and add a +1 so we can count up the most popular questions. Please try not to repeat questions that have already been asked. If you are interested in discussing the questions you see in this thread, please join us live on Twitch this Tuesday, March 28th at 11am Pacific Time. See you Tuesday! *This event has ended. Please see the  [Responses] Roll20 Roundtable Hour #1 - Q1 2017 thread for answers the questions below and a link to the live event.

1) Is anything going to be done about the suggestion graveyard?  Currently it feels like it is actively ignored in favor of whatever the devs decide they would rather be doing. 2) Is there any plan to lower prices as products (mostly modules) mature?  $49.99 forever seems like too much for Storm Kings Thunder (for example). Thanks for doing this.  I look forward to increase communication with the dev team.

Question 1.) Will you all ever be able to implement a toggle system to games? Example being able to switch a token when entering half health, or switching visions/light by macro or some other way. Question 2.) Will the R20 app for Android soon be compatible with more phones/systems and are you planning on adding more to it to make it a more directly helpful tool?

Khrain said: 1) Is anything going to be done about the suggestion graveyard?  Currently it feels like it is actively ignored in favor of whatever the devs decide they would rather be doing. +1 from me for this question. Thank you for giving us this opportunity to get some insight from you guys!

What is the current status of the Pathfinder compendium?  Are there plans to update the layout and organization similar to 5e's?  Will the roll20 community ever be allowed to update the compendium again?

Khrain said: 1) Is anything going to be done about the suggestion graveyard?  Currently it feels like it is actively ignored in favor of whatever the devs decide they would rather be doing. +1 to this question. I understand the past year had seen some necessary foundation changes (some planned and some unplanned), as well as expanding ways to monetize things. Both of which keep Roll20 going and in business in the future, but the Suggestions could really use some attention. A better method might be two or three times a year the devs select (from the Suggestions forum or from Roll20 internal plans) 10 enhancements (for example). Then for two weeks users can vote for 5 from those 10 for the devs to work on. Khrain said: 2) Is there any plan to lower prices as products (mostly modules) mature? $49.99 forever seems like too much for Storm Kings Thunder (for example). Somewhat of a +1 to this question. I understand that your licensing agreement with WotC probably does not allow you to regularly charge less than full price. But I do note that a competing product offers occasional discounts and sales on WotC products, and I am hoping you can do the same. I want to see Roll20 succeed and pay its staff, but I also want to see it be able to compete and attract users. Khrain said: Thanks for doing this. I look forward to increase communication with the dev team. Definitely +1 to this!

Will we be seeing the 5e PHB, DMG as buying options in the Roll20 Store? And if so are you able to say if it's sooner rather than later? Will we be seeing the Pathfinder Core Rulebook/s as a buying option in the Roll20 Store, and are there plans to release Adventure Paths? Really glad that you are doing this! :)

Many people I've played with bemoan the minimal social networking functionality on the site. Much of the development focus seems to be on the game client, but what about things like friend lists, community groups, and better forum management tools? Could you share some long-term plans / overall goals for expanding and improving how players use the site?

Khrain said: 1) Is anything going to be done about the suggestion graveyard?  Currently it feels like it is actively ignored in favor of whatever the devs decide they would rather be doing. +1

Vince said: What is the current status of the Pathfinder compendium?  Are there plans to update the layout and organization similar to 5e's?  Will the roll20 community ever be allowed to update the compendium again? +1   This is my main concern right now.  Also a huge thanks to Vince and all the other guys working on the amazing Pathfinder Sheets.  I would not be using Roll20 at all if not for the great work you guys put in for free.  Roll20 is a great platform, but without your character sheets it is of very limited utility to me.

1) The suggestion graveyard/forum is not really useful. Suggestions should not simply be ordered by votes, this puts too much emphasis on old or flashy suggestions. What is your plan on improving this? A well functioning suggestions/issue tracker is core to an involved and loyal community. Categories, filtering, more involvement from Devs, many options to improve this part. 2) Your volunteer developers putting many many hours of time in creating scripts/sheets that use the Roll20 API are an important part of roll20 community. Together they are adding a large amount of value to your product. What are your plans to improve their QOL within roll20? For example more features on the Dev server to test scripts interfacing with paid content.

1) Any plans to enhance the dice roll engine to handle multiple dice critical hit/failure? Like being able to roll {2d6}cf2cs12 for example, and test it with the roll template helper functions?

Users are limited to 2 short questions each and we ask that you start a new reply for each of your questions to help us organize all of your responses Everyone seems to have missed this instruction. :D 1) The suggestion graveyard/forum is not really useful. Suggestions should not simply be ordered by votes, this puts too much emphasis on old or flashy suggestions. What is your plan on improving this? A well functioning suggestions/issue tracker is core to an involved and loyal community. Categories, filtering, more involvement from Devs, many options to improve this part. +1 to this.

You guy have not implemented any useful updates in years. Just look at other VTs like Maptool and see what they have done. I don't expect Roll20 to do anything to make Roll20 any better. Not exactly sure why you are having this "Roundtable" other than to try and pacify the ppl that are upset that no real updates have been implemented for years.

Nelson G. said: You guy have not implemented any useful updates in years. Just look at other VTs like Maptool and see what they have done. I don't expect Roll20 to do anything to make Roll20 any better. Not exactly sure why you are having this "Roundtable" other than to try and pacify the ppl that are upset that no real updates have been implemented for years. Its a great step in the right direction, and them giving us what we sometimes not so pleasantly asked for as a community, so i dont see why you have to drag down their attempt at opening up to a more transparent discussion.  Also please review the CoC before posting: Civil Discussion Posts should be centered around adding to our community in an intelligent manner. Trolling, whining, passive aggression , reliance on memes, spamming, irritating repetition (including topic duplication), and intentionally unclear or misleading posts are not welcome. Further, while these areas are intended for adults, clearly explicit content is prohibited. Please make an effort to use the best grammar available to you.

They haven't implement any good updates and I'm not suppose to not mention it??? So basically just shut up and don't rock the boat?? Before you go on about how I'm being too critical, I pay for this service and I expect some so sort of progress, so far there have not been any.

Springroll said: Will we be seeing the 5e PHB, DMG as buying options in the Roll20 Store? And if so are you able to say if it's sooner rather than later? +1 If the 5e PHB becomes available will it be integrated with the OGL character sheet? (compendium drag/drop all spells, class features, feats, etc).

As a marketing cooperative with WotC, if the community asked for it, would you, as a company, be willing to vie on our behalf for more SRD content? (Marvel Superheroes, AD&D, Gamma Worlds, etc). While I understand you have no control over these things, sometimes it just takes the right person asking to see results.

Would you be willing to consider a subscription scale that allows some users "limited" access to paid content, so that those of us who make new content for the site can more easily integrate our efforts without having to purchase module after module that we ourselves rarely if ever use outside of incorporating content?

When the Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook, Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, or other WoTC/3rd Party content is made available:   If I (as the GM of the game, and Pro Subscriber if that matters) purchases these compendium addons, will players in games that I create be able to access these resources via the compendium and be able to drag and drop items/spells/etc. to their character sheets?

When will we get the sound working again? It's been over two months since I had stable sound effects in game. Seems like the issue was solved the day after I posted this. :P 

Vince said: What is the current status of the Pathfinder compendium?  Are there plans to update the layout and organization similar to 5e's?  Will the roll20 community ever be allowed to update the compendium again? Yeah this is one of my major concerns now. It would be exceedingly helpful to the games I run.

Any chance of GMs being able to some day add custom content to their campaigns' compendiums? Any plans in the future to extend dynamic lighting for things such as dimly lighting areas players have already seen or dynamic lighting walls that only block line-of-sight from one side? I recall someone writing an API script for the first thing mentioned for 2. I have some theories about how to pull off the second one as an API script. As for pulling these off in WebGL, here are some initial thoughts: Breadcrumb lighting: Let each player have an invisible breadcrumb polygon on each map. This polygon begins as an empty set. Let us also have an invisible dynamic lighting polygon for each player on each map. This polygon shall consist of the union of the polygons formed by the dynamic light currently viewable by each token with sight that player can control. Each time a token with sight that the player controls is moved, recompute that player's dynamic lighting polygon and then recompute the breadcrumb polygon as the union of the current breadcrumb polygon and the current dynamic lighting polygon. Next, let's do a couple rendering passes of the virtual tabletop doing some magic with stencil buffers. On the first pass, first render the player's breadcrumb polygon to a stencil buffer (initially with all pixels with the value 0x00, assuming an 8-bit stencil buffer), incrementing each pixel in the buffer by 1 where the polygon is rendered. Map-layer pixels that have a stencil value of 1 will be drawn with dim lighting. Otherwise the pixels will not be rendered (they will remain the background darkness color). On the second pass, first render the player's dynamic lighting polygon to a stencil buffer (again, initially zeroed out), incrementing each pixel drawn in the buffer. Set the stencil function to draw any pixels with a stencil value of 1 using the functions normally with appropriate lighting. Skip rendering any pixels whose stencil values are not 1. The result will draw darkness first, then the dimly lit breadcrumb areas of the map layer, then the lit areas of the map and objects layers currently visible to the player. This also will have the nice added effect of not drawing pixels of tokens that the player can't see. One-way dynamic lighting: When a dynamic lighting wall is drawn, this will require us to have some way to tell the VTT which side of the wall's line segments are see-through. When computing the current dynamically-lit area for a token, if the token is on the see-through side of the dynamic lighting wall segment (this can be tested by checking the sign of the cross-product between the segment's vector and the vector of the segment's start point to the token's center), clip that segment of the wall from the dynamic lighting computation. That's pretty much it. Probably the trickiest part of it would be deciding on the interface users would use to say which side of a wall is see-through.

1) Is anything going to be done about the suggestion graveyard? Currently it feels like it is actively ignored in favor of whatever the devs decide they would rather be doing. +1 (million) Any chance of GMs being able to some day add custom content to their campaigns' compendiums? +1 Thanks for this.  Some of my players want to move.  I do not.  But it's getting harder and harder to say no.  Hopefully this will placate them a bit.

Why are you hosting a live stream roundtable at a time when a majority of your users are going to be at work and unable to watch live?

Stephen L. said: Any chance of GMs being able to some day add custom content to their campaigns' compendiums? +1 Kevin said: When the Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook, Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, or other WoTC/3rd Party content is made available:   If I (as the GM of the game, and Pro Subscriber if that matters) purchases these compendium addons, will players in games that I create be able to access these resources via the compendium and be able to drag and drop items/spells/etc. to their character sheets? +1

Brian said: Why are you hosting a live stream roundtable at a time when a majority of your users are going to be at work and unable to watch live? The stream will be posted to our YouTube and questions answered in the thread after the event, so you'll be able to watch at your convenience.

To help us prepare in advance for the show, please share your questions below -- remember keep it brief and keep it civil, please review the  CoC to ensure you post by the rules of the site. Users are limited to 2 short questions each and we ask that you start a new reply for each of your questions to help us organize all of your responses. Any questions not answered in the live roundtable will be addressed in this thread by our staff before the next roundtable event. Greetings to all - thanks a ton for your questions so far! Please keep in mind the instructions above. This thread is meant to be a place for us to collect these questions, so please make sure to stay on-topic to help us best collect your questions. Thanks!

Kevin said: When the Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook, Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, or other WoTC/3rd Party content is made available:   If I (as the GM of the game, and Pro Subscriber if that matters) purchases these compendium addons, will players in games that I create be able to access these resources via the compendium and be able to drag and drop items/spells/etc. to their character sheets? I would like to heartily second this one. If I, as a GM am purchasing some of this great content that mods the compendium for me (Volo's guide, storm kings thunder, monster manual, etc), it would be nice allow the players in my better access to these resources; at least during game play. Also, I want better ways of browsing and searching marketplace content. Currently I have to page through individual items using the "more" button. After doing this several times, I encounter an item and want to see the included content, I click on it. That is all great. But now when i go back, I have to start all over and click through pages of "more" buttons to get back to where I was. There must be better ways to do this. Finally, I really think we need the ability to "flatten" content on the map layer. After using marketplace content to build a map, it becomes cluttered with a large number of items, and becomes difficult to work with. I'd love to be able to "flatten" this into a single png file, and possibly even download it. This would make my maps smaller, easier to load, and easier for me as a GM to work with.

Avacyn said: Brian said: Why are you hosting a live stream roundtable at a time when a majority of your users are going to be at work and unable to watch live? The stream will be posted to our YouTube and questions answered in the thread after the event, so you'll be able to watch at your convenience. I assumed the video would be posted somewhere later, but that wasn't my question. Why are you hosting a live stream  at a time when most of the people interested in its content cannot watch it live?

Brian said: Avacyn said: Brian said: Why are you hosting a live stream roundtable at a time when a majority of your users are going to be at work and unable to watch live? The stream will be posted to our YouTube and questions answered in the thread after the event, so you'll be able to watch at your convenience. I assumed the video would be posted somewhere later, but that wasn't my question. Why are you hosting a live stream  at a time when most of the people interested in its content cannot watch it live? Brian - apologies for misunderstanding your original question. The live stream time was selected to correspond with the other shows we have on Twitch. However, this event is still a work in progress, so thank you for letting us know that you do not think the time works well. We will take that into consideration as we continue to adapt. 

Springroll said: Will we be seeing the 5e PHB, DMG as buying options in the Roll20 Store? And if so are you able to say if it's sooner rather than later? Will we be seeing the Pathfinder Core Rulebook/s as a buying option in the Roll20 Store, and are there plans to release Adventure Paths? Really glad that you are doing this! :) +1 Will we be seeing the 5e PHB, DMG as buying options in the Roll20 Store?

2) Character sheet or API scripts creations and maintenance may require a lot of work, as do add-ons, modules, tokens, maps etc. Any plans to add the possibility of making them a marketplace asset (choice would be up to the character sheet/script creator), if the licence of the game or the publisher permits it of course?

Nelson G. said: They haven't implement any good updates and I'm not suppose to not mention it??? I strongly disagree (sheet worker, the compendium, playlists, library folders etc.). But it all depends on what you need/want, at a personnal level. Imho, you should be more specific about what would be usefull to you.

Hi All, Many thanks to Roll20 for being open to doing this - I hope it turns out to be a productive exercise and that it's the start of an ongoing constructive dialogue between company and users. There have been a lot of specific questions about specific features; if I may, I'd like to ask a couple of more general ones: Where do the Roll20 team see the site going in the next couple of years - what will be the core focus of the product? I think there's an assumption among many of us who write scripts/sheets/etc that Roll20 is at heart a platform - with certain core capabilities built-in, for sure, but principally a generic base on which other developers can build specific extensions. Whether or not this was true in the past, it's not clear to me that this is where the team see it going in the future. There's a lot of excitement at the moment around licensed content, and I imagine it's probably pretty  good for the bottom line; but the more that the Roll20 team look to build their own content on the core platform, the greater the likelihood that there will be awkward conflict with community developers who have invested a lot of energy in doing the same. At the end of the day, Roll20 is a business, and you guys are going to follow the money.  I don't begrudge you that, even if it doesn't end up fitting with what I want out of the site. But if you owe your community anything, I think it's to be clear and honest about your goals here; the one thing that would really embitter me is if I invest a lot of effort in continuing to build things on the platform, only to find that this side of the site is something that hasn't really been a significant part of your long term plans for a while, but you didn't really want to say that openly. Are there any architectural/technical goals that you can share with us that might influence how we design our extensions to the platform? In particular, it's clear to me from conversations with Riley that there's a limit to how far we can push our use of the API server before it becomes unsustainable for you to provide the processing power; if you do have an ongoing commitment to an extensible platform, do you have some grand plans for e.g. how we might be able to do more interesting customisation in the client, to take some of the weight off your servers? Would you be open to talking in more detail with the more technically minded of your users about this sort of stuff - perhaps we would even be able to feed in some useful ideas?

My question would be similar to Lucian's - with all the licensed content and the majority of users playing one particular RPG, is Roll 20 still committed to being system agnostic?   Is there a chance of seeing that expand to not just system agnostic, but multi-system friendly (i.e. other compendiums being made available)?

1. As a potential Marketplace creator, I have a few game designs that I'd like to contribute to the Roll20 community (for free if possible). The problem is, I use artwork gleaned from the 'net and the free assets from the marketplace for tokens and game boards. I have benefited from other's hard work for free and I'd like to give back, like pay it forward. What I'd like to know is how someone like me should produce content (i.e. a module or board game) that would not violate copyright on IP. I have looked at the huge wall of text in the Marketplace EULA and other Marketplace content links in the wiki and that just shut me right down. 2. Are people who earn money streaming their games or producing monetized Youtube videos, using token and map pieces from the marketplace, violating copyright?

1. Would you please go through the top 5 suggestions in the Suggestion Forum and briefly discuss the reasons they have not, should not, or cannot be implemented?

2. Would you consider any sort of incentive plan for your highest contributors of scripts or sheets? Or, since you do allow and encourage Patreon accounts, could you discuss any plans to provide them with sample data structures or features that will be released with your flagship content offerings? I can only imagine that providing a module or resource that is more integrated with some of your more popular 3rd party sheets or scripts, for instance, would add value to your customers.

keithcurtis said: 1. Would you please go through the top 5 suggestions in the Suggestion Forum and briefly discuss the reasons they have not, should not, or cannot be implemented? Great question.

keithcurtis said: 1. Would you please go through the top 5 suggestions in the Suggestion Forum and briefly discuss the reasons they have not, should not, or cannot be implemented? I like this question.  Plus I need to free up some votes... ;-)

Khrain said: 1) Is anything going to be done about the suggestion graveyard?  Currently it feels like it is actively ignored in favor of whatever the devs decide they would rather be doing. 2) Is there any plan to lower prices as products (mostly modules) mature?  $49.99 forever seems like too much for Storm Kings Thunder (for example). Since I have nothing original to contribute off the top of my head, I'll echo Khrain's 2 questions. Why have a suggestions forum that's not Dev-monitored? Ask your paying subscriber audience what they want and then attempt to give it to them. Simple, really.

keithcurtis said: 1. Would you please go through the top 5 suggestions in the Suggestion Forum and briefly discuss the reasons they have not, should not, or cannot be implemented? +1 to this question 2.  Are there any plans to integrate with the DND Beyond Twitch/Curse application as far as allowing character import/export?  The beyond compendium homebrew capability may demand I purchase licensed content a third time (books, roll20, and now Beyond) in order to gain all the functionality required to manage face-to-face, online, and mixed mode game sessions. 

As a character sheet developer, when can we get [Google] font support for character sheets Related Stephen's question about custom content being added to compendiums: Will we ever be able to create our own personal compendiums and what's that timeline look like? keithcurtis said: 1. Would you please go through the top 5 suggestions in the Suggestion Forum and briefly discuss the reasons they have not, should not, or cannot be implemented? +1

1) Roll20 has some platform limitations around lighting (no integration of Fog of War and lighting, for starters) and around the way the map + tokens is drawn (one big image is my understanding). Are you looking at rethinking the way those parts of roll20 work, possibly using up-and-coming technologies like WebAssembly? The effort required would be great; the payoff potentially just as great: Animated GIFs for tokens and background elements become an option; lighting can do things it can't do now and still be performing well; maybe even the API load is lessened if WebAssembly becomes an option on that side. Edit: Oh, and Unity could be used to develop roll20 if using WebAssembly, which in and of itself sounds like a treasure trove of functionality that'd become available.

keithcurtis said: 1. Would you please go through the top 5 suggestions in the Suggestion Forum and briefly discuss the reasons they have not, should not, or cannot be implemented? I'm looking forward to that.

The Comm system is execrable, is there any chance of either fixing it, I personally would be willing to lose the video to get consistent decent quality for the audio even though I do use the video for some of my games. I run D&D 2E, so many of my players are not tech savvy and have lower end computers, this may be a part of the problem, but tokbox worked fine. Currently I am using Skype for audio, but that software is well known for problems and hogging a lot of memory, which creates another set of problems for them. I have a mid range to lower high end computer and everything works good for me, but if I can't talk to my players... I personally would be willing to pay a little more to have an in app comm system that meets my and my player's needs.

keithcurtis said: 1. Would you please go through the top 5 suggestions in the Suggestion Forum and briefly discuss the reasons they have not, should not, or cannot be implemented? +1 for this.

Would it possible for sheet developers to have somewhere they can test sheets which behaves in the same way as the production server drop down. There is growing number of instances where a sheet tests fine on the custom sheet yet does not function or does not display correctly from the production server   drop down. 

Hard to think of questions that aren't just jeopardyized suggestions. 1. I noticed some of the bugs have been worked out of the mobile version of roll20, which is great. Just not most of the big ones which is less great. I'm just wondering if the mobile platform is even on your minds. Because it would be super helpful to people who want to play but can't sit at home on their computers. 2. And I've seen a lot of announcements relating to D&D 5e content. And I'm sure Wizards gives you a lot of financial incentive for it. It does leave me worried that all the attention you are giving to this new content, is leaving everyone and everything else neglected. The question is implicit in the above text. I can't think of a good way to word it explicitely.

Khrain said: 1) Is anything going to be done about the suggestion graveyard?  Currently it feels like it is actively ignored in favor of whatever the devs decide they would rather be doing. +1, my group has taken an extended break from Roll20 due to waiting for features such as fog of war for dynamic lightning. I don't know why I'm still paying a sub while waiting around for this. keithcurtis said: 1. Would you please go through the top 5 suggestions in the Suggestion Forum and briefly discuss the reasons they have not, should not, or cannot be implemented? +1