[Responses] Roll20 Roundtable Hour #1 - Q1 2017

Last week we took to the streets of Twitch for the first in our new quarterly chats from the Dev Team. Our goal for this event was to create a place for our users to meet up with us in a live setting, ask questions, and get some insight into the inner workings of Roll20. Check out the full video now on YouTube . Side note… as a result of your feedback from this event, we’ve launched the Roll20 Community Corner! A weekly series of forum posts/blogs from the Roll20 Dev Team. The Roll20 Community Corner will feature updates from our Dev Team on the development of the site, along with some cool things we think you might want to check out from from our incredibly passionate and talented community, like API Scripts, Sheets, Marketplace Packs, and more.  Roll20 Community Corner #1: 3/31/2017 &  Roll20 Community Corner #2: 4/7/2017 are available now, with a new edition every Friday! Below you’ll find responses from our Dev Team to your questions posted previously. Questions answered live on Twitch are noted below and responses are paraphrased, please see the full video for the most detailed reply. Links to specific answers from the video are linked at the appropriate timestamp for each question, so you will not have to jump through the video to find the reply you are looking for, just click the “reply on YouTube” link below. To see the complete question from each user, click their name below or check out the full [Questions] Roll20 Roundtable Hour #1 - Q1 2017 thread .

Khrain - Is anything going to be done about the suggestion graveyard? Link to the reply on YouTube . There have actually been a lot of suggestions completed in the last year. However, a lack of resources and recent infrastructure changes (like Video/Voice Chat, Jukebox, etc) have prevented us from hitting your top 5 most requested features. New team members are coming soon and to give greater visibility to new suggestion we are changing the default mode of browsing the Suggestions Forum to activity mode.

2. Khrain - Any plan to lower prices as products (mostly modules) mature? a. For all questions related to Products & Licensing, please see the reply on YouTube .

3.  Herman R. - Will you all ever be able to implement a toggle system to games? a. That is actually the purpose the the API, you might considering checking out TokenMod .

4.  Herman R. - Will the Roll20 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? a. We’re interested in doing more on mobile overall, mostly because the amount of users that are taking Roll20 to their in-person games. Truth be told, we’ll probably have to tackle this with a direct hire somewhere down the road.

5.&nbsp; Vince and Kevin had questions about the Compendium. a.&nbsp;Link to the reply on YouTube . b.&nbsp;We want more Compendiums for Open Gaming License works. What we need is structured data: <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Compendium#The_Basic_Structure_of_a_Compendium_Page_JSON" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Compendium#The_Basic_Structure_of_a_Compendium_Page_JSON</a> c.&nbsp;There are no plans for player-direct access (to protect the copyright and prevent piracy), but you do have the ability to share specific entries in-game via handouts, journal, etc - the way you would share your book at the table.

6.&nbsp; Springroll - Will we be seeing the 5e PHB, DMG as buying options in the Roll20 Store? a. For all questions related to Products & Licensing, please see the reply on YouTube .

7.&nbsp; Springroll - Will we be seeing the Pathfinder Core Rulebook/s? a. For all questions related to Products & Licensing, please see the reply on YouTube .

8.&nbsp; TED - ...what about things like friend lists, community groups, and better forum management tools? a. Roll20 has very much tried to avoid becoming a social media platform where folks “live” or collect friends. That said, the #1 reason someone cancels their subscription here at Roll20 is their gaming group falls apart. So we have talked a lot about ways we might improve “matchmaking”-- which for a long term gaming group is a nuanced goal!While it isn’t friends lists or the like, we do feel a lot of the growing pains of our private messaging and forums systems on the site-- we are all interested in seeing this overhauled.

9.&nbsp; Arno - The suggestion graveyard/forum is not really useful. What is your plan on improving this? Link to the reply on YouTube . This question was already asked above, see the above reply under&nbsp; Khrain for more details.

10.&nbsp; Arno - What are your plans to improve their (Community Creators) QOL within roll20? We are hiring a UI/UX Developer specifically with some of these concerns in mind.

11.&nbsp; Natha - Any plans to enhance the dice roll engine to handle multiple dice critical hit/failure? It is something we are willing to investigate.

12.&nbsp; Mark R. - If the 5e PHB becomes available will it be integrated with the OGL character sheet? a. For all questions related to Products & Licensing, please see the reply on YouTube .

13.&nbsp; SFX - Would you, as a company, be willing to vie on our behalf for more SRD content? a. For all questions related to Products & Licensing, please see the reply on YouTube .

14.&nbsp; SFX - Would you be willing to consider a subscription scale that allows [creators] "limited" access to paid content to more easily integrate our efforts? a. We’d be more interested in creating a feature-complete sandbox for development than providing official content for free to community creators. No timeline on this as a feature, but our hope is this will occur naturally as we expand licenses.

15.&nbsp; Stephen L. - Any chance of GMs being able to someday add custom content to their campaigns' compendiums? Link to the reply on YouTube . WE LOVE this idea, go Vote for it if you want it too!

16.&nbsp; Stephen L. - 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? Link to the reply on YouTube . We’ve already spoken to this when discussing the Top 5 suggestions in the video, our system has limitations. We’re looking at other options. See the answer to&nbsp; keithcurtis ’s question for more information.

17.&nbsp; Natha - Any plans to add the possibility of making [API Scripts or Sheets] a marketplace asset? Not at this time, this is why we encourage patreon.

18.&nbsp; Lucian - Where do the Roll20 team see the site going in the next couple of years - what will be the core focus of the product? We’re focused on polishing and improving existing Roll20 features. We think that Roll20’s features are incredible and mosts people’s pain points when using Roll20 is not a lack of features, but a lack of polish in using existing features. It’s very important to us that our users have the options to play their games in whatever way works best for their groups. It became important for us to provide official Roll20 sheets and scripts for our licensed products, but we have no intention of making community created content less accessible. If anything, we recognize that this is a pain point for creators that we will try to address in coming update.

19.&nbsp; Lucian - Are there any architectural/technical goals that you can share with us that might influence how we design our extensions to the platform? We answered just a small part of Lucian’s question in the video , but to expand... Firstly, Roll20 needs to hire more programmers. That is something we’re working on actively right now.We continue to make design decisions on making an optimal browser experience. Roll20 is an amazing setup that flips what a browser is capable of doing on it’s ear.So if you’re curious what our architectural and technical feeling are: SLIM. c. We have made in the last 6 months substantial character sheet and API infrastructure improvements to speed up existing processes for heavy community created sheets and scripts. While we will always continue to optimize the Roll20 platform at this point we have no immediate plans for more infrastructure improvements. However, as we hire more developers, we do hope to improve the tool set used in content creation for Roll20. If you’d like to add suggestions specifically for this topic, you’re welcome to email <a href="mailto:team@roll20.net" rel="nofollow">team@roll20.net</a>

20.&nbsp; Gozer the Gozerian - Is Roll20 still committed to being system agnostic? Link to the reply on YouTube . In short… Abso-freakin-lutely, we are!

21.&nbsp; Gozer the Gozerian - Is there a chance of seeing that expand to not just system agnostic, but multi-system friendly (i.e. other compendiums being made available)? Link to the reply on YouTube . We can only as Roll20 produce officially supported sheets with our licensed partners and more licenses is something we are working on, for compendium support see that other question.

22.&nbsp; Doug E. - 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? a. The Roll20 Marketplace only features wholly original content, meaning we do not allow the type of work you described on the Marketplace. Please see our Becoming a Creator page for more details on how to apply.

23.&nbsp; Doug E. - Are people who earn money streaming their games or producing monetized Youtube videos, using token and map pieces from the marketplace, violating copyright? a. Technically yes - if you are not accrediting the creator, either verbally or in writing, then yes. Since all Marketplace creators retain the rights to their content, it’s not Roll20’s copyright you’re infringing upon, but that of our hardworking independent creators.If you’re ever concerned about this issue, but would like to include Marketplace art in your monetized video content, consider reaching out to the creator directly to request permission.

24.&nbsp; keithcurtis - 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? Link to the reply on YouTube . Foreground Map Layer: Something we want to do, however we want it to have an even larger scope to allow as many layers and flexibility as users want, so it this makes it a large project than we can commit to at the moment. Dynamic Lighting Integrated Fog-of-War: It is incompatible with our current DL system, we’re investigating other opportunities, but it is not likely to happen soon. Create Custom Sets of Status Icons for Token Hover to see token name and bar Size of the distance measurement should scale with zoom levels These last 3 are related: These are all features we are interested in developing, as Roll20’s Dev resources grow with our 2 new employees these thing becoming a higher and higher likelihood of being included.

25.&nbsp; keithcurtis - Would you consider any sort of incentive plan for your highest contributors of scripts or sheets? Beyond Patreon, we have no concrete incentive plans for script or sheet contributors. We would love to find a way to aid coding creators at Roll20, but the reality is that many of the customizations that folks create are non-commercial as they interact with owned intellectual properties.

26.&nbsp; Shonder - For all questions related to Products & Licensing, please see the reply on YouTube .

27.&nbsp; Finderski - As a character sheet developer, when can we get [Google] font support for character sheets. Requires a large infrastructure change, it is on our radar because it also has to do with other things like how images are hosted on the site.

28.&nbsp; Finderski - Will we ever be able to create our own personal compendiums and what's that timeline look like? Link to the reply on YouTube . This question was addressed above under&nbsp; Stephen L ’s question. No set timeline to announce on this at this time.&nbsp;

29.&nbsp; Thorsten B. - Are you looking at rethinking the way [...] roll20 work[s], possibly using up-and-coming technologies like WebAssembly? Link to the reply on YouTube . See the above reply under&nbsp; keithcurtis for more information.

30.&nbsp; al e. - The Comm system is execrable, is there any chance of either fixing it...? We hear you, we know, here is what we have done recently, try the Dev version, here is this wiki thing to give to players who have issues. We’ll keep pushing to make this as available to everyone as we can.

31.&nbsp; David - 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? See the above reply under&nbsp; Lucian for more information.

32.&nbsp; Devlin M. - I'm just wondering if the mobile platform is [...] on your minds. Dropping the barrier of entry for players is a goal for us, however we are currently understaffed. With the addition of more developers, we hope to look into prioritizing our mobile efforts.

33.&nbsp; Devlin M. - For all questions related to Products & Licensing, please see the reply on YouTube .

34.&nbsp; Justin - For all questions related to Products & Licensing, please see the reply on YouTube .

35.&nbsp; Pexx - Is nesting the macro hotbar in layers something ya’ll would consider? We are not against the idea, the suggestions forum will let us know how important it is to the community. Likely if this does get implemented it would be an option and not the default.

36.&nbsp; Pexx - I like the special effects tool however it would be possible to give players access to this? a. Players can activate the FX Tool from Chat commands, link to the wiki: <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Text_Chat#Special_Effects_.28.2Ffx.29" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Text_Chat#Special_Effects_.28.2Ffx.29</a>

37.&nbsp; John B - Can the development team be mindful that one of the pro account features is trying out the new goodies? We took your suggestion, look at&nbsp; Community Corner #1 , you can find with new for testing every week on this new blog. That is our intention, check out what is there now.

38.&nbsp; MeditatingMunky - Will we ever get Map Folders? Yes.

39.&nbsp; Volomon - Will you add a method to delete entire folders in the Journal along with everything in them? Link to the reply on YouTube . Yes. See the stream for more info. We have started with Art Library, but if it is important to the community we’ll do it.

40.&nbsp; Volomon - Will you add the tablet/phone feature? We do already have a tablet option for subscribers,&nbsp; Table on Tablet and our Free Tablet App&nbsp; Roll20 for iPad/android - see the reply to&nbsp; Herman R. for more information.

41.&nbsp; Brad - Are there any plans to provide more features to Pro users, or in general? Link to the reply on YouTube . We’re very comfortable as a business with the current value we’re providing with our subscription product. Our current goal is to to improve the overall user experience as opposed to adding something on top.

42.&nbsp;Extra topics from our live audience in the Video… Is Fanburst the Officially a long-term replacement for SoundCloud? Yes - Link to the reply on YouTube . Limitations of our Bio & Text Editors... We know, it is bad… Link to the reply on YouTube . Isometric Grid Options? Work around discussed, not that impossible... Link to the reply on YouTube . Map Vault? Pro’s can already with Transmog, not likely. - Link to the reply on YouTube . Bulk Delete from the Art Library/Journal? You can in the Art Library - Link to reply on YouTube . Not yet... Link to the reply on YouTube . 5th Edition OGL Sheet, why does it roll twice? 3D Dice, 2 rolled, why is only 1 shown? It doesn’t have to, you can change the default! - Link to reply on YouTube . Only when you have auto-rolling damage - Link to reply on YouTube . Standalone App? i. Not likely - Link to reply on YouTube .

Thanks to all who added questions!