Ghouls, gamers, creatures of the night... Halloween draws near so we hope you're ready to celebrate! First though, it's time for the weekly update from your spooky Roll20 crew. We start off with a word from our lead developer, Steve. Developer Spotlight Hi, rollers. I wanted to take a minute to talk about the Compendium changes that came out in the Fog and Functionality update, what the design decisions were, and what you can expect to see in the future. Our original pass on the Compendium ran into the same design constraints that many of our projects crash into, our promise to remain system agnostic. It’d be relatively straightforward to design a system of storing and serving game data if we designed it around a single rule system. Each game has different categories of data, that have varying levels of importance to play and complexity in relevant details. Additionally, the size of these data sets means that any design changes we make need to be able to be programmatically applied to the existing data, rather than attempting to manually update tens of thousands of pages of rules. I believe our original pass got us in the ballpark. We sorted the rules into categories. For Dungeons and Dragons that looked like game rules, races, classes, monsters, items, spells, feats, backgrounds, etc. We created a system of automatic linking between pages. With some rough dynamically generated lists to help start the browsing process. Where I think the first pass of the Compendium failed was in its ease of use. Because we needed to remain system agnostic, the data elements for any given rules page were just displayed in the order they were entered, or now in alphabetically ordered list. While a list displays data in a system agnostic way, it’s much less useful that the NPC stat blocks or spell cards that fans are used to seeing in books. It’s this problem that our new list view is designed to help solve. Now Compendium curators can create lists of dynamically generated information cards, presented in a listview. The cards can be designed to show the important information of just that category of rules. These lists can be sorted and filtered by any attribute. Need to see all first through third level druid spells, ordered by school? Or maybe all Dungeon World ranger class moves sorted reverse alphabetically? We’ve got you covered. Our hope is that as we get more and more rules sets into the Compendium, we’ll make referencing rules, and directly implementing rules onto the Roll20 tabletop, like dragging and dropping NPCs, a key part of every Roll20 experience. What’s next? The information cards are a great first step towards serving the game’s data in a more useful layout. We’re still exploring ways to improve that process both in and out of the virtual tabletop. We’re also exploring ways to make the rules sets easier to use as a virtual book, reading the rules from beginning to end, instead of structured mainly as a reference tool. Finally, we’re focused on new ways the Compendium can lend its strengths to other parts of the play experience. New tools that work in conjunction with the Compendium’s structured data. Expect to see more enhancements in the next update. And until next time, happy rolling. Steve K. Roll20 Lead Developer On the Marketplace We know you probably have your halloween costume ready, but how about sprinkling some of that sweet holiday flavor on your game too? Search through some of the best new spooky packs on the Roll20 Marketplace! They're all here ! WOTC Highlights There are only a few days left before the latest officially licensed D&D modules will release on Roll20! Grab your copies of Hoard of the Dragon Queen and The Rise of Tiamat before their imminent Halloween (October 31st) launch! If you and your companions are feeling bold and want to take on both adventures at once, we're also offering a Tyranny of Dragons bundle , so you can grab both modules at the same time. Beware: these are not for the faint of heart! What's more terrifying than taking on the dragon queen herself? Doing it on Halloween! See you on the other side~ -Suzanne
