Medium-to-Large Sheet Refactor Questions

Hi Folks. Targeted Question : I'm considering removing some supplemental fields (e.g. non-game mechanic) in the BRP sheet to have it more in line with the official BRP sheet. Is there a programmatic way to move text to the "Bio & Info" tab? Larger Question: How does the community decide what should be in a single sheet representing a game for all time? The fork would be how regular open source projects with a large philosophical disagreement would handle things, but Roll20 staff has already made it known that they frown on duplicated sheets for a system. I don't feel so strongly about this that I couldn't leave things in, but the designer/coder in me sees opportunity for tightening things up and some of the things in the current sheet are obvious holdovers from the original sheet upon which the BRP sheet is based. I have been in contact with the sheet's original author before starting my layout changes (see below) and will draw his attention to this thread. Background I've been committing code cleanups (mostly commented out code deletions) to the BRP character sheet in preparation for a major layout fix for the skills by category section in order have it look less messy overall. I may go on to improve the layout for the top block of general PC description and characteristics too. So far there shouldn't be any functional delta so no migration is necessary. My design inspiration is the official BRP character sheet so my fixes/improvements are aimed at coming closer to the official sheet as recommended by Roll20 (where practical). I strongly suspect that from the sheet.json and by looking at the code that the BRP sheet was forked from the CoC 5th edition sheet with some layout changes. As such it has a lot of fields from that game that aren't germane to BRP (a generic system). Much of it is description such as "Personal Description", "Family & Friends", "Personal Property", "Real Estate", "Marks & Scars" (which itself is duplicative of the BRP "Distinctive Features" entry already in the sheet. I feel these things could very well be included in the general "Bio & Info" tab.The only thing that the official BRP sheet doesn't have that players are likely to regularly reference in-game is an equipment section.

Carl T said: Hi Folks. Targeted Question : I'm considering removing some supplemental fields (e.g. non-game mechanic) in the BRP sheet to have it more in line with the official BRP sheet. Is there a programmatic way to move text to the "Bio & Info" tab? There isn't within sheet workers (The API can do it, but that's not helpful to you). General remark: Some people like to have this kind of non-system-revelant description fields. Maybe keep them, but move them out of the way to a separate tab? Larger Question: How does the community decide what should be in a single sheet representing a game for all time? The fork would be how regular open source projects with a large philosophical disagreement would handle things, but Roll20 staff has already made it known that they frown on duplicated sheets for a system. I don't feel so strongly about this that I couldn't leave things in, but the designer/coder in me sees opportunity for tightening things up and some of the things in the current sheet are obvious holdovers from the original sheet upon which the BRP sheet is based. I have been in contact with the sheet's original author before starting my layout changes (see below) and will draw his attention to this thread. There's no good answer, but you will definitely get pushback for removing functionality. One person's legacy cruft is another person's favorite feature. Perhaps you could make some changes optional (and off by default) instead.

Is there such as an Official BRP sheet, BRP is a toolbox. My intent was to have switches for Rome, Mythic Iceland and Merrie England as can be seen by the switch to to put skills in alphabetical order and other things like, major wounds / hit locations. Is it your intent to create a sheet which is your vision of what the official should be. Another thing the is not to make a sheet look to much like an official sheet as this may infringe copyright. BTW I tried get input from members of BRP central (the official forum) when I started but got little interest.

Jakob said: General remark: Some people like to have this kind of non-system-revelant description fields. Maybe keep them, but move them out of the way to a separate tab? Larger Question: How does the community decide what should be in a single sheet representing a game for all time? The fork would be how regular open source projects with a large philosophical disagreement would handle things, but Roll20 staff has already made it known that they frown on duplicated sheets for a system. I don't feel so strongly about this that I couldn't leave things in, but the designer/coder in me sees opportunity for tightening things up and some of the things in the current sheet are obvious holdovers from the original sheet upon which the BRP sheet is based. I have been in contact with the sheet's original author before starting my layout changes (see below) and will draw his attention to this thread. There's no good answer, but you will definitely get pushback for removing functionality. One person's legacy cruft is another person's favorite feature. Perhaps you could make some changes optional (and off by default) instead. Yeah, I kind of assumed that this would be the answer. My biggest problem with this is that someone will always complain about any change. However, with no way of surveying users and seemingly no system telemetry to tell us what's being used or not used there's just no way of making sound decisions about any sheet's features. It's going to boil down to who edits the code last and gets a pull request accepted by dev. :)  I don't imagine that the BRP sheet is among the most heavily used. I'd be interested in knowing how the more popular community sheets handle this issue. Why doesn't any sheet left long enough become a junk drawer of tabs as competing authors all do their thing? Walt S said: Is there such as an Official BRP sheet, BRP is a toolbox. My intent was to have switches for Rome, Mythic Iceland and Merrie England as can be seen by the switch to to put skills in alphabetical order and other things like, major wounds / hit locations. Is it your intent to create a sheet which is your vision of what the official should be. Another thing the is not to make a sheet look to much like an official sheet as this may infringe copyright. BTW I tried get input from members of BRP central (the official forum) when I started but got little interest. The sheet that comes in the book is about as official as I can find. I think anyone looking at the existing sheet can see that it's already heavily influenced by the Chaosium design. My currently uncommitted changes are code refinements aimed at that same design - a design that already exists in the sheet. Personally, I don't buy the copyright issue for reasons already discussed in a post just a few weeks ago. I think that my vision of the sheet would be as valid and official as any of the previous authors only in the sense that we committed time to starting something for a community. What it probably comes down to is whether the first person to code and commit a sheet is the defacto "product owner" of the sheet for life.  I hope this doesn't come off sounding jerk-ish. I'm really just interested in understanding the expectations for any work I choose to do so I can make the right decision about how or how not to invest my time. Thanks!

Several systems have multiple sheets available. If you're planning to make radical changes, it might be better to add a new sheet and clearly communicate what is different in yours.

Yeah, I kind of assumed that this would be the answer. My biggest problem with this is that someone will always complain about any change. However, with no way of surveying users and seemingly no system telemetry to tell us what's being used or not used there's just no way of making sound decisions about any sheet's features. It's going to boil down to who edits the code last and gets a pull request accepted by dev. :)  I don't imagine that the BRP sheet is among the most heavily used. I'd be interested in knowing how the more popular community sheets handle this issue. Why doesn't any sheet left long enough become a junk drawer of tabs as competing authors all do their thing? Most sheets have <= 1 authors who are actively modifying them, or the decision is somehow made by consensus, so the problem doesn't come up all that often. If I wanted to make some changes to a sheet that are not obviously bug fixes or obviously positive stuff, I would definitely ask the previous author(s) first. And yes, this leads to a situation where the first person to submit a sheet for a system "owns" the sheet.

Carl T said: Yeah, I kind of assumed that this would be the answer. My biggest problem with this is that someone will always complain about any change. However, with no way of surveying users and seemingly no system telemetry to tell us what's being used or not used there's just no way of making sound decisions about any sheet's features. It's going to boil down to who edits the code last and gets a pull request accepted by dev. :)  . . . I think that my vision of the sheet would be as valid and official as any of the previous authors only in the sense that we committed time to starting something for a community. What it probably comes down to is whether the first person to code and commit a sheet is the defacto "product owner" of the sheet for life.  One way to handle it would be to modify the existing sheet slightly to include a "pop-up" of sorts that can alert people to an upcoming change. This alert can include a link to a test campaign where people can discuss what they like or don't like about a given sheet.  I recently did this in preparation for an upcoming change to the Savage Worlds Tabbed sheet.  It looks like this: This has allowed me to warn people of a potential game-breaking update and off them the chance to check it out and provide feedback prior to the update going live.  Since it's a campaign, I'm able to use the game's forum to include topics of discussion, such as a wishlist of items and communicate progress on the upcoming change. This isn't perfect, but it has allowed two-way communication between me (the developer/"owner" of the sheet) and others who use it. And to Jakob's other point, you could incorporate your changes in such a way that they can be "turned on/off" per the user's desire.  This is also something I've done with the Savage Worlds sheet—Savage Worlds is a generic system, so some will play Sci-Fi, some Fantasy, some Post Apoc, etc. There are many published settings, too, each with slight tweaks to the system. So, to make it so we don't need dozens of Savage Worlds sheets, I include a configuration section that allows me to turn certain fields on or off, it allows me to change the labels of certain fields or even change the background image and logo... And while the original creator becomes the defacto owner, you can work with that creator to either assume ownership, or become a collaborator.  I've been the only one working on the sheet, but recently someone reached out to me and wanted to help (I loved that!), so I created a github repository for my "in development" code that we can both hit against. This has protected the core sheet on Roll20 while allowing me to mess around with code and put in in my QA/Test Campaign to allow others to provide feedback, etc. Just some thoughts that may help you and the original owner (Walt S?) figure out how to proceed with the sheet. :)

Thank you for the discussion and suggestions. I don't think I'm anywhere near the point of wanting to do a second sheet. Mostly my goals were to improve layout, readability, modernize the code for the parts I have to touch, and making sure there are no serious gotchas for players using the sheet (my recent PRs fixed a few). I've got a ways to go to even learn all the moving parts of BRP so won't be touching anything I'm not absolutely sure about rules-wise. I believe the BRP sheet actually has a version of your config menu in it Finderski. :) Generic systems are tough to do so the Savage Worlds example is interesting and I don't envy the work needed to make one sheet hit multiple genres. So for whoever's interested here's what I've done: <a href="https://app.roll20.net/join/2785151/kqpuOw" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/join/2785151/kqpuOw</a> If I don't hear any complaints or get any bugs or hate mail I'll try and merge things into a pull request and probably call it a day for a while.

The people actually using the sheet might not see that message. If your changes remove anything from the sheet, or majorly change it's usability, it's better to follow Finderski's suggestion and push a notice to the sheet itself, give the users a week or two to see it and respond, then push your changes to the sheet. Though if the change log described in your campaign is accurate, it looks like you don't change the functionality of the sheet, just improve its design, and if that's the case, just pushing it to live would be fine. However, that campaign link doesn't help people check the sheet, because there isn't an accessible character. You need to add a character, and make it editable by all players. As it is now, we cant see the character sheet.

I can do many things but apparently mastering Roll20 permissions is not one of them. I thought I had made all the things for all the people. :D Please try again.

I'm not a user of the BRP sheet, but I've had a look. I cant honestly tell what's changed (due to my inexperience with the sheet) and that's probably a good thing :) Exception: the configuration button placement is much improved! I'll have to check your code to see how you did that because I'm having an issue with that in the sheet I'm designing. One thing I noticed: the stats rolls don't use the same output formatting as the skills rolls.

G G said: I'm not a user of the BRP sheet, but I've had a look. I cant honestly tell what's changed (due to my inexperience with the sheet) and that's probably a good thing :) Exception: the configuration button placement is much improved! I'll have to check your code to see how you did that because I'm having an issue with that in the sheet I'm designing. One thing I noticed: the stats rolls don't use the same output formatting as the skills rolls. Yes, the formatting is all over the place. Part of the reason why I started the work. There were at least 3 authors upstream from me including the author(s) on the sheet this was originally based. I'm not going to be touching any of the roll output. My players were missing the configuration button overall so I embiggen'd it. :) Eighty percent of this is not my code so I've just done what I needed to do to get the move. Not sure if it would be the best way to do it if I got to start from scratch so use at your own risk!&nbsp; There's not going to be much noticeable difference for this round unless you're using the skills by category configuration. And even then it's alignment formatting and other micro aesthetic/UX changes. From a code standpoint, in the sections I refactored I removed all the table based layout to stylesheets in order to get done what I needed.

Hello! I'm someone who's worked on the BRP sheet. I'm mainly trying to increase sheet automation and I wouldn't object to layout improvements as long as the automation stuff doesn't get downgraded. Most of the changes I've made to the sheet have been small things. Like adding a multiplier inquiry box for rolls and making the ranged weapons use the roll template, etc. I recently got the sheet to automatically calculate the damage bonus (Courtesy of G G here). As for your new sheet, I've noticed that the sheet options were moved from above the BRP Logo to the top right corner. The text box for the skills have been changed. The buttons for the characteristic rolls have been changed to be more aesthetically pleasing. That's all I've noticed so far.

Khoa P. said: Hello! I'm someone who's worked on the BRP sheet. I'm mainly trying to increase sheet automation and I wouldn't object to layout improvements as long as the automation stuff doesn't get downgraded. Most of the changes I've made to the sheet have been small things. Like adding a multiplier inquiry box for rolls and making the ranged weapons use the roll template, etc. I recently got the sheet to automatically calculate the damage bonus (Courtesy of G G here). As for your new sheet, I've noticed that the sheet options were moved from above the BRP Logo to the top right corner. The text box for the skills have been changed. The buttons for the characteristic rolls have been changed to be more aesthetically pleasing. That's all I've noticed so far. Haha! Well I guess the joke's on me because while I've been discussing this your last PR two days ago with the changes to the roll queries means I'll have to revisit every skill again to migrate and test the roll button values. While I can appreciate the irony here, I think I'll just shelve my changes since it was already a huge effort to do that the first time and response to my changes seem to be lukewarm at best. Also, you may want to check with Walt S because I think he's got some plans for the roll templates.&nbsp; Thanks to everyone who took time to discuss how things should work.&nbsp;

Well, if it's worth anything, I appreciated that you made the changes to clean up the coding. I had to update my own fork with all your changes before I could submit anything.

Well I guess the joke's on me because while I've been discussing this your last PR two days ago with the changes to the roll queries means I'll have to revisit every skill again to migrate and test the roll button values. While I can appreciate the irony here, I think I'll just shelve my changes since it was already a huge effort to do that the first time and response to my changes seem to be lukewarm at best. Yes Khoa P. has a history of not making any attempt what so ever of contacting any previous authors.&nbsp; There has been slight improvement in that he made contact after he already made changes and committed a pull request. I am out as well, with any luck someone will will swoop in unannounced, in the future, and do something about the multiple roll queries and the weird skill multipliers that are about to appear.

Walt S said: Well I guess the joke's on me because while I've been discussing this your last PR two days ago with the changes to the roll queries means I'll have to revisit every skill again to migrate and test the roll button values. While I can appreciate the irony here, I think I'll just shelve my changes since it was already a huge effort to do that the first time and response to my changes seem to be lukewarm at best. Yes Khoa P. has a history of not making any attempt what so ever of contacting any previous authors.&nbsp; There has been slight improvement in that he made contact after he already made changes and committed a pull request. I am out as well, with any luck someone will will swoop in unannounced, in the future, and do something about the multiple roll queries and the weird skill multipliers that are about to appear. Again, my apologies for the unannounced changes. If you want me to, I can remove the skill multipliers and just keep it as modifiers. And some of the stuff I've worked on.