Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Roll20: A new virtual tabletop focused on storytelling
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 5882604" data-attributes="member: 8835"><p>On a technical note, having a document or link sharing system should be trivial (one of my products is document management technologies, I know how I'd solve it). And it makes a lot of sense, you get a lot of happiness for a little bit of work and disk space.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Enabling the VTT macros in the char sheet means the char sheet has to be modeled inside the VTT and not just a posted Word or Excel document. It certainly encroaches on that. I suspect this is a line Roll20 is hesitant to cross, for now. I would agree.</p><p></p><p>However, consider this game situation. I have a 12 for my Climb skill (let's say 8 ranks +4 dex).</p><p></p><p>With zero in-VTT support, when I want to make my check, I could type:</p><p>I roll a Climb check at 1d20+12</p><p></p><p>The GM would see my result as:</p><p>Janx: I roll a Climb check at 1d20+12=18</p><p></p><p>There could be a d20 Skill check macro loaded that let's me type:</p><p>/skill Climb 12</p><p></p><p>and the screen sends:</p><p>Janx rolls 18 for Climb</p><p></p><p>If the VTT has the runtime variables (globals) like mIRC does, I could load up my skills pre game with commands like "/skill Climb=12"</p><p></p><p>and then in the game I send:</p><p>/skill Climb</p><p></p><p>and it sends back:</p><p>Janx rolls 18 for Climb</p><p></p><p>With any of these variants, the VTT itself doesn't have to hold or manage my character sheet for useful automation. I can easily consult my paper char sheet (actually, I use my iPad and the Numbers spreadsheet app) for my stats as needed.</p><p></p><p>Macros can handle doing the automation, and depending on how robust that system is, it can handle the whole problem.</p><p></p><p>If the VTT includes and import/export of these "runtime" variables, the user can save their game state seperately. Or somebody could write an external CharSheet manager app to take the import/export file, parse it and add the data to bring in your char sheet data back into the VTT's variables so the macros can use them.</p><p></p><p>I would also recommend having autocomplete/intellisense for your chat interface with regards to macros. Note, I assume like I did for IRC, macro comamnds are launched in the chat window, often prefaced with a / to differentiate them from normal speech.</p><p></p><p>In which case, take the following function definition for a macro (in pseudo-code):</p><p>macro SkillCheck(SkillName from SkillList, SkillLevel as Number)</p><p></p><p>note, I'm using a VB-like syntax. As a user, the moment I start typing "/skill" Intellisense should be showing me all the macros that start with skill. Next, when I lock in "/SkillCheck" note how it solve for case-sensitivity. When I press space, it should be showing me a list of Skills to pick from the SkillList (an enum data structure defined outside the Macro, that the Macro uses).</p><p></p><p>Continuing the example, I'll press cl which will jump to Climb from the list, and press space to type a number. The number will use the dice parser, so I could type "12" or "1d6" and it would know what to do with it.</p><p>the final command I enter will be:</p><p>/SkillCheck Climb 12</p><p></p><p>but I have less typing to do, and am not going to make a mistake in entering anything. The parser won't let me screw up and reduces my keystrokes.</p><p></p><p>Intellisense is the number one reason I like coding in Visual Studio. It speeds up development, and actually helps me explore the system, because I can start typing the name of something, and it shows me all the possible things with that name, and then if I choose one, it shows me their parameters so i get it right the first time.</p><p></p><p>If you can get your command parser running that smooth, it should make your system very easy to use at the keyboard.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Janx, post: 5882604, member: 8835"] On a technical note, having a document or link sharing system should be trivial (one of my products is document management technologies, I know how I'd solve it). And it makes a lot of sense, you get a lot of happiness for a little bit of work and disk space. Enabling the VTT macros in the char sheet means the char sheet has to be modeled inside the VTT and not just a posted Word or Excel document. It certainly encroaches on that. I suspect this is a line Roll20 is hesitant to cross, for now. I would agree. However, consider this game situation. I have a 12 for my Climb skill (let's say 8 ranks +4 dex). With zero in-VTT support, when I want to make my check, I could type: I roll a Climb check at 1d20+12 The GM would see my result as: Janx: I roll a Climb check at 1d20+12=18 There could be a d20 Skill check macro loaded that let's me type: /skill Climb 12 and the screen sends: Janx rolls 18 for Climb If the VTT has the runtime variables (globals) like mIRC does, I could load up my skills pre game with commands like "/skill Climb=12" and then in the game I send: /skill Climb and it sends back: Janx rolls 18 for Climb With any of these variants, the VTT itself doesn't have to hold or manage my character sheet for useful automation. I can easily consult my paper char sheet (actually, I use my iPad and the Numbers spreadsheet app) for my stats as needed. Macros can handle doing the automation, and depending on how robust that system is, it can handle the whole problem. If the VTT includes and import/export of these "runtime" variables, the user can save their game state seperately. Or somebody could write an external CharSheet manager app to take the import/export file, parse it and add the data to bring in your char sheet data back into the VTT's variables so the macros can use them. I would also recommend having autocomplete/intellisense for your chat interface with regards to macros. Note, I assume like I did for IRC, macro comamnds are launched in the chat window, often prefaced with a / to differentiate them from normal speech. In which case, take the following function definition for a macro (in pseudo-code): macro SkillCheck(SkillName from SkillList, SkillLevel as Number) note, I'm using a VB-like syntax. As a user, the moment I start typing "/skill" Intellisense should be showing me all the macros that start with skill. Next, when I lock in "/SkillCheck" note how it solve for case-sensitivity. When I press space, it should be showing me a list of Skills to pick from the SkillList (an enum data structure defined outside the Macro, that the Macro uses). Continuing the example, I'll press cl which will jump to Climb from the list, and press space to type a number. The number will use the dice parser, so I could type "12" or "1d6" and it would know what to do with it. the final command I enter will be: /SkillCheck Climb 12 but I have less typing to do, and am not going to make a mistake in entering anything. The parser won't let me screw up and reduces my keystrokes. Intellisense is the number one reason I like coding in Visual Studio. It speeds up development, and actually helps me explore the system, because I can start typing the name of something, and it shows me all the possible things with that name, and then if I choose one, it shows me their parameters so i get it right the first time. If you can get your command parser running that smooth, it should make your system very easy to use at the keyboard. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Roll20: A new virtual tabletop focused on storytelling
Top