As you open the thread, you notice weird symbols on the page. As you focus intently, you see that it is a birthday invitation for an upcoming development stream, for this coming Friday the 16th at 11am PST. The words on the invitation shift into the face of Sorce, one of the site's local mods.
Hail and Well Met Travelers!
BadEye will be hosting the next Developer Stream on Friday the 16th of March. This stream will provide further updates from the D&D Beyond team and allow you to have your questions answered. Get all the latest info about what has been happening and participate in the stream. There may even be some goodies to giveaway!
Please post questions you would like answered in the thread below. We will be collating these, and BadEye will do his best to answer as many questions from the forums as well as Twitch Chat.
Did you miss out on the February developer stream (the one where BadEye can't avoid saying James)? Watch below!
Are there any plans to integrate some form of custom module creation? If so, would it possibly be integrated into the marketplace later down the line (in the same vein as DM's Guild)?
Will it eventually be possible to change weapon properties (like finesse, two handed, etc.), damage types (bludgeoning, force, slashing, etc.) and damage dice for weapons using the homebrew magic items process (or a new "mundane items" homebrew editor)? If so will this be a near-term update (i.e. in the next 6 months to a year) or more of a "one of these days" things?
As of late it seems like development for D&D Beyond has slowed significantly; for example, you began teasing the Character Sheet revamp as early as September of last year (link to post), and while we keep hearing "soon". Another example is the amount of time it took to add Warlock Invocations (from Xanathars) onto the Warlock class page, which was reported and marked as being resolved fairly soon (link to the post), but again that took 2 months to implement/fix.
Now, I'm not going to underestimate the overall difficulty & time required to code and add these to ensure functionality, but it also seems like one of the bigger things we keep hearing is that the team is working on the foundations to implement more features that people request. As a legendary bundle owner, its frustrating to see what seems to be development and progress moving at a snail's pace to the point where community seems to be developing key features quicker than the team itself. For example, D&D toolbox, a community created plug-in to Chrome, seems to have a lot of features that people have been clamoring for such as an Initiative Tracker, Persistent Notes with sync across multiple tabs so as to track things much easier.
I apologize if my post is coming across as diminishing the achievements that you and the team have accomplished in the short lifespan of the website, but my question is: Are we going to see the general development of the site & its features stay at the same pace or will features/functions begin to come out quicker?
As of late it seems like development for D&D Beyond has slowed significantly; for example, you began teasing the Character Sheet revamp as early as September of last year (link to post), and while we keep hearing "soon". Another example is the amount of time it took to add Warlock Invocations (from Xanathars) onto the Warlock class page, which was reported and marked as being resolved fairly soon (link to the post), but again that took 2 months to implement/fix.
Development hasn't slowed in the slightest - we are actually writing more code than we ever have. Releases have certainly slowed in comparison to four or five months ago for a few reasons.
First, like many software/ web development companies, we shut down the office entirely for almost a month around the US holidays to allow our team to recharge batteries. This time means no active development, but it is still essential to us being able to sustain the passion/ drive for the new year. This is not intended in any way as an excuse, but an explanation that for that month nothing was going to come - same as will happen towards the end of 2018.
Additionally, we've said since we first announced DDB (almost a year ago) that we are in this for the long haul. In order to set ourselves up for the long future ahead, we had to take a bit of a detour to maintenance and upgrade our infrastructure to accommodate. All kinds of deployments have been happening, chief among these a massive migration to AWS and the cloud, that the public wouldn't see or from which perceive a benefit. All the same, a great deal of "quick and agile" development has been happening, and the good news is our infrastructure is now in a great place that means we are able to move forward into the features roadmap for the foreseeable future.
Next, releasing our mobile app alpha and now beta is not an insignificant task that has happened in parallel with the items above. We reached the point we are at with mobile surprisingly quickly, given that development didn't start in earnest on it until late October of last year. We see strong positive response to the mobile app in its early stages and will continue to invest in it, and you'll see the next aspect of the beta (listings) before too long.
The addition of warlock invocations to the class page was a fairly simple change (in comparison the the scale of the sheet revamp), but the impact of missing some invocations from that class page impacted a small percentage of the community and therefore was prioritized lower than some of the other tasks I've mentioned. We squeezed it in a couple of weeks ago because I noticed it had been requested for a little bit and we wanted to deliver it. To put the development on that into perspective, it took a single dev about two days to do all of that work. So again, it's not about speed of development, it's about prioritization and pipeline.
Finally, we have of course been working on the character sheet revamp, and it has a vast scope. Sure, it was teased in September, because it was essential for us to get an initial response from the community about the direction we were taking for the sheet. If you pay attention to that tease, it clearly indicates that it is in a "rough mock" status, which means that it was simply a concept at that point. We teased it to see if the approach we planned to take resonated with the community, and the response was overwhelmingly positive, which helped us confirm that we should dive into it. We have made tremendous progress on the revamp, and to be honest, it's tough for me to use (or to even look at) the current character sheet any longer. We will have more to share about the release of the revamp when it's ready, and we're not going to release it until it's polished to a point that we are happy with it.
As a legendary bundle owner, its frustrating to see what seems to be development and progress moving at a snail's pace to the point where community seems to be developing key features quicker than the team itself. For example, D&D toolbox, a community created plug-in to Chrome, seems to have a lot of features that people have been clamoring for such as an Initiative Tracker, Persistent Notes with sync across multiple tabs so as to track things much easier.
Community-created plugins/ extensions are going to naturally cover gaps that we have not filled, otherwise they wouldn't be created in the first place. In other words, the perception that development with these mods is "quicker than the team itself" is not an accurate assessment. These great contributors in the community don't have any of the things I listed we've been working on above on their plates, for instance, and they can focus on making the handful of things you listed. It's not "quicker" development, but development on a different track.
Sincerely not to take anything away from the many folks in the community that are creating mods or things like Chrome extensions to supplement DDB, but these solutions simply wouldn't scale across the entirety of our user base. We'll have to implement a dice roller, initiative tracker, persistent notes, etc. in ways that can be used across all devices, operating systems, and browsers, for instance, and that can handle the load of hundreds of thousands of users and are up to Amazon/ Twitch security standards.
We have been okay with (and even encourage) these community contributions in the meantime, similar to how mods have popped up for World of Warcraft, Minecraft, and Skyrim over the years. It allows us to see what kinds of functionality are received well within the community as we prioritize what we will incorporate into the toolset itself over time. Blizzard did this with things like raid frames, DPS meters, floating action text, mob nameplates, and much more. None of those things existed in the early days of WoW, and now it's hard to imagine they weren't there from the beginning.
Having said all of that and to answer your question at the end, yes, our release velocity will increase in the next several months as many ships that have been on long journeys come into port closer and closer together.
I hope this all shines some light on what's been happening behind the curtain, and I appreciate the desire to see more and more come to DDB. I share that sentiment for sure.
We have made tremendous progress on the revamp, and to be honest, it's tough for me to use (or to even look at) the current character sheet any longer.
As of late it seems like development for D&D Beyond has slowed significantly; for example, you began teasing the Character Sheet revamp as early as September of last year (link to post), and while we keep hearing "soon". Another example is the amount of time it took to add Warlock Invocations (from Xanathars) onto the Warlock class page, which was reported and marked as being resolved fairly soon (link to the post), but again that took 2 months to implement/fix.
To say the truth lately I feel we are getting way more updates, like bug fixes and small features, mobile releases. As Adam said the cloud migration is no small thing at all, imagine doing that for a bazillion data from all users XD. And it went smooth, btw congrats on that guys.
Sincerely not to take anything away from the many folks in the community that are creating mods or things like Chrome extensions to supplement DDB, but these solutions simply wouldn't scale across the entirety of our user base. We'll have to implement a dice roller, initiative tracker, persistent notes, etc. in ways that can be used across all devices, operating systems, and browsers, for instance, and that can handle the load of hundreds of thousands of users and are up to Amazon/ Twitch security standards.
We have been okay with (and even encourage) these community contributions in the meantime, similar to how mods have popped up for World of Warcraft, Minecraft, and Skyrim over the years. It allows us to see what kinds of functionality are received well within the community as we prioritize what we will incorporate into the toolset itself over time. Blizzard did this with things like raid frames, DPS meters, floating action text, mob nameplates, and much more. None of those things existed in the early days of WoW, and now it's hard to imagine they weren't there from the beginning.
I would love to make it available to all users. Indeed I intend to all the browsers, but unfortunately as of today it is kind of hard for mobile browsers since there is no extension feature available to them.
Well, I would indeed be flattered to see a professional version of a feature from an extension being implemented on DDB (btw if you guys have some time take a look on the map references feature, specially for LMoP). On the dragon talk from 3/5 with BadEye and Todd there was a discussion about the possibility of amazing content from the community getting into DDB (despite the fact there is not a submission system). I am not a game designer, writer or even have the experience of the veteran DMs from our forums. I hope someday we can have this also for developers, to really make a diference, something similar from what was done on "The Binding of Isaac" community with some mods entering in the game as booster packs. Maybe on the future we will reach a point with an API to make that possible.
As of late it seems like development for D&D Beyond has slowed significantly; for example, you began teasing the Character Sheet revamp as early as September of last year (link to post), and while we keep hearing "soon". Another example is the amount of time it took to add Warlock Invocations (from Xanathars) onto the Warlock class page, which was reported and marked as being resolved fairly soon (link to the post), but again that took 2 months to implement/fix.
Development hasn't slowed in the slightest - we are actually writing more code than we ever have. Releases have certainly slowed in comparison to four or five months ago for a few reasons.
First, like many software/ web development companies, we shut down the office entirely for almost a month around the US holidays to allow our team to recharge batteries. This time means no active development, but it is still essential to us being able to sustain the passion/ drive for the new year. This is not intended in any way as an excuse, but an explanation that for that month nothing was going to come - same as will happen towards the end of 2018.
Additionally, we've said since we first announced DDB (almost a year ago) that we are in this for the long haul. In order to set ourselves up for the long future ahead, we had to take a bit of a detour to maintenance and upgrade our infrastructure to accommodate. All kinds of deployments have been happening, chief among these a massive migration to AWS and the cloud, that the public wouldn't see or from which perceive a benefit. All the same, a great deal of "quick and agile" development has been happening, and the good news is our infrastructure is now in a great place that means we are able to move forward into the features roadmap for the foreseeable future.
Next, releasing our mobile app alpha and now beta is not an insignificant task that has happened in parallel with the items above. We reached the point we are at with mobile surprisingly quickly, given that development didn't start in earnest on it until late October of last year. We see strong positive response to the mobile app in its early stages and will continue to invest in it, and you'll see the next aspect of the beta (listings) before too long.
The addition of warlock invocations to the class page was a fairly simple change (in comparison the the scale of the sheet revamp), but the impact of missing some invocations from that class page impacted a small percentage of the community and therefore was prioritized lower than some of the other tasks I've mentioned. We squeezed it in a couple of weeks ago because I noticed it had been requested for a little bit and we wanted to deliver it. To put the development on that into perspective, it took a single dev about two days to do all of that work. So again, it's not about speed of development, it's about prioritization and pipeline.
Finally, we have of course been working on the character sheet revamp, and it has a vast scope. Sure, it was teased in September, because it was essential for us to get an initial response from the community about the direction we were taking for the sheet. If you pay attention to that tease, it clearly indicates that it is in a "rough mock" status, which means that it was simply a concept at that point. We teased it to see if the approach we planned to take resonated with the community, and the response was overwhelmingly positive, which helped us confirm that we should dive into it. We have made tremendous progress on the revamp, and to be honest, it's tough for me to use (or to even look at) the current character sheet any longer. We will have more to share about the release of the revamp when it's ready, and we're not going to release it until it's polished to a point that we are happy with it.
As a legendary bundle owner, its frustrating to see what seems to be development and progress moving at a snail's pace to the point where community seems to be developing key features quicker than the team itself. For example, D&D toolbox, a community created plug-in to Chrome, seems to have a lot of features that people have been clamoring for such as an Initiative Tracker, Persistent Notes with sync across multiple tabs so as to track things much easier.
Community-created plugins/ extensions are going to naturally cover gaps that we have not filled, otherwise they wouldn't be created in the first place. In other words, the perception that development with these mods is "quicker than the team itself" is not an accurate assessment. These great contributors in the community don't have any of the things I listed we've been working on above on their plates, for instance, and they can focus on making the handful of things you listed. It's not "quicker" development, but development on a different track.
Sincerely not to take anything away from the many folks in the community that are creating mods or things like Chrome extensions to supplement DDB, but these solutions simply wouldn't scale across the entirety of our user base. We'll have to implement a dice roller, initiative tracker, persistent notes, etc. in ways that can be used across all devices, operating systems, and browsers, for instance, and that can handle the load of hundreds of thousands of users and are up to Amazon/ Twitch security standards.
We have been okay with (and even encourage) these community contributions in the meantime, similar to how mods have popped up for World of Warcraft, Minecraft, and Skyrim over the years. It allows us to see what kinds of functionality are received well within the community as we prioritize what we will incorporate into the toolset itself over time. Blizzard did this with things like raid frames, DPS meters, floating action text, mob nameplates, and much more. None of those things existed in the early days of WoW, and now it's hard to imagine they weren't there from the beginning.
Having said all of that and to answer your question at the end, yes, our release velocity will increase in the next several months as many ships that have been on long journeys come into port closer and closer together.
I hope this all shines some light on what's been happening behind the curtain, and I appreciate the desire to see more and more come to DDB. I share that sentiment for sure.
Thanks!
Again- I hope I wasn't coming across as derogatory or as flaming in general, I was just trying to convey my frustration, especially because I really love D&D beyond and am happily supporting it, and will continue to do so. I've no doubt that software development in general is a multi-faceted and complicated approach and I'm certainly relieved and happy to hear that progress is going faster than ever & that we'll be seeing the fruits of labor the team has worked on for so long relatively soon.
I have seen more people here and on social media wishing there was a Windows App for offline use because their mobile device of choice is a Surface laptop which doubles as a tablet. Let's be honest, that sector is going to grow with other manufacturers beyond Microsoft also making Windows tablets with detachable keyboards, and running the full version of Windows 10.
Given that this market will probably grow in this form factor, and given that most people cannot afford to buy one of these laptops and an ipad or Android tablet, will you give more consideration to a Windows app in the near future?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
- Will the Homebrew Subclass tool allow the introduction of new resources (think stuff similar to Ki points or Sorcery points)?
-As it seems unlikely full checks and control can be done every time, how do you plan on dealing with possible content taken from paid resources from DM's Guild (or 3rd party content, including subclasses, items, spells, races etc) being published here on DDB by people other than the rightful publisher? (asking because it seems an extremely daunting task to be undertaken by a relatively small team of mods as there is now... we like our mods, don't let them die of overwork XD)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
How (if at all currently) is the new sheet handling encumbrance, levels of exhaustion, and containers (bags of holding, etc)? Can we get any previews? :)
What is it looking like on mobile devices currently?
I really, desperately, would like the "This is Your Life" sections of Xanathar's to be integrated into the toolset.
Just for fun I generate a lot of random characters. I do this to give myself ideas, and also to force myself to consider playing combinations that I normally wouldn't.
I would really, really love to be able to also generate characters with a random backstory. Is this something that is being considered/worked on?
What would be awesome would be an easier way to add or take away money in the character builder. The current way is sufficient but still quite clunky. And a way for it to automatically convert money from CP to GP for example.
It may be every session but some sessions a lot of money can be spent and earned and changing it from GP alway down to CP is time consuming and inefficient.
So far I'm 2 for 2 with having my questions answered live, so let's see if I can pull off a hat trick.
First off, I'm loving all of the new content coming to the DDB homepage from your new team of contributors. We all know Todd has been doing a great job with his videos for quite some time, but so far his interviews seem to mostly cover different aspects of D&D from more of a lore perspective. As valuable as that content is, are there any plans for future interviews covering more of the rules and game mechanics (similar to the Sage Advice features on Dragon Talk)?
I think a lot of DMs (especially newer DMs) could really benefit from that kind of content, especially if it was also linked in the related compendium section as it is released. As in, while looking up the rules for Stealth, not only is the text there, but also a video link/embed where I can hear Mike or Jeremy further explain them is just a mouse click away.
Keep up the great work!
P.S. Any new character sheet teasers will make me scream like a Beatles fangirl.
"The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read." - Terry Pratchett
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Hail and Well Met Travelers!
BadEye will be hosting the next Developer Stream on Friday the 16th of March. This stream will provide further updates from the D&D Beyond team and allow you to have your questions answered. Get all the latest info about what has been happening and participate in the stream. There may even be some goodies to giveaway!
DATE:
Friday 16th March
TIME:
11am PT / 2pm ET (when is this for me?)
LOCATION:
D&D Beyond Twitch
Please post questions you would like answered in the thread below. We will be collating these, and BadEye will do his best to answer as many questions from the forums as well as Twitch Chat.
Did you miss out on the February developer stream (the one where BadEye can't avoid saying James)? Watch below!
Site Rules & Guidelines --- Focused Feedback Mega Threads --- Staff Quotes --- Homebrew Tutorial --- Pricing FAQ
Please feel free to message either Sorce or another moderator if you have any concerns.
Are there any plans to integrate some form of custom module creation? If so, would it possibly be integrated into the marketplace later down the line (in the same vein as DM's Guild)?
Will it eventually be possible to change weapon properties (like finesse, two handed, etc.), damage types (bludgeoning, force, slashing, etc.) and damage dice for weapons using the homebrew magic items process (or a new "mundane items" homebrew editor)? If so will this be a near-term update (i.e. in the next 6 months to a year) or more of a "one of these days" things?
Trying to Decide if DDB is for you? A few helpful threads: A Buyer's Guide to DDB; What I/We Bought and Why; How some DMs use DDB; A Newer Thread on Using DDB to Play
Helpful threads on other topics: Homebrew FAQ by IamSposta; Accessing Content by ConalTheGreat;
Check your entitlements here. | Support Ticket LInk
As of late it seems like development for D&D Beyond has slowed significantly; for example, you began teasing the Character Sheet revamp as early as September of last year (link to post), and while we keep hearing "soon". Another example is the amount of time it took to add Warlock Invocations (from Xanathars) onto the Warlock class page, which was reported and marked as being resolved fairly soon (link to the post), but again that took 2 months to implement/fix.
Now, I'm not going to underestimate the overall difficulty & time required to code and add these to ensure functionality, but it also seems like one of the bigger things we keep hearing is that the team is working on the foundations to implement more features that people request. As a legendary bundle owner, its frustrating to see what seems to be development and progress moving at a snail's pace to the point where community seems to be developing key features quicker than the team itself. For example, D&D toolbox, a community created plug-in to Chrome, seems to have a lot of features that people have been clamoring for such as an Initiative Tracker, Persistent Notes with sync across multiple tabs so as to track things much easier.
I apologize if my post is coming across as diminishing the achievements that you and the team have accomplished in the short lifespan of the website, but my question is: Are we going to see the general development of the site & its features stay at the same pace or will features/functions begin to come out quicker?
I'll go ahead and respond to this one now:
Community-created plugins/ extensions are going to naturally cover gaps that we have not filled, otherwise they wouldn't be created in the first place. In other words, the perception that development with these mods is "quicker than the team itself" is not an accurate assessment. These great contributors in the community don't have any of the things I listed we've been working on above on their plates, for instance, and they can focus on making the handful of things you listed. It's not "quicker" development, but development on a different track.
Sincerely not to take anything away from the many folks in the community that are creating mods or things like Chrome extensions to supplement DDB, but these solutions simply wouldn't scale across the entirety of our user base. We'll have to implement a dice roller, initiative tracker, persistent notes, etc. in ways that can be used across all devices, operating systems, and browsers, for instance, and that can handle the load of hundreds of thousands of users and are up to Amazon/ Twitch security standards.
We have been okay with (and even encourage) these community contributions in the meantime, similar to how mods have popped up for World of Warcraft, Minecraft, and Skyrim over the years. It allows us to see what kinds of functionality are received well within the community as we prioritize what we will incorporate into the toolset itself over time. Blizzard did this with things like raid frames, DPS meters, floating action text, mob nameplates, and much more. None of those things existed in the early days of WoW, and now it's hard to imagine they weren't there from the beginning.
Having said all of that and to answer your question at the end, yes, our release velocity will increase in the next several months as many ships that have been on long journeys come into port closer and closer together.
I hope this all shines some light on what's been happening behind the curtain, and I appreciate the desire to see more and more come to DDB. I share that sentiment for sure.
Thanks!
A natural 20 crit with that wall of text.
As a Legendary Bundle owner I am super excited by all they y’all have done and looking forward to the future. Keep up the great work BadEye!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
twitch.tv/PGKarieo
And I cast Heroism on the community.
Can we have an option for spell points other than slots?
I have seen more people here and on social media wishing there was a Windows App for offline use because their mobile device of choice is a Surface laptop which doubles as a tablet. Let's be honest, that sector is going to grow with other manufacturers beyond Microsoft also making Windows tablets with detachable keyboards, and running the full version of Windows 10.
Given that this market will probably grow in this form factor, and given that most people cannot afford to buy one of these laptops and an ipad or Android tablet, will you give more consideration to a Windows app in the near future?
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
- Will the Homebrew Subclass tool allow the introduction of new resources (think stuff similar to Ki points or Sorcery points)?
-As it seems unlikely full checks and control can be done every time, how do you plan on dealing with possible content taken from paid resources from DM's Guild (or 3rd party content, including subclasses, items, spells, races etc) being published here on DDB by people other than the rightful publisher?
(asking because it seems an extremely daunting task to be undertaken by a relatively small team of mods as there is now... we like our mods, don't let them die of overwork XD)
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
How (if at all currently) is the new sheet handling encumbrance, levels of exhaustion, and containers (bags of holding, etc)? Can we get any previews? :)
What is it looking like on mobile devices currently?
Check out the upcoming full 3D VTT, TaleSpire! [official website] [subreddit] [discord]
I really, desperately, would like the "This is Your Life" sections of Xanathar's to be integrated into the toolset.
Just for fun I generate a lot of random characters. I do this to give myself ideas, and also to force myself to consider playing combinations that I normally wouldn't.
I would really, really love to be able to also generate characters with a random backstory. Is this something that is being considered/worked on?
As with the other times, I would love an update on any druid wild shape functionality. Also any campaign updates would be great.
As an additional thing, I am curious as to the programming methodology being used by the team. Scrum, Waterfall, Scrumfall, chaos, kanban?
What would be awesome would be an easier way to add or take away money in the character builder. The current way is sufficient but still quite clunky. And a way for it to automatically convert money from CP to GP for example.
It may be every session but some sessions a lot of money can be spent and earned and changing it from GP alway down to CP is time consuming and inefficient.
So far I'm 2 for 2 with having my questions answered live, so let's see if I can pull off a hat trick.
First off, I'm loving all of the new content coming to the DDB homepage from your new team of contributors. We all know Todd has been doing a great job with his videos for quite some time, but so far his interviews seem to mostly cover different aspects of D&D from more of a lore perspective. As valuable as that content is, are there any plans for future interviews covering more of the rules and game mechanics (similar to the Sage Advice features on Dragon Talk)?
I think a lot of DMs (especially newer DMs) could really benefit from that kind of content, especially if it was also linked in the related compendium section as it is released. As in, while looking up the rules for Stealth, not only is the text there, but also a video link/embed where I can hear Mike or Jeremy further explain them is just a mouse click away.
Keep up the great work!
P.S. Any new character sheet teasers will make me scream like a Beatles fangirl.
I'd love to see more DM tools teased, released, tantalized.
Some tools that I'd love to see first.
Initiative tracker that includes AC (including applying modifiers), conditions, HP (or HP bar)
A better campaign tracker, perhaps module milestone tracker
I'd love some DNDBEYOND merch. Maybe iPad, or Surface cases?
Just wondering about the Druid wildshape and other shape changing spells. How soon could we expect that system to be put in place?
Other than homebrew subclasses, are there any changes to the homebrew system we can look forward to in the coming months?
Tooltips | Snippet Code | How to Homebrew on D&D Beyond | Subclass Guide | Feature Roadmap
Astromancer's Homebrew Assembly
"The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read." - Terry Pratchett