I would like to see a way to define what optional rules my campaign is using. Then have it displayed on the campaign home page as either a list or a link to a "This campaign's Optional Rules" page.
I am a freelance web and app server developer, but before that, I used to a consultant and team lead for large software implementation projects. I've been involved in personal projects, small teams, large teams, you name it. Building software as a hobby and building enterprise stuff are two completely different universes.
If I create a character builder app as a hobby, with no other stakeholders except myself, I will make very rapid progress. However, there are no quality controls. No capacity planning to ensure the system doesn't go down randomly. I don't need to check with anyone to make sure I am not infringing copyrights or patents, and that I am not using unlicensed software. I don't have to compile feedback from users. I don't have release management controls. I don't have to care about having multiple test environments. I don't have to keep stakeholders updated on progress or make planning meetings to ensure the whole team knows what everyone is supposed to be doing. I don't have to manage paying people, or giving them vacations. I don't have to deal with disagreements where distinct parts of the team want to go in different creative directions. I don't have to build in a store or some other monetization scheme. I don't have to do same-day release of new content when wizards puts out a new book.
So in short, making enterprise software with complex requirements and a team is slow. Timeframes aren't comparable with personal projects.
Just adding to that, when you are alone it is true these things don't happen... but isn't that the goal of having a whole department working on it ? so that time can be passing the same way.
do the test of the lego building thing, see for yourself... i do not believe you need the approval of every single department for every single line of code you add. if that's the case then something is awefully wrong with your management. This feels to me like those hollywood production where the producers only want the money and not the fame. you know those producer who force add stuff for the sake of it. there will always be problem when listening to everybody, you cannot please everyone. so why try to please everyone ? i'm fine with the way this place work right now, i wouldn't be buying from them if it weren't. but i do think that adding more then 3 small text box isn't that big of a deal. anything literally anything could of been better then 3 simple text boxes. those who think management is all about having character sheets, have probably never been DM to begin with.
as a DM heres what i need for management... - player character sheets (checked) - DM Notes sorted by Maps, Cities, NPCs, etc... - Player notes sorted by the same as the above. - World information, may be able to split that between the player stuff. - Adventure module creation and stuff. You know for those of us who do not use modules but create our own.
this is from the top of my head, i also need tools but those aren't part of management.
As for those who think "you can already create homebrew monsters what else do you need?" how about a place to put our homebrew monsters and be classing them by encounters ? you know be able to go into our notes and just see the monster there instead of having to search the homebrew list we have that cannot be sorted and have everything including weapons and armors and wondrous items as well as spells and feats into it.
You know thinking about it... i think what i'm asking for is the ability to create homebrew adventure modules. because that's true campaign management right there !
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DM of two gaming groups. Likes to create stuff. Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games --> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
Not at all a bad idea, and it has actually come up in another thread recently, although I can't remember exactly which one.
The thing that makes this idea tricky though is Content Sharing. As in, Content Sharing allows all users (Players and DM) to share everything they have purchased with everyone in the campaign.
So let's take a real example. My DM for ToA bought the physical book at launch, but as a favor to her and because I have plans to DM it for my other group later, I went ahead and purchased it on DDB.
Now let's say hypothetically, I decide to start running it in 6 months. The group I'm playing in is far enough ahead at that point to where I'm not worried about the group I'd be DMing for catching up, so spoilers aren't an issue.
So what happens if my DM decided to lock the contents of that book from Player View? Do I lose the content I paid for until she decides to grant it back to me? Do I have to quit the campaign to get it back if she won't unlock it? Or can she not lock it from me since I bought it? If that's the case, what's to stop a player who wants to cheat bad enough from just buying the book themselves? On that note, what's to stop any player from just buying a physical book?
I'm not particularly worried about this scenario, but it's worth bringing up as a hypothetical to demonstrate how different the circumstances can be from group to group.
Like I said, a toggle isn't a bad idea and it's a good point that needs to be discussed, but ultimately at some point for many groups, it still has to come down to trusting your players to not cheat themselves out of the experience. I'm only bringing up criticisms so that the argument for the toggle can consider every angle.
I'm not 100% sure if you were replying to me or someone before me but to be clear, my proposal doesn't involve locking any content. But then, I didn't envision it as a tool for blocking access to published campaigns - to me, that's a fool's errand. As you say, if people want to read the adventure they're playing, they will do so! I was thinking of it solely as a way of defining a table's house rules.
I was speaking of the ability to create a unique campaign-specific copy of the compendium, which would be accessed only via that campaign's portal. Each campaign can have one, tied only to that campaign. The idea is that the toggles only define what can and can't be seen if DM or players access that campaign's particular version copy of the compendium - the DM can use the toggles to define what rules get included, which are left out, and what homebrew content to make "campaign official". They'd effectively be making their own game-specific rules bible.
The system would be isolated from the larger site, so none of the toggled content changes anywhere else on DDB - whatever you've paid to see, you can see in the global compendium/character creation, or in any other campaign you take part in that allows it.
A related idea would be to allow players to enter the character creation tool via the campaign portal, and if they do so only see character options in the builder that have been toggled on for that particular campaign.
Not at all a bad idea, and it has actually come up in another thread recently, although I can't remember exactly which one.
The thing that makes this idea tricky though is Content Sharing. As in, Content Sharing allows all users (Players and DM) to share everything they have purchased with everyone in the campaign.
So let's take a real example. My DM for ToA bought the physical book at launch, but as a favor to her and because I have plans to DM it for my other group later, I went ahead and purchased it on DDB.
Now let's say hypothetically, I decide to start running it in 6 months. The group I'm playing in is far enough ahead at that point to where I'm not worried about the group I'd be DMing for catching up, so spoilers aren't an issue.
So what happens if my DM decided to lock the contents of that book from Player View? Do I lose the content I paid for until she decides to grant it back to me? Do I have to quit the campaign to get it back if she won't unlock it? Or can she not lock it from me since I bought it? If that's the case, what's to stop a player who wants to cheat bad enough from just buying the book themselves? On that note, what's to stop any player from just buying a physical book?
I'm not particularly worried about this scenario, but it's worth bringing up as a hypothetical to demonstrate how different the circumstances can be from group to group.
Like I said, a toggle isn't a bad idea and it's a good point that needs to be discussed, but ultimately at some point for many groups, it still has to come down to trusting your players to not cheat themselves out of the experience. I'm only bringing up criticisms so that the argument for the toggle can consider every angle.
I'm not 100% sure if you were replying to me or someone before me but to be clear, my proposal doesn't involve locking any content. But then, I didn't envision it as a tool for blocking access to campaigns - to me, that's a fool's errand. As you say, if people want to read the adventure they're playing, they will do so! I was thinking of it solely as a way of defining a table's house rules.
I was speaking of the ability to create a unique campaign-specific copy of the compendium, which would be accessed only via that campaign's portal. Each campaign can have one, tied only to that campaign. The idea is that the toggles only define what can and can't be seen if DM or players access that campaign's particular version copy of the compendium - the DM can use the toggles to define what rules get included, which are left out, and what homebrew content to make "campaign official". They'd effectively be making their own game-specific rules bible.
The system would be isolated from the larger site, so none of the toggled content changes anywhere else on DDB - whatever you've paid to see, you can see in the global compendium/character creation, or in any other campaign you take part in that allows it.
A related idea would be to allow players to enter the character creation tool via the campaign portal, and if they do so only see character options in the builder that have been toggled on for that particular campaign.
I am a freelance web and app server developer, but before that, I used to a consultant and team lead for large software implementation projects. I've been involved in personal projects, small teams, large teams, you name it. Building software as a hobby and building enterprise stuff are two completely different universes.
If I create a character builder app as a hobby, with no other stakeholders except myself, I will make very rapid progress. However, there are no quality controls. No capacity planning to ensure the system doesn't go down randomly. I don't need to check with anyone to make sure I am not infringing copyrights or patents, and that I am not using unlicensed software. I don't have to compile feedback from users. I don't have release management controls. I don't have to care about having multiple test environments. I don't have to keep stakeholders updated on progress or make planning meetings to ensure the whole team knows what everyone is supposed to be doing. I don't have to manage paying people, or giving them vacations. I don't have to deal with disagreements where distinct parts of the team want to go in different creative directions. I don't have to build in a store or some other monetization scheme. I don't have to do same-day release of new content when wizards puts out a new book.
So in short, making enterprise software with complex requirements and a team is slow. Timeframes aren't comparable with personal projects.
Have to agree here. It's easy when the project is small scale and you don't have costs to think about. Then the thousands of users reporting bugs and or feature requests they want yesterday. You're also dealing with personal and credit card information, so the complexity continues to increase with each step. Not to mention the offline app being worked on. Prioritization is difficult when trying to please the masses.
Campaign management needs work for sure, but there are a lot of features which have made it easier introducing new players to the game. Especially the character creation process. This experience is much more welcoming and less daunting overall. Plus a lot of the other tools I have seen that do the same things require more technical expertise, which a lot of people don't want to deal with: having to create an account has made people balk at getting online.
I'd like to see the source code editing be able to display custom content better. I had created tables and upon saving, the tables didn't display any longer. I tried putting in some ordered and un-ordered lists to organize and those didn't display properly either.
again, that would be true if you were alone and doing things on a grander scale. but that's why whole department works on it, while you as a developper work on something,. about 5 other people are treating those feedbacks. if your employees are waiting on others job then something is off in your chain of command. Take blizzard for exemple, starcraft II came upon because all the developpers graphics and coding had already started stuff in their free time. they didn't wait for someone to tell them, do that. they had initiative and they created stuff. after that once they were able to, they completed the game in 2 years, 1 of which was playtesting only. that's why you have numerous people on the a project, so you could split the job and not have to wait on the others. I can understand the argument that quality control is important, and yes it is, but to be honest if your employees needs someone to tell them, how professionnal they should be, then something is again, wrong with your company.
My biggest beef with the three textbox, is that a textbox has no formating, there is literally nothing we can do except type random text and ascii organising. heck even a rich text box would of been way better then these three. and that doesn't take more then 15 minutes to create. To me this is a what you call quality control faillure. even as an intermediate programmer i would of done much better then just 3 textbox with no formating availlable.
DM of two gaming groups. Likes to create stuff. Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games --> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
I'd like to see the source code editing be able to display custom content better. I had created tables and upon saving, the tables didn't display any longer. I tried putting in some ordered and un-ordered lists to organize and those didn't display properly either.
Without reading through the numerous suggestions already made, I'll toss this in. Sorry if it's a repeat.
I'd like to be able to control the allowable content for a campaign. e.g. restrict races, classes, feats, etc. Often the first question is, "what sources are allowed?" I'd like the campaign to set those parameters and the builder to comply with them.
What you just described is not even campaign management, you just described what a whole website of tools should be. we're talking managing here.
now with them having changed the things to richtextbox instead of regular textboxes, things are much better already. see, it was a simple change that made a whole lot of difference. and with that availlable, its already something i can work with now. unlike the 3 regular textboxes.
If you wanna talk about tools... i require much much much more then they have here and have found tools like what i need about 5 years ago. not to mention donjon tools who literally released 5e tools 3 days after the official release of books. so yeah other sites still are faster then here on getting stuff done. again i have no problem with neat UI... but i'd rather get features done now. UI is sfine as is and i dont think they need to work on it more. i think people are more willing to pay for features then they are for beauty of things. At least i know i would pay more money for features even if this site had only decent UI.
Have you notice they literally send you to fantasynamegenerator to find your characters name instead of having done their own ? like literally they are telling you, heres your basic character builder, the rest find it on the net. i find this a bit offensive, cool for fantasynamegenerator who does a great job for something done in her spare time. but from curse, that's like saying, heres your gamepad but you can buy the rest of the console at microsoft. that's kinda counter productive when you think about it. and right now most of their answers are literally telling us to go elsewhere to find answers. To me thats counter productive from a company whos wants us to have the best.
now as i said, campaign managing wise... regular textboxes no, 3 richtextboxes.... sold at least we can format things and sort things ourselves. i'm satiated with this temporary solution. as long as it doesn't stay like that forever, i'm fine with it.
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DM of two gaming groups. Likes to create stuff. Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games --> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
So I have a couple different groups that are running Princes of the Apocalypse. I don't use milestone xp because it's a sandbox type of story and I want the players to feel like they are making progress. One of the groups is moving a bit slow progress because it's a party of 6. So I put together a spreadsheet that takes the XP tables and calculates XP needed to level for each level based on party size. I then added tables for combat encounters in each piece of the story based on level. The adventure book provides a breakdown for each dungeon and side quests expected level. Lastly I created a table that shows the gap between what is awarded by combat encounters and what is needed to level by party size. The xp gap shows me what amount of discretionary XP I have to award for good rp, random encounters and "quest" rewards. I can also tweak monster counts to adjust for scaling encounter difficulty to party size.
So my question to the devs is "Have you considered adding some functionality like this to the site after the main campaign management features are completed?"
I haven't found any new info lately, do we know when/if players in a campaign will be able to view other player's character sheets? Or will that always be limited to only the DM? Sorry if this has already been answered. Information is all over the place on the forums, I have trouble finding it all. =/
I haven't found any new info lately, do we know when/if players in a campaign will be able to view other player's character sheets? Or will that always be limited to only the DM? Sorry if this has already been answered. Information is all over the place on the forums, I have trouble finding it all. =/
There haven't been any regular updates to this that i have seen recently however i highly recommend putting these questions here for the live stream that is happening early next week that way they will hopefully be able to give you an answer then.
*The ability to add character specific notes to each character, some that the player can see and some that they can't. Right now I can add public/private notes to the campaign as a whole, but not to individual characters (at least not that I see.)
* The ability to add custom tags to characters that are specific to the campaign. Example: 3 of my 7 characters are cursed from a specific event, if I could enter #curseofthering to a search box and return custom tagged content I would see those characters (and other notes/objects I'd created that I added that tag to.)
* Maps.. NOT for combat, that's almost always better done with a physical object/tokens unless you're playing a VTT game. But, for example... I take my laptop to the game, instead of having a stack of books, DM screen, dice, etc I have the laptop and dice. I hook up a relatively low cost projector to the display port output as an extended desktop. I can have my copy of the map on my primary display where I have the dndbeyond.com site open. On my extended desktop display I can drag another window, also open to dndbeyond.com, and display the nicely war fogged player copy of the same map. The player map copies already exist in the adventure modules, rather than keep copies of pictures, it should be relatively easy to attach a data element to a given campaign that references a static player map image and has the fog of war that's been revealed using the grid system that's already built in. Significantly less space used than storing separate map copies and still allows persistence. The DM can simply click a section on the player map to reveal the grid underneath as they party moves along.
* Adventure modules ++: Left hand side of the screen contains a full length table of contents to various sections of the game module so if I need to refer to a different section I don't have to scroll back and forth through the pages... a simple click puts me on the page I left off on, maybe a "back" button specific to the adventure module for an added bonus. Everything in the module is tooltipped/hyperlinked. I can either mouse over a named NPC to get their stat block on the page where the name appears or click it to get taken to the reference page in the module that has the NPCs information. Obviously the DM/module creator is responsible for the required markup in homebrew content, but that shouldn't really upset anyone... they don't have to do the extra work if they don't want, but they'd have the ability.
* Party tracker pad: A pad that sits on the right hand side of the screen, that has a table of player names with character name and a couple of important stats for each such as AC, passive perception value, current HP then toolitp the character's name for some more detail like saving throws, race, classes and levels, etc. The more info I have without having to navigate away from the part of the module I'm in the better. From there if I want to click a character/player it takes me to the appropriate character sheet so I can click through to their list of spells and read whatever shenanigans they're trying to pull off, then a "convenient" return to module button to get me back without having to find my place again... even though I can find my place pretty easily from the above.
* Combat tracker ... this can be a pop up style block that can obscure, to a point, the adventure module's text. The basic display would show init order for all involved creatures and PCs with AC, attack types/bonuses and current HP for creatures with the mouseover option for their stat blocks. Again,the ability to click through and get back easily for more detail is important.
Really my ideal would be to be able to sit down and run a table top game but taking advantage of modern technology. There are already some decent virtual tabletops out there, but the ability to have quick referenced access to source material is really only good if we can use it to make the process of running our games significantly easier. Right now there's still a lot of hunting, page scrolling, etc that's only arguably any faster than finding the right book, then flipping through to the correct page. Otherwise, if we're not creating characters, we really might as well have just purchased PDFs for the adventure modules at this point.
Well i corrected that problem of scrolling by just opening another tab. Remember middle clicking a link opens it in another tab without leaving the page you were on. So on laptop i open the table of content then middle click link to open others pages without ever leaving that table of content.
Of course a menu that sticks to the side would be greater. Because this on tablet isnt really possible. We can still click stay the menu open in another tab. But seriously its a hassle on tablet.
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DM of two gaming groups. Likes to create stuff. Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games --> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
Well i corrected that problem of scrolling by just opening another tab. Remember middle clicking a link opens it in another tab without leaving the page you were on. So on laptop i open the table of content then middle click link to open others pages without ever leaving that table of content.
Of course a menu that sticks to the side would be greater. Because this on tablet isnt really possible. We can still click stay the menu open in another tab. But seriously its a hassle on tablet.
Known and agreed. Reality is we'll sit there and crack the books if that's what we have to do.. I don't want to play an MMO or a VTT game, but I would like to take advantage of technology to make tabletops easier and I believe the asks for this are reasonable, again, with the understanding that they get paid for!
This has probably been said before since I didn't read all 24 pages of posts, but my players consider the following things bare bones functionality for campaign management:
1. Ability to set your character sheet to be viewable by other members of the campaign.
2. Ability to toggle what account holder shares with the campaign members (right now it's all or nothing).
3. A private forum for the group.
4. A calendar with email notifications of the next game.
We've used Obsidian Portal in the past and this is the level of expectation they've set for us regarding campaign management. But, the above items are the bare minimum.
Thanks!
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I would like to see a way to define what optional rules my campaign is using. Then have it displayed on the campaign home page as either a list or a link to a "This campaign's Optional Rules" page.
I am a freelance web and app server developer, but before that, I used to a consultant and team lead for large software implementation projects. I've been involved in personal projects, small teams, large teams, you name it. Building software as a hobby and building enterprise stuff are two completely different universes.
If I create a character builder app as a hobby, with no other stakeholders except myself, I will make very rapid progress. However, there are no quality controls. No capacity planning to ensure the system doesn't go down randomly. I don't need to check with anyone to make sure I am not infringing copyrights or patents, and that I am not using unlicensed software. I don't have to compile feedback from users. I don't have release management controls. I don't have to care about having multiple test environments. I don't have to keep stakeholders updated on progress or make planning meetings to ensure the whole team knows what everyone is supposed to be doing. I don't have to manage paying people, or giving them vacations. I don't have to deal with disagreements where distinct parts of the team want to go in different creative directions. I don't have to build in a store or some other monetization scheme. I don't have to do same-day release of new content when wizards puts out a new book.
So in short, making enterprise software with complex requirements and a team is slow. Timeframes aren't comparable with personal projects.
Just adding to that, when you are alone it is true these things don't happen... but isn't that the goal of having a whole department working on it ? so that time can be passing the same way.
do the test of the lego building thing, see for yourself...
i do not believe you need the approval of every single department for every single line of code you add.
if that's the case then something is awefully wrong with your management.
This feels to me like those hollywood production where the producers only want the money and not the fame. you know those producer who force add stuff for the sake of it.
there will always be problem when listening to everybody, you cannot please everyone. so why try to please everyone ? i'm fine with the way this place work right now, i wouldn't be buying from them if it weren't. but i do think that adding more then 3 small text box isn't that big of a deal. anything literally anything could of been better then 3 simple text boxes. those who think management is all about having character sheets, have probably never been DM to begin with.
as a DM heres what i need for management...
- player character sheets (checked)
- DM Notes sorted by Maps, Cities, NPCs, etc...
- Player notes sorted by the same as the above.
- World information, may be able to split that between the player stuff.
- Adventure module creation and stuff. You know for those of us who do not use modules but create our own.
this is from the top of my head, i also need tools but those aren't part of management.
As for those who think "you can already create homebrew monsters what else do you need?"
how about a place to put our homebrew monsters and be classing them by encounters ?
you know be able to go into our notes and just see the monster there instead of having to search the homebrew list we have that cannot be sorted and have everything including weapons and armors and wondrous items as well as spells and feats into it.
You know thinking about it... i think what i'm asking for is the ability to create homebrew adventure modules.
because that's true campaign management right there !
DM of two gaming groups.
Likes to create stuff.
Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses
If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games
--> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
again, that would be true if you were alone and doing things on a grander scale. but that's why whole department works on it, while you as a developper work on something,. about 5 other people are treating those feedbacks. if your employees are waiting on others job then something is off in your chain of command. Take blizzard for exemple, starcraft II came upon because all the developpers graphics and coding had already started stuff in their free time. they didn't wait for someone to tell them, do that. they had initiative and they created stuff. after that once they were able to, they completed the game in 2 years, 1 of which was playtesting only. that's why you have numerous people on the a project, so you could split the job and not have to wait on the others. I can understand the argument that quality control is important, and yes it is, but to be honest if your employees needs someone to tell them, how professionnal they should be, then something is again, wrong with your company.
My biggest beef with the three textbox, is that a textbox has no formating, there is literally nothing we can do except type random text and ascii organising.
heck even a rich text box would of been way better then these three. and that doesn't take more then 15 minutes to create. To me this is a what you call quality control faillure. even as an intermediate programmer i would of done much better then just 3 textbox with no formating availlable.
DM of two gaming groups.
Likes to create stuff.
Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses
If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games
--> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/d-d-beyond-feedback/7985-campaign-management-suggestion-make-it-work-like
Hey let’s assume this is NOT what will be released for campaign management and move on.
Thanks this definitely helps.
Without reading through the numerous suggestions already made, I'll toss this in. Sorry if it's a repeat.
I'd like to be able to control the allowable content for a campaign. e.g. restrict races, classes, feats, etc. Often the first question is, "what sources are allowed?" I'd like the campaign to set those parameters and the builder to comply with them.
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
Tooltips (Help/aid)
What you just described is not even campaign management, you just described what a whole website of tools should be.
we're talking managing here.
now with them having changed the things to richtextbox instead of regular textboxes, things are much better already.
see, it was a simple change that made a whole lot of difference. and with that availlable, its already something i can work with now.
unlike the 3 regular textboxes.
If you wanna talk about tools... i require much much much more then they have here and have found tools like what i need about 5 years ago.
not to mention donjon tools who literally released 5e tools 3 days after the official release of books. so yeah other sites still are faster then here on getting stuff done.
again i have no problem with neat UI... but i'd rather get features done now. UI is sfine as is and i dont think they need to work on it more. i think people are more willing to pay for features then they are for beauty of things. At least i know i would pay more money for features even if this site had only decent UI.
Have you notice they literally send you to fantasynamegenerator to find your characters name instead of having done their own ?
like literally they are telling you, heres your basic character builder, the rest find it on the net. i find this a bit offensive, cool for fantasynamegenerator who does a great job for something done in her spare time. but from curse, that's like saying, heres your gamepad but you can buy the rest of the console at microsoft. that's kinda counter productive when you think about it. and right now most of their answers are literally telling us to go elsewhere to find answers. To me thats counter productive from a company whos wants us to have the best.
now as i said, campaign managing wise... regular textboxes no, 3 richtextboxes.... sold at least we can format things and sort things ourselves.
i'm satiated with this temporary solution. as long as it doesn't stay like that forever, i'm fine with it.
DM of two gaming groups.
Likes to create stuff.
Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses
If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games
--> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
So I have a couple different groups that are running Princes of the Apocalypse. I don't use milestone xp because it's a sandbox type of story and I want the players to feel like they are making progress. One of the groups is moving a bit slow progress because it's a party of 6. So I put together a spreadsheet that takes the XP tables and calculates XP needed to level for each level based on party size. I then added tables for combat encounters in each piece of the story based on level. The adventure book provides a breakdown for each dungeon and side quests expected level. Lastly I created a table that shows the gap between what is awarded by combat encounters and what is needed to level by party size. The xp gap shows me what amount of discretionary XP I have to award for good rp, random encounters and "quest" rewards. I can also tweak monster counts to adjust for scaling encounter difficulty to party size.
So my question to the devs is "Have you considered adding some functionality like this to the site after the main campaign management features are completed?"
I haven't found any new info lately, do we know when/if players in a campaign will be able to view other player's character sheets? Or will that always be limited to only the DM? Sorry if this has already been answered. Information is all over the place on the forums, I have trouble finding it all. =/
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What I am looking for from the campaign manager:
*The ability to add character specific notes to each character, some that the player can see and some that they can't. Right now I can add public/private notes to the campaign as a whole, but not to individual characters (at least not that I see.)
* The ability to add custom tags to characters that are specific to the campaign. Example: 3 of my 7 characters are cursed from a specific event, if I could enter #curseofthering to a search box and return custom tagged content I would see those characters (and other notes/objects I'd created that I added that tag to.)
* Maps.. NOT for combat, that's almost always better done with a physical object/tokens unless you're playing a VTT game. But, for example... I take my laptop to the game, instead of having a stack of books, DM screen, dice, etc I have the laptop and dice. I hook up a relatively low cost projector to the display port output as an extended desktop. I can have my copy of the map on my primary display where I have the dndbeyond.com site open. On my extended desktop display I can drag another window, also open to dndbeyond.com, and display the nicely war fogged player copy of the same map. The player map copies already exist in the adventure modules, rather than keep copies of pictures, it should be relatively easy to attach a data element to a given campaign that references a static player map image and has the fog of war that's been revealed using the grid system that's already built in. Significantly less space used than storing separate map copies and still allows persistence. The DM can simply click a section on the player map to reveal the grid underneath as they party moves along.
* Adventure modules ++: Left hand side of the screen contains a full length table of contents to various sections of the game module so if I need to refer to a different section I don't have to scroll back and forth through the pages... a simple click puts me on the page I left off on, maybe a "back" button specific to the adventure module for an added bonus. Everything in the module is tooltipped/hyperlinked. I can either mouse over a named NPC to get their stat block on the page where the name appears or click it to get taken to the reference page in the module that has the NPCs information. Obviously the DM/module creator is responsible for the required markup in homebrew content, but that shouldn't really upset anyone... they don't have to do the extra work if they don't want, but they'd have the ability.
* Party tracker pad: A pad that sits on the right hand side of the screen, that has a table of player names with character name and a couple of important stats for each such as AC, passive perception value, current HP then toolitp the character's name for some more detail like saving throws, race, classes and levels, etc. The more info I have without having to navigate away from the part of the module I'm in the better. From there if I want to click a character/player it takes me to the appropriate character sheet so I can click through to their list of spells and read whatever shenanigans they're trying to pull off, then a "convenient" return to module button to get me back without having to find my place again... even though I can find my place pretty easily from the above.
* Combat tracker ... this can be a pop up style block that can obscure, to a point, the adventure module's text. The basic display would show init order for all involved creatures and PCs with AC, attack types/bonuses and current HP for creatures with the mouseover option for their stat blocks. Again,the ability to click through and get back easily for more detail is important.
Really my ideal would be to be able to sit down and run a table top game but taking advantage of modern technology. There are already some decent virtual tabletops out there, but the ability to have quick referenced access to source material is really only good if we can use it to make the process of running our games significantly easier. Right now there's still a lot of hunting, page scrolling, etc that's only arguably any faster than finding the right book, then flipping through to the correct page. Otherwise, if we're not creating characters, we really might as well have just purchased PDFs for the adventure modules at this point.
Well i corrected that problem of scrolling by just opening another tab. Remember middle clicking a link opens it in another tab without leaving the page you were on. So on laptop i open the table of content then middle click link to open others pages without ever leaving that table of content.
Of course a menu that sticks to the side would be greater. Because this on tablet isnt really possible. We can still click stay the menu open in another tab. But seriously its a hassle on tablet.
DM of two gaming groups.
Likes to create stuff.
Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses
If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games
--> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
This has probably been said before since I didn't read all 24 pages of posts, but my players consider the following things bare bones functionality for campaign management:
1. Ability to set your character sheet to be viewable by other members of the campaign.
2. Ability to toggle what account holder shares with the campaign members (right now it's all or nothing).
3. A private forum for the group.
4. A calendar with email notifications of the next game.
We've used Obsidian Portal in the past and this is the level of expectation they've set for us regarding campaign management. But, the above items are the bare minimum.
Thanks!