Roll20 Sheet updated

The new version of the Roll20 character sheet is up, I pushed the code to github and thought it might take a couple weeks but they pushed it right away and so I haven't had a lot of time to write up a good blog post on the subject.  My idea to publish something on the Beacon Blog weekly is not going to happen and although I am hoping to meet a monthly schedule, honestly I'm pretty happy with the pace of the playtesting and the recent changes to the sheet.  No reason to complain about that.

The new sheet has a bunch of changes.  It looks prettier with a less crowded layout and more colour.  I incorporated the Beacon logo colours into the page headers and the repeating list controls.  I cleaned up the fonts, added a new Notes tab and moved spellboox to the end of the sheet. I put in a minimum and maximum width for the sheet so it doesn't compress or expand and throw off the labeling. 

I added in a lot more fields for notes. I found personally that one or two large text boxes on a roll20 sheet does not work like a paper sheet where you can write little notes everywhere.  Having more smaller boxes lets you organize better and keep smaller bits of info easier to read.  I also put in some boxes for tracking conditions like a sickness or if your character is encumbered.

Aside from those cosmetic type changes I fixed an issue where chainmail was not the right AC and where wearing heavy armour would remove dexterity penalties and not just dexterity bonuses.  I also fixed some of the weapon damage calculations and separated out attack bonuses and damage bonuses so you could model a spear that gives damage bonus but actually have an attack penalty.  This makes customizing weapons much more flexible.  I moved a lot of the weapons and armour detail into expandable sections that players can hide away most of the time, and I added note fields.  I also fixed the maximum range calculations on ranged weapons so they display now.  I also added in a repeating section for companions and henchmen where players can note many common attributes for a hired hand or their apprentice or animal companion.  I also rebranded/recalculated the coin totals to be in silver as well as companion wages.  Beacon is a Silver standard game so that fits better with the theme and reminds everyone to scale down appropriately.

The biggest change was adding encumbrance/inventory system.  The encumbrance system was hard to sort out because it has to be both simple and flexible but also contain a good amount of automation or it will never get used.  The last version of the sheet had a simple spot for players to keep track of their carried load and did the strength calculation for them.  This NEVER got used.  Players just won't use a system that requires even this level of manual bookkeeping and I get that.  Either its just not their thing or they do like to do it but get caught up in something else and then the tally gets messed up over time anyway.  I decided what I would try was to do as much as possible in the sheet, but not sweat the small stuff which resulted in a hybrid system where I automated as much as I could but added in namable 'container' items with a load value that would store all the odds and ends.

What that resulted in was four interworking systems to track encumbrance: consumables, combat, coins and item/containers. Encumbrance for weapons and armour is calculated from equipped types, as are the most common consumables like rations and torches, tracking coin weights was already implemented, and finally these large items/containers would manage everything else.  My view of this is that the more opt-in you automate the more likely the system will get used so having players just focused on keeping track of large items and packs and sacks in a little widget was the perfect level of interaction.  You can always ignore the whole encumbrance system but I'm finding more and more that it powers that exploration vibe I like. 

The weapons and armour opt-in to the encumbrance system by default when you add the item row and you can uncheck them if you need to drop them.  Armour has different encumbrance if its work vs carried and the sheet can track that.  You can add as many items and containers as you like and they have both inventory and note text boxes as well as a checkbox if you decide to drop one somewhere.  The rows of small item trackers have a location field so you can list what container they are in etc.  All in all I think it adds a lot to the game having this in the sheet.

I'm pretty excited to see how this will work in game, it seems like the right handshake between automation and player participation in the system.  Its also a lot prettier than it was before.

Updates for the Character Sheet

I've been thinking of some updates to the Roll20 character sheet and finally got my butt in gear to make the changes. A big part of this Beacon renaissance I've embarked upon is to make Beacon very friendly for online play over Roll20 (for now) and I want to leverage the online sheets for tracking anything a player might want to track for their character.  The new character sheets have been a great facilitator to play so far and so I'm trying to build on that success.  I spend some time cleaning things up and refactoring some of the code from the last couple updates. I made the labels bigger in general and tried to clean up any bugs.  I fixed an issue with level 5 spells not expanding properly and also updated the AC bonus on chainmail.  I did update the page section headers to make them more colourful as well as apply a similar colour scheme to the repeating item buttons.

One bigger addition was to add was a section for companions, be they hired goons, apprentices or animal companions.  Players are using companions a lot and also there is some work I want to do to beef up animal companions for Druids so I like having this on the online sheet and not on a notepad or google docs somewhere. 

I wanted to make it simple and leverage the spellbook idea of tucking away the details when not needed. I inherited some pretty good examples for this code from the original sheet designers so it was pretty simple to add it in.  I originally tried to fit this onto the Inventory page but after seeing how busy that section was getting I added it to the Combat tab.  Hopefully there is enough meat in this section to handle anything a player might want to track about a hireling or their pet owlbear.

Now players have a handy list of their companions and can track their HP and check the box off when they get killed by a norker right on the sheet, but if you click the notes button there is plenty of room for all sorts of inventory and comments.  It will even track how much you owe them.

While doing this I liked having two smaller text boxes instead of the one large textbox the spell section used, so I also updated the spellbook section to split descriptions and notes into two text boxes.

The next change was similar and revolves around the ongoing war I have with encumbrance. I also wanted to automatically calculate encumbrance to make it easier for players to manage, but not to the point of getting down to item weights etc.  I can't see tracking statistics of  every item on the sheet like the 5e sheet does, and I also didn't want to have to have players add the weight of every item by hand because they would never do it.  They didn't even always do the estimated total weight carried in the rules very often.  I settled on a meet in the middle approach.  I want to try using a weight input box on various containers and large items and calculate the totals on that instead.  I figure a player can say I put x in a sack and it weighs 2 or this backpack carries 5 weight.  I also wanted to give the ability to drop things so that when player run or loose something it can stay on the sheet but not be totaled into the encumbrance.

In order to do this I had to add in containers in the inventory section that could be named and have toggles like armour does.  This would let us easily track if they were being carried or not so I could calculate carried encumbrance.  These containers, like the companions tuck away on the sheet so you don't have to deal with a wall of text.  I also added in the weight of coins and the weights of common consumables like rations.  I think this will enable some easy and fun gameplay around dropping off caches of items while exploring or modeling how a sack of loot could be dropped in a chase scenario.

For backwards compatibility I had to leave the old inventory sections at the bottom.  I would hate to roll out an updated sheet and have Beacon players in the wild loose their items!  These sections are at the bottom of the sheet and don't really take up much room though.  I'm still testing these changes but I think its pretty good chance that this will be pushed up soon.

Happy Beaconing.