Changelog

Hey everyone, I hope you are doing well. This post is a longer one detailing recent changes, a new release and what to expect down the road:

Dashboard Pages, Migrated!

The dashboard pages have been migrated to our new tech stack. That covers the Rooms, Games, Sheets, Templates and Assets pages, the user menu pages (Profile Settings, Orders and Redeem), and the log in and sign up flows.

Baseline, the pages should look and feel the same for the most part, though some pages may load more quickly thanks to a few optimizations on how much data they ask for. On top of that there are two bigger changes that came with the move.

The first is small but handy: most dashboard pages now support filtering by name. Have a ton of assets and you’re looking for the right one? Now you can quickly search for it.

The second is a set of changes to how Rooms are managed.

Room Management

Earlier this year, the free tier went from one Room to two open Rooms so hosts had more space to explore and game. This release gives you more flexibility with those Rooms.

• [New Feature] Sandboxes. When you first create a Room it comes in as a Sandbox: a place to set up and test things out and make sure everything is right before your first session. While a Room is a Sandbox, other players can’t join it. Everyone, free and subscribed, can make as many Sandboxes as they like.
• [New Feature] Open Rooms. When you’re ready to bring folks in, open the Room up and invite them. Opening a Room takes up one of your two open slots on the free tier. Patron subscribers have unlimited open Rooms, so they won’t see slots at all.
• [New Feature] Open slots on your dashboard. Free-tier hosts will now see placeholders at the top of the Rooms page representing their two open slots, so it’s clear at a glance what’s in use.
• [New Feature] Room labels. Rooms you host now carry a label showing which state they’re in: Sandbox, Open Room, or Archived. A Room with no label is one you’ve joined that someone else hosts.
• [New Feature] Archiving. Any host can archive an open Room, which moves it to a new Archived section on your Rooms page. Archived Rooms are frozen: the other players won’t see the Room on their dashboard or be able to enter it until you unarchive it. Nobody is removed, so when the gang gets back together you can unarchive and everyone is right where they were, no re-inviting needed. For free-tier hosts this is the way to free up a slot: archive a Room you’re not using, then open a new one and start a new game. Note that you’ll need an open slot available to unarchive a Room.

The first time you visit the Rooms page after this release you’ll see a short modal explaining all of this, so you won’t need to remember this post.

Fixes

• [FIX] Issue where assets tied to rooms on the Assets page were loading unnecessary data; Asset pages now load more quickly than before
• [FIX] Issue where sorting on Dashboard pages did not always work as before
• [FIX] Orders in the Orders page that did not come from a bundle incorrectly showed a striked out $0.00 next to the paid price
• [FIX] Products with no downloadable files would incorrectly show a Download button that just gave an empty zip

Web Apps

With the CHROME game and then Owlbear Rodeo, we explored what it would be like to bring in other web apps into the platform. Building off that work, we wanted to improve what we can offer players so we partnered with Ties That Bind Gaming to bring you a new kind of release - our next 3rd party web app integration: Diegetic Simulators!

Diegetic Simulators

Role has partnered with Ties That Bind Gaming to bring Diegetic Simulators right into your Room! Diegetic Simulators is a collection of immersive tools you can use in your session that help give you a whole other dimension of play. Give your players a real in-world terminal to break into. They can force sealed doors, crack encrypted files, and race a hacking countdown while the alarm keeps beeping, and you control every system live from behind the screen. It also unlocks Diegetic Databases for an archive of info that folks can access during the session, and Diegetic Handhelds so players’ phones can act as a second screen.

All Role users can enjoy checking out the new option on the store front through the weekend, but note that a Patron subscription will be required by the host of a Room with this Web App starting Monday, October 12th (non-gm players are not required to have an active Patron subscription).

This is Role’s next expansion into more Web Apps being integrated and as the platform progresses, I’ll continue to explore other avenues and options that can help bring the play experience up a notch. You can check it out on the store today: Diegetic Simulators

Let’s Talk Role 1.0

Role is still in Early Access (v0.5.0 as of today) and it’s been in EA for a long time now. I’ve been very slowly chipping away at things and with a clearer set of milestones in mind I want to share with you what my vision for Role 1.0 looks like.

• Dashboard Migration and Updates This is where we’re currently at, hot off the presses.
• Project T This is something I’ve been cooking up on the side based on an idea we had a few years ago and finally got around to making a prototype for it. I won’t say too much about it but it’s something that’s likely to be detailed more in about 2 weeks time after the Dashboard changes have settled down. I’ll have more to say on it then.
• Sheets App and Sheets 2.5 One of the bigger requests and bigger changes we’ve all wanted is Sheets updates and when I tried to get it going earlier this year the major roadblock I hit was the old tech stack (this is why we are in the middle of the Big Migration). This will be a major update for Sheets and with a goal of having Sheets be it’s own webapp that you can run on your phone. This is a huge goal for me and the platform and I’m working hard towards that end
• Cards Refresh The current offering of cards is very limited and when dice got their update we never got a chance to revisit this. I’m aiming to get cards in a much better position where they feel more like a natural part of the play space, and opening up the opportunity for more uses of cards beyond the classic 52 playing deck
• Room Migration This one is probably the heaviest lift of all the migration pieces, so this will likely be more of an under-the-hood update with some minor cosmetic fixes and tweaks. If there’s an opportunity to make solid Quality of Life changes to improve game play or user experience, I’ll aim to get those in
• Maps and Tokens Update I hinted at this with some screenshots earlier this year and what I’m hoping for is a much better standard offering of maps and tokens on the platform than we have now. This will not replace OBR since theirs will always be a more robust option and I genuinely like their platform, but free tier users could do with a refreshed version for them too.
• Sheets 3.0 This is a continuation of the Sheets work that I detailed a while ago and will be building off what should be an almost complete migration of the entire Role web app. I’m still excited and committed for this one because it gives players more control and more options for gameplay than before.

There’s a lot to this 1.0 timeline and as things get closer to release, I’ll be making more comments and posts about each step along the way.

That’s all for now. Please reach out if you have any questions, and as always…

You can play with us!

-– Role <3

Hey everyone, I hope you are doing well. Just wanted to do a write up on some of the recent changes as well as some things im thinking of next:

Changes

• [New Feature] Account Deletion. Some might find this one odd, but it’s important for folks to feel more in control of their data these days more than ever, and I wanted to honor that (and make it easier) by giving users the ability to delete their data from our platform when you want to without waiting. When you visit your profile settings from the User Menu, you’ll see an option at the bottom to delete. If we can see that you have any orders on your account we let you know that so you can go download your games and assets to your computer before you go.

• [Bug Fix] Document Uploads. Quite a few folks have chimed in with an issue that prevented them from uploading larger PDF files, and with slower internet that makes it almost impossible. That should be better handled now, and you should see a progress bar to get a sense of how much is left. You can also cancel the upload mid-way if you need to.

• [New Feature] Free Tier gets 2 Rooms. This is a simple but important change - we’ve normally limited users to only 1 Room at the free tier, but I envisioned that people may want to have an additional Room to test things out in, try new games, or prep for a new product they want to add to the storefront. Hopefully this makes things easier on that front.

Asset Uploads

I’ve introduced Bulk Uploads for assets.

Previously when you wanted to add an image, map, or token to a Room you went through a one-at-a-time flow that, frankly, got tedious fast if you were prepping a session and had a stack of things to bring in. So I rebuilt that experience.

When you go to add a new image you’ll now see a small menu giving you the option to add from your existing library or to upload something new.

Choosing Upload opens a new modal where you can either click to select a file, or drag and drop multiple files - or even whole folders of files - all at once. You’ll also see your current storage usage at the bottom so you have a sense of how much room you’ve got left.

As files come in they show up in a list below the drop zone. If the file is an image type, it gets a Map and Token toggle so you can tell the app what each asset is meant to be before it gets committed, instead of sorting it out after the fact.

If you mark something as a Token, a side panel opens up so you can scale it against a sample grid - square or hex - and get it sized the way you want before it lands in your Room.

If you mark something as a Map, that same side panel lets you set the number of tiles for the map so it lines up with your grid out of the gate.

When you’re happy with everything, hit Upload and the whole batch goes up together. Quite a bit faster than the old flow, and hopefully removes a chunk of the prep work for those of you running heavier sessions.

Upcoming

A few things I’m working on or thinking about that I wanted to share:

• Going back to Rooms, I’m planning on making an additional change or two. I’m looking at adding an Archive feature to let you take a Room and remove it from the main list of Rooms; while this will mean other players can no longer join, the host can still go in to check something from it if they need to reference anything, and old chats will (likely) still be in there too. Room creation will also be slightly adjusted so that a new Room may start in a “sandbox” mode that won’t count to the 2 Room max on Free tier until you actively switch it to take up a spot. Once these features are set up I’ll speak more on them.
• I’ll be taking a pass on a Group bug or two, as I know they’ve come up in Discord recently and cause some weird issues with duplications in particular.
• Sheets 2.1 and Sheets 2.2 - I’m hammering away at some of the more gnarly bugs that came out of Sheets 2.1, and some Sheets 2.2 features are in flight. As I get closer to 2.2 things being feature complete I’ll speak more on those as well.

That’s all for now. Please reach out if you have any questions, and as always…

You can play with us!

-– Role <3

Hey everyone, I hope you are doing well, with the state of things such as they are.

I wanted to make a post about some of the smaller changes that have come through on the app recently, and one not so small change. Let’s dive in:

Audio Updates

I’ve made a series of smaller changes specifically for audio support.

• [New Feature] Playlist Mode. I’ve added a new “Playlist” toggle button to the Audio Tab in the room. Those of you who wanted tracks to play in order that they are in the tab should expect it to work now when that is enabled; looping, back and next buttons should work as expected. You might ask why this didn’t work like this before - truth is I’m not sure. But rather than mess up someone’s current understanding of the Audio Tab, I added a manual on/off toggle for folks who want a different experience. I’ll be taking notes for more improvements in the area in the future.

• [New Feature] Audio Preview Panel. If you’ve checked out our recent addition of the audio pack by Brombaer called the Wildlands Trilogy, you may have noticed something new visiting the free preview of the audio pack: I’ve added an Audio Preview panel that lets you listen to the tracks on the Product Page without having to visit a Room to do so. I’ll be using this for future audio packs so you can try before you buy.

• [Bug Fix] Audio Scrubber Volume. Fixed a bug where using the scrubber on an audio track doesn’t adjust the volume correctly and seems to end around the middle of the way. Now the volume transition should be a bit more natural when you want to increase or decrease the audio for music or for someone’s user volume.

Sheets v2.1

Now for the not so small change: I have released what I’m calling Sheets v2.1.

This is not the full Sheets 3.0 that I talked about before. This represents a step in that direction.

Sheets v2.1 is a set of architectural updates to the sheets and how the data flows between them and where they are saved. It also reinforces collaborative editing of the same sheet and adds a layer of “local redundancy” in case of issues.

What does all of this mean? It’s a lot of words to say that you may not notice much of anything; maybe your data loads a little bit faster, maybe you notice when someone else is typing in a field in the same sheet as you. If you occasionally deal with shaky internet, there is a level of offline support now that attempts to store your sheet data locally in your browser and syncs it back to the server when you’re back online. For those of you who care about “keeping your data local” this is a step-wise improvement in that direction as well.

It may not be flashy but it’s both a necessary step to further the goal for Sheets 3.0, and also a way for me to test out these changes at scale. That being said, if you do find issues with your sheets acting odd I have added a user toggle in your Profile Settings page if you choose to disable the experimental features. Just click that checkbox then refresh the page with your Room and your sheets will go back to the way they were.

I’ll be monitoring logs and any reports folks send in (if you need to send them to support@playrole.com) or ping me here. While this is out there, I’ll be planning the next phase of Sheets changes and hope to get back to you soon enough.

That’s all for now. Please reach out if you have any questions, and as always…

You can play with us!

-– Role <3

Hey there, it’s been a minute since we’ve had a new post here and I wanted to do a longer write up. There’s been a slew of changes since late last year that, while have been communicated to the Discord, have not been posted in our Blog. So I’ll do a summary of a bunch of things to catch us all up!

Changelog Blog

I’ll work to keep this updated, but more than just strict changes. You may see posts here closer to what folks in the Discord might see as well - to keep parity and to give more context to work on Role.

Audio and Video Updated

At the end of last year, we moved to a new tech stack for our audio and video. It was necessary to make this migration to replace an older set of technology that was potentially going to shut down, but also so that new features can be built more easily. While you may not notice that the migration happened - which is, frankly, a good thing - we made a few other changes as well:

• [New Feature] User Volume. When you click on another user’s name in a room who has their mic turned on you will now see a User Volume slider for them. Now you can adjust their volume, or anyone else’s in the room, without affecting what others hear. It’s just for you.
• [New Feature] Hidden video. There’ve been multiple requests by folks asking for a way to turn on their cameras but then hide their own video, or hide someone else’s video. Now you can. When a user has their video turned on, you should see a new “eye-con” on the tile that lets you toggle between the video being shown to you or not. This doesn’t affect your video being turned on at all or theirs. Just whether it is visible to yourself.
• Fixed an issue where the network quality indicator next to a person’s username would always show no matter what. Now it only shows if it’s anything less than max.
• I heard some issues with the size of the user’s video tiles when in speaker mode or showing an asset so I’ve increased the size of them a bit to give a better experience.

Long Standing Chat Bug Resolved

• [Bug Fix] Loading Chat Bug. This one has been a long time coming and I appreciate your patience. When you see a chat loading forever, it was because it was being “closed” after a long period of time has passed. Unfortunately this impacted too many of you and left room chat locked down. The fix itself is a bit convoluted but suffice to say that the next time you go into that room you will see the chat start to load again and you should see a message with “Your chat is still loading!” show up. Depending on how many messages there were, it may take longer than others; let it cook. The spinner and message will eventually go away and you should see your messages! If you try to scroll up and there seems to be a bounce effect forcing the scroll back down, it’s still loading the rest of the messages (probably dice roll messages) so some extra patience while it finishes loading but it should be fine to start typing again!

Miscellaneous Changes

• Added support for .webp format images.

What’s Next - Sheets 3.0

So here’s what’s coming next; this will be the main large portion of changes coming to Role pertaining to Sheets. This section is a long one, with lots of context.

Sheets (aka Sheets 2.0)

One of the most important pieces to any game is the Sheet. Each person in a Room can have one or more Sheets and they hold information about characters, health pools for bosses, notes for a story and more. These are sources of truth for many of you in all your games.

Ian and I have gone through a lot of feedback around Sheets and wanted to summarize some of the most common points here:

• Current Sheets, especially long Sheets, are hard to navigate
• Elements, and the space between them, take up a lot of Room
• Trying to get to a specific Element can be tough, and having to jump between multiple Elements makes it even harder to be in the moment.
• Making minor edits on individual Elements is time consuming, especially when you are already in a Room

We’ve also received requests for certain features or changes to Sheets as well:

• Quick search on a Sheet and faster navigation on sections
• More layout options for Sheets
• Give Elements like Dropdown more functionality in a Sheet
• Allow for more customization on Sheets

With all of these in mind we started brainstorming on how best to level up sheets. We have a bunch of things we want to accomplish, so I’ll be presenting them here in chunks. This first chunk called Sheets 3.0 represents what we aim to implement in our first series of changes:

Sheets 3.0

Sheet migration and Elements refactor

To unlock new options for Sheets, we need to move in a new direction with the base framework for Sheets. In a similar vein, Elements need to be upgraded as well, bringing more control and responsiveness to them. This will unlock new feature opportunities and help improve performance for Sheets

Groups are being removed, Sections are now Groups

Group as an Element is very powerful and unlocks lots of possibilities, however because it is an Element, it creates limitations to what can be done at that level. We are remaking Sections giving them duplication and nesting possibilities similar to what Groups have today. For now, we will allow Sections to be nested 1 level deep; if this becomes something that be handled well and in a performant manner, we could revisit that specific limitation.

Responsive Sheets

Sheets will gain some new layout options. With Elements being more responsive, this will allow for multiple columns worth of Sections sitting next to each other. In Rooms, you’ll be able to expand to a number of columns wide and sections will snap and fill to those columns. Outside of a Room, as you drag the Sheet container wider, the sections will get wider and develop new columns as you hit certain thresholds.

Quick Sheet Search

Sheets in a Room will have a search bar for quickly jumping to an Element you need to get to, helpful for much larger Sheets full of detail

Permission Prompts

When a player joins a Room, they’ll be prompted to allow Room Hosts to Edit their public Sheets. We aim to give all players in the Room the agency to choose who they want to see and change their Sheets, same as you might do in an in-person game. Adding more context clues for players in the Room should help mitigate issues that can come up in the future like a Host needing to make edits to a Sheet when a player is unavailable. We will pay attention to how these are used and received and make more changes if needed.

Element Updates and Changes

Element descriptions hidden by default in a tooltip. Descriptions are one of the things that tend to add a lot of unnecessary vertical space in a Sheet and, unlike labels which are indicators for what a field or Element is, descriptions are pieces of optional context which are particularly important for new players. Once the player is accustomed to their Sheet, they will become less reliant on these.

Buff Elements will gain a + and - option directly on them which allow small increases or decreases within a Room

Dropdown functionality improved, giving players more things they can do with them. Selecting an option can bring in a new Element or a new section to a Sheet, revealing new options for a player while in a game and new possibilities for Sheet creators.

[NEW] Image Element - Users will be able to add this new Element to Sheets that will give them the ability to upload an image at-will to their Sheet.

There’s a lot here and hopefully my comments for each change will explain enough about what they each entail.

Now, given all of that, there are subsequent features and changes we’d like to implement but will not be part of the first chunk known as Sheets 3.0. Instead, these will be done in a more free-form , follow up manner once the first batch of changes are completed. These are also still in discussion, so they may change in form by the time we get to a productionized version of them.

Sheets 3.1

• Sheet compact mode (toggle which reduces vertical padding and other visible Elements)
• Sheet “Edit Mode” (allow bulk editing of a Sheet from inside a Room)
• Asset Linking (clicking on a certain Element in a Sheet will reveal an asset in the Room)
• Pop out Sheets (Responsive Sheets in a new window)
• Sheet-to-Sheet Communication (allow a player’s actions to trigger something in another player’s Sheet)
• New Elements
• Other import/embed options for 3rd-party Sheets
• Additional Element functionality (similar to Dropdowns but for other Elements)
• Additional Sheet Customizations
• Pinning Elements to a Sheet header
• Offline Sheets for mobile support

Even beyond what’s been stated here, there are other exciting opportunities that we’ve discussed and hope can come to fruition soon enough. This is a large undertaking, so please bear with us as we work to bring the next generation of Sheets to Role. If you’re in the Community Discord, feel free to drop a comment if you have feedback or questions, or if not then send an email to support@playrole.com; while we cannot promise to do all things and implement everything, we do listen to the feedback that comes in.

Anyway this has been a fairly lengthy post so I’ll cut it here but suffice to say I am very excited to work on this next set of changes. Please reach out if you have any questions, and as always…

You can play with us!

-– Role

Role is back to full power and then some!

• We officially launched our patronage subscription model. Learn more here.
• Audio/Video features have returned to Role!
• We’ve launched our integration with Owlbear Rodeo. Hosts can use OBR right in their Role Room without needing a new tab. All players can see and access your OBR rooms without even needing an OBR account!
• We fixed a handful of bugs throughout the platform.

Dear Role Players,

In early December we were informed that our video provider would be shutting down their service. We are working on integrating a new service provider for audio/video calls, but in the meantime we are disabling the ability to create or join video calls. This affects the following features:

• Joining audio/video calls
• Screensharing
• Streaming music to players

These features are disabled temporarily until we can integrate with a new service provider. We understand that this is a major interruption for many game rooms and we are doing our best to get Role back to full power as soon as possible! Any questions, feel free to email us at support@playrole.com.

Best,
The Role Team

• Fixed an issue preventing sheet templates from being deleted from your dashboard.
• Fixed being able to unsave sheet templates that comes from a product you haven’t purchased.
• Fixed properly showing “Duplicate” button when previewing a sheet template if you have already saved it.
• Fixed loading custom dice from sheet templates coming from a game.
• Fixed sheet templates you searched for showing up as if you had saved them already.
• Fixed crash that sometimes happened when signing out while viewing a product page.
• Fixed incorrectly redirecting you to the wrong page when signing in.

• First pass at dashboard performance improvements. Games, rooms, sheets, templates, assets have been optimized to load more quickly.
• Added a filter panel to the store. This let’s you find new games based on product type, price, complexity, or average session length.
• Added new sections to the store: Bestsellers, Free Quickstarts, and Role Exclusives.
• Fixed unnecessarily showing the new user Room First Time Experience if you are joining a room. We now only show it when you are creating your first room.

Custom Dice

You can now create custom sided dice from within a room and within the template builder!

• The Dice Roller in a room now has a new option in the top right to access Dice Settings. This is only visible to a Room Host.
• Hosts can toggle which dice are available in the room, as well as set the default color.
• From within the dice settings, hosts can also create custom sided dice for use by everyone in the room.
• In the Templater Builder, you can add custom dice to the template. These dice are usuable in a Dice Pool element as well as when creating an Element Link to the Dice Roller.

Search

We’ve updated our search to begin moving it towards a global search. When searching you will now see games available on the platform, products that are for sale, as well as templates published by the community.

Bugfixes

• Fixed dice with default color having a border after they are rolled.
• Fixed being able to update the color of an element’s dice link.
• Fixed updating card settings from overwriting all room settings.

We’ve updated your dashboard to our latest design patterns!

• Updated UI for Rooms, Sheets, Templates, Assets.
• New Games page under My Stuff shows you your purchases core and supplement books.