Release notes on recent improvements

Keleth and I have been levelling up functionality and slaying bugs (...and probably making a few new bugs along the way). Here's an update.

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Features and fixes

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Dark mode

Dark mode can now be enabled for users without the extension. You'll find it at the bottom of your user profile.

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Warn if there's an unsaved post

You'll be warned if you try to leave a post page when there's text in the editor. If you like to live dangerously, you can turn this functionality off in your user profile.

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Game page

Game descriptions now support BBCode and appear at the top of the page.

Add links to your Games Tavern thread and your profile page to help people introduce themselves before trying to sign up for your game.
Add pictures, videos and styling to make your game page more appealing.
Open/Closed has been renamed to "Open/Closed for applications".

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Inviting users to games

You might have seen a few comments in the Game Tavern where GMs said they couldn't invite a specific user to a game because the player name didn't appear in the dropdown.

If the name entered in the Invite textbox exactly matches a username, they now appear at the top of the list for selection.

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Thread in breadcrumb

On the advanced posting page, the thread appears at the end of the breadcrumb, so you can open it in a new tab and remember what you're replying to.

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ooc in notes

Fixed a bug where ooc in the middle of a note made the rest of the note visible.

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Avatars that aren't square

Only BowlOfSpinach requested this and didn't even notice once we'd fixed it. I don't know why we bother (he wrote, sulkily).

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Current HP in 5e character sheets

5e characters now have a box for their current HP. Because... yeah... current hit points are a thing.

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One player is an allowable option

This site now supports duets.

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Game editor

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Notes dropdown

Don't enjoy the thrill of spelling bizarre usenames? The notes button now has a dropdown for selecting players - choose "Add Note" once you've made your selection.

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Upload to Imgur

If your image isn't already on the internet, this option will ask you to select an image from your computer, upload it, and add the img tag.

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New BBCode tags

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youtube

Click the "share" link on a YouTube video and put it in a youtube tag for inline videos.







I've seen people use videos for ambient music to play whilst reading the post - I like that (shoutout to AA64 and his smooooth Baldur's Gate noir jazz).

One gotcha. If you want to start from a point in time, the YouTube link will have a "?t=" parameter at the end - you'll need to change that to a "?start=" parameter.

I don't know why YouTube uses a different parameter name for embedded videos. I could convert it in code, but less code means fewer bugs, and that's good too - right?

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map

Using On The Fly Battle Maps? The map tag means you can keep all the parameters on separate lines for easy editing. The system will also turn the map image into a link, showing the map in a new tab.

If you're not using OtFBM then this is an img tab that automatically adds a link to view the image in a new tab.

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Thanks to everyone for the suggestions and feedback.

nice!

👏

Absolutely fantastic work. I can't wait to try every one of these new features!

Wow terrific! Thanks for putting in all that hard work.

Yes, amazing work, Adam and Keleth!
Thank you

Incredible! Thanks for the gargantuan update, Keleth & Adam.

Oh, all this is so awesome! Embedded YouTube videos is an awesome feature. Is there a way to do the same with Spotify share links?

I love non-square avatars, by the way. :)

That's an excellent idea (mainly because it's easy to implement).

Wow. Some absolutely HUGE contributions here, Keleth, Adam. Thanks.

Just wow! And them battle maps... Go go grandpa Adam!

Keleth and Adam: Wow and thanks!

Incredible! Many thanks, Adam & Keleth!

Great work!
most useful aside from not exposing notes :)
Also could yo try to better explain the maps feature?

Amazing work Adam and Keleth! Thank you!

KoldikSteelskin, the map tag uses "on the fly battlemaps," a separate service that generates battlemaps based on the code you put into a URL. Here is the documentation for using it: http://docs.otfbm.com

Thanks so much, Adam and Keleth. These wonderful additions will make it way more user-friendly for GMs new to GP.

this is really cool. It would be great to have all these bbcode tricks added to the guide so new (and old) players can reference them easily.

Sweet updates, thanks for all the hard work!

OtFBM

I know more people are using OtFBM on here. The documentation for OtFBM that Len added is the best place to start.

OtFBM is great for a quick map. Just slap...

http://otfbm.io/8x5/D3r-Goblin/A1r-Goblin/G4g-Fighter

...in an img tag, and you have a map.

But before you know it, you're maintaining messes like this:

https://otfbm.io/40x40/@dc42/x22r-Orc14~5nh6m/y23g-A~5nh6m/x23r-Orc10~5nh6m/w24-Orc4~5nh6m/ak20-Orc~5nh6m/ak21-Orc~5nh6m/aj22-Orc~5nh6m/ak23-Orc~5nh6m/ak24-Orc~5nh6m/ak25-Orc~5nh6m/x24-Al~2dhed/v24-Ugo~gt4tf/q20-Diesa~6gr9h~/u17-Turner~p9x5k/x21-Thellan~4qnme/ah11l-Manticore~b8g4t/n9:26x20?bg=https://i.imgur.com/694uWjY.jpg

Editing that mess is like playing a word-search puzzle.

The map tag lets you make that stuff a little more readable and maintainable as you can keep things on different lines and the tag strips whitespace before adding to the image.

https://otfbm.io/40x40/@dc42
/x22r-Orc14~5nh6m
/y23g-A~5nh6m
/x23r-Orc10~5nh6m
/w24-Orc4~5nh6m
/ak20-Orc~5nh6m
/ak21-Orc~5nh6m
/aj22-Orc~5nh6m
/ak23-Orc~5nh6m
/ak24-Orc~5nh6m
/ak25-Orc~5nh6m

/x24-Al~2dhed
/v24-Ugo~gt4tf
/q20-Diesa~6gr9h~
/u17-Turner~p9x5k
/x21-Thellan~4qnme

/ah11l-Manticore~b8g4t
/n9:26x20?bg=https://i.imgur.com/694uWjY.jpg



It also adds a link to open the image up in a new tab (so the poster doesn't need a url tag with that huge OtFBM link as well as the img). This is useful because GP automatically shrinks images in a post, but for wide battle maps players might need that extra detail (esp. if there's a mix of range and melee combat going on).

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Other maps

But you could use it for other maps (having whitespace isn't mandatory!). Under the hood, it's an img tag with a link.

Consider the image: https://media.wizards.com/2015/images/dnd/resources/Sword-Coast-Map_LowRes.jpg

That map is 3600 pixels wide.

If I do this:



Then it acts like an img tag but the players can click it to view it all, and it's a little more readable and compact than a URL with the same img:

...but, yeah, otfbm is doing the heavy lifting. The new map tag just makes it slightly easier to give it the stuff to lift.

Amazing, thanks for these improvements, folks!

Star Wars FFG dice

There was a restriction on how many dice were shown during rolling. Now you can throw whole handfuls of dice at Jedi/Imperial scum.

This is fantastic, but I had a thought. I don't know how possible it is, but it would be nice for a GM to be able to add additional dice to a player's roll. Like if I roll to try to hack a computer, I don't innately know the difficulty, so it's not easy to add the number of difficulty or challenge dice I need to roll.

If the GM could adjust the roll after and add those into my roll, then I wouldn't have to use one of the options that are currently available: Guessing, waiting to hear how difficult it is before I roll, or needing to have the GM calculate my results after he manually rolls the difficulty dice.

Hopefully I make sense? Not 100% sure, but I swear that it's clear in my head!

That definitely ☝️ Allowing the GM to correct the dice pool is great!

And there used to be a bug with triumphs/despair not counting as success/fails as well. (Probably still there)
This was on a genesis game, but I’m betting it works the same for SW

Speaking of players posts what about keeping their character avatar when you edit their post I used to fix spelling mistakes for a while until I noticed that then I decided if I could figure it out better to leave the character picture.

You could always upload a copy of their character sheet and then "post as" that when you edit a player's post. But that's a big workaround. I agree, I'd like to be able to edit players' posts without their avatars disappearing

I shudder to think about GMing for a player character with that high a Force Rating...

...But this is a huge improvement. Thanks! (I second the request to finally fix the Triumph/Despair bug that CESN mentioned. And that disappearing avatar thing.)

Great stuff!

Awesome awesome developments! Thank you, Keleth and Adam! It's great to see this site we all love getting even better.

The extension dark mode is still a bit better. I think it is an issue with the background image
I find that it only works in game forums. In other, like this forum, the image buton only offers the URL option.
Sames goes for the note function btw

It makes sense for the Notes button because in a public forum it would have to list every single user on the site. No idea about the image thing, though

I didn’t want to make it easier for spammers to add images.

That makes perfect sense. So it is not a bug, its a feature :D

It’s by design - but it might be a stupid design.

Release notes 9th July 2021

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Tables (custom character sheets)

A table tag has been added to the bbcode. They don't support nesting yet and this is the first release - so let's see how it goes.
Tables were added to better support custom character sheets.

So instead of this:


You can do this:


Using the table tag:


I've tried to keep the syntax simple:
In a table tag, each line (hard return) is a new row and each | separates a column.

(shout out to Public Repository of Custom Games Sheets for all your custom character sheet needs)

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Spoilers on character sheets

...and if you're using other character sheets then spoilers now work on those too.

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Size bonus used in D&D 3/3.5 sheets

Size is now taken into account on D&D 3/3.5 character sheets (thanks to Demagor and flatworldsedge for reporting the bug).

Note. There are still a number of bugs in d20 systems - mainly where ability bonuses are doubled up in edit mode (although there are other bugs too). I'm going to be looking at fixing all d20 sheets soon.

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Spotify tag

This was SavageBob's suggestion. If you get the "share" link from something in spotify (a track, an album, an artist, a show, an episode) then put it inside a spoitfy tag then it'll embed it in your post.

Wow, that is all really awesome! I especially like the tables thing.

Thank you, Adam!

Great stuffs!! :D intense custom sheet editing being audible

Amazing!

"This content is not available in your country." I wonder what this Spotify link is. XD

Nice new features, kudos! Tables really make life easier. And finally I can indulge my habits of putting lots of text on my sheets without them looking too cluttered... :D

Ah, I didn't think about that. I imagine Spotify cares more about music-licensing in various national markets than YouTube does. Still, an awesome addition that I hope to try out in game! (Maybe provide a YouTube link and a Spotify link to something in case a player from another country isn't able to access the Spotify link. Have to think on that.)

Great work Adam! Thank you 😁

You wouldn't believe how many videos on YouTube are region locked and not available in Germany

Is there a way to suppress YouTube vids from embedding? It's a useful feature in most cases but sometimes I just want the link and not the inline video. I thought they'd only embed when you use the youtube tag but even when I use the url tag they are embedding. Thanks!

Sweet enhancements, Adam. Really appreciate your work on this!

Ah. That's the extension that's doing that. As more functionality is added to the main site, the extension becomes more redundant.

I think if I add character sheet integration to the site then the extension will have done its job and should be retired. I'll miss the game backgrounds though.

Release notes: 16th July 2021 (pending)

Please disable the Chrome and Firefox GP extension until the update has propogated, or else some functionality will be duplicated.

The most popular system on Gamers' Plane is "custom", just edging out 5e. Some of the changes here are designed to help custom games express their character; other changes help provide mechanical support to these games. The challenge is in trying to support the wide variety of different games available by giving the GM configuration options.

So whether you're kids on bikes, criminally-minded grizzly bears, ghost detectives, noble mice, or cyborg mechs, I hope this release has something for you.

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Custom type

Custom games now have an additional field for the type of RPG. This is shown in place of 'Custom' in the 'Game details', 'My Games' and 'Join a game'.

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Custom character sheet changes

Custom character sheets are now full width (like the other character sheets) and have some other styling improvements.



Add your game's logo at the top by including a style bbcode in your character sheet.

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Custom character sheet dice integration

This option requires that GMs enable it in their game. This is done by setting a flag in the new 'Advanced rules definition' section of the game.



There's a new table type called 'rolls'. You can add this BBCode to the notes of other character sheet types too.



During the game, players will see their characters' names above the 'Add new roll' label, GMs will see all the PCs if they need to make a roll on their behalf.



Selecting the PC will show their available dice rolls.



Clicking on a dice roll will automatically add it to the rolls with a reason based on the row name (and when there are multiple rolls in a row, using the heading too).

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Dice highlighting

Dice highlighting rules, also set in the GM's 'Advanced rules definition' section, allows GMs to determine how dice rolls are highlighted. The configuration is based on the GM's preferences for their game, not the system.



In The Expanse RPG, when 3d6 are rolled, pairs of dice represent stunt points, and one of the dice (the drama die) is special.

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Dice pool sorting

Once the 'Advanced rules definition' is enabled (even with an empy set '{}'), dice pool sorting becomes enabled.

Click on a pool of dice, and the rolls will be sorted from low to high. Click again to return them to their original order.

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Editing posts

When editing posts for a player, GMs now preserve the PC who made the original post.

Previous rolls can now be seen on the edit post page, and their visibility changed. This allows a GM to roll in secret and reveal the dice as necessary.

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Other changes and fixes

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This release contains a number of changes. I ask that you are patient with me if there are bugs. I'll try and fix them as soon as possible.

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Thanks to the Gamers' Plane community for their help in shaping this release and for reporting bugs.

Wow, these changes are impressive in scope. Can't wait to implement them!

Excellent work!

These changes are huge. Amazing work!

The character sheet dice integration is especially interesting to me, but on the GM side. Having an NPC's attack and relevant skill rolls embedded in the sheet and accessible from a single button both saves time looking it up and is much easier to use on mobile. And if you spend the time to do this for generic monsters, for example an owl bear, you could reused that owl bear in many games over and over again, so the time savings is compounded. Also, a GM often has a separate character sheet for narration, and you could store frequently used dice rolls for various mechanics like downtime tables or wilderness exploration.

Yeah. No. It doesn't do any of that for DMs. DMs can roll for players, not themselves. Happy to talk on the site dev channel about how we can make this happen.

I can't get the image upload via Imgur to work. Adams browser extention have been removed from my browser

Based on what Adam said on Discord, I think he is in the process of moving may of the extension's features to the site's code, with the intention of eventually dropping the extension altogether as it becomes redundant.

The previously announced upcoming changes are now live.

Here are some more changes that have also gone live.

Character sheet preview
When you change the "post as" to a character then a link appears next to the dropdown that will open the character sheet in a new tab.



GM post as player
On the advanced posting page, GMs can now post as PCs. This fixes the bug that if a GM edits a player post then the PC is retained as the poster.

I am seeing some weirdness with the dice rolling from character templates.

As the GM I can only see other player's characters, even though I have PCs of my own (for testing).

I can also see PCs listed even if they have no table="roll" entries, which is not a big deal and just FYI.
Aside from that. This is pretty awesome.

That's by design (although perhaps it's a weird design). It's to allow GMs to roll for PCs.

To speed up the system it only checks a PC character sheet when you click on it - so it doesn't know there aren't any rolls to show until the sheet is selected. Perhaps if it doesn't find anything it can use then it should just show the whole character sheet so at least the player or GM can try and make sense of it. I'll look at that for a future release.

Yeah, checking each sheet would be a lot of backend work, and the player can easily see that the list is empty (perhaps not as clearly as desired with the way it displays as am empty line).
'By design' that only other people's PCs show up? Why not show PCs owned by the GM as well?
Not a big deal since I don't plan to use those PCs, but some might.
Setting them as as PCs, NPCs, or Mobs makes no difference, they still don't show if owned by me (the GM).

It's a good question. It's because I don't use those NPC sheets either - and as a user of the site, I tend to use myself as the test case (and feedback from others).

If people are filling in NPCs with a bunch of data (other than just name and avatar) then maybe I'll change it. But at the moment it reduces clutter by not showing a bunch of empty NPC sheets. And I have a lot of empty NPC sheets.

Fair enough. I merely found it puzzling. I don't need the feature. What we have now is awesome.
Just wanted to make sure there was not a bug. :) /carryon

holycow, only just spotted this release! Got to try some of these, they sound like awesome features. Thanks!

This is great (tough probably not as user friendly yet as the original icons ) :D

Just a very quick question about the dice rules… can you set the same rule for many different rolls?
So, instead of, let’s say
{
"diceRules":[
{"rolled":"2d20","lastDie":true,"highlight":"fail bold underline"},
{"rolled":"3d20","lastDie":true,"highlight":"fail bold underline"}
]
}

Do something like
{
"diceRules":[
{"rolled":["2d20","3d20"],"lastDie":true,"highlight":"fail bold underline"}
]
}

Or even better, does just omitting "rolled" default to every roll?

Omitting the first number does it, as long as it's the same type of dice.
^This works for 3d10, 5d10, etc. Source: my own testing. XD

Also making it simply "d" will work for all rolls. It's based on string being in the input field, I think.
Also-also, I discovered that "d10" works for d100 rolls. That might be unintended. XD

Cool! FS is writing the documentation! Yes. That’s exactly what it does.

Errr. Yeah. The d10 being used for d100 is unintended. Perhaps I should get users to enter them as regular expressions (shudder)

While we're on this topic, is it possible to not make the D/d case sensitive? In the games I'm running I have added both versions since I think most people use the notation of XdY and I use XDY.

Hey, if you actually need a documentation writer, just call! :P

To be fair, d100 and d10 probably aren't used that often together. Though if they work, so would d2 and d24, right? And all other similar combos. Maybe you can check if the number of symbols is correct for the desired expression (so 3 for d10, 4 for d100)?

Right! It works with pattern matching :)
Need to try "d10$" :D

As long as Flying gets her D3 support, she'll be happy 😄

That fix was checked in. It might have been deployed. 🤷‍♂️

Hey, my d3 doesn't have successes and failures, it needs no highlighting. But you haven't seen me use d256 yet... :P

In D&D6 they'll harmonize everything down to d1 in the inevitable conclusion to narrowing the range of options. The most bounded of accuracies.

Two questions. Using 2d10, there are two special cases, rolling doubles, and rolling a 13. How could I implement either/both of these?

Unless I am misunderstanding 'doubles' I think {"rolled":"d10","paired":true,"highlight":"info"} might do it.

Matching on the total would be useful for many games.

Release notes: 18th September 2021

Thanks to Keleth and the wisdom of the Council of Elrond (bowlofspinach, Qralloq, Harrigan, Antiproduct, vagueGM) the following changes have been made to the site.

Access retired games
The My Games page now has a collapsible section for your retired games.


Dark mode colour adjustment
The system will try invert the brightness of colours but keep the hue and saturation as best as possible, but the idea is that if it's visible against white then it should still be visible against the dark colour. It really has to work for blue and this adjusts the hue somewhat.

Mark as unread
The last post of a thread has an "unread" option next to quote. Clicking this keeps the thread as unread.

Homepage changes
The homepage's Latest Posts section now removes the overlap with Latest Game Posts (to avoid game posts being in both lists). Latest Posts is now called Latest Community Posts.

Other changes/fixes
* Custom game subtypes are now shown on the homepage.
* Your homepage will tell you if you've been invited to a game.
* Emjoi, smart quotes and special characters will now be rendered correctly (e.g. in PMs and editing a game).
* The apply button has been removed for closed games.
* The pager on the Latest Posts and Latest Game Posts pages now reports the correct number of pages.
* Breadcrumbs are shown on the thread view.
* The "Re:" prefix has been removed from the Latest Community Posts section of the homepage.
* Secondary GMs can edit games.
* The footer border in dark mode is now... um... dark.
* Dice roller in game footer tools menu now has visible text.
* A spelling correction on the 403 page.

It's like Christmas came early! Thanks, dev team!

Wow, what Jabes said. Fantastic. Thanks for all the work!

A million thumbs up!

Gene hangs a few Christmas Ornaments on Jabe's to enforce the idea.

This. And thanks, really.

Wicked, Adam (and VagueGM and Keleth), and the documentation is excellent, too. Thanks bunches!

Though... could that be generalized to all the posts?
(In case a player edits a post that is not the last)

With the npc tag, where do the npc avatars go? In the post or on the side avatar?

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Here's a table.

Did you post as player (not character)?

I did! But I figured out my mistake. I somehow lobbed off the last ] on the [/npc] tag. That makes the image appear to the left of the text rather than in the avatar box.

The new drop down character stat menus are great, but can AC be added? That's one I look for a lot.

If you add a Roll Table it will show up in the dropdown even if you don't have any rolls in it, this is particularly useful with custom sheets but can be used in any. if your talking about displaying that Information automatically you'll have to remember that there are multiple types of sheets and that not all are set up the same way.

no, no,

I really like the sheets and find them super useful. But the 5e sheet doesn't incude Armour Class

The character sheet includes AC.



If you mean the roller sheet, then what I think KoldikSteelskin means is you can add your own rolls table to the notes of 5e character sheets and it'll show up at the bottom of the in-game roller sheet (even if the values aren't rolls)

I don't know what to call it, the new drop down menus in the "rolls" tab.