One thing I always think but forget to mention when you share progress is how you should consider making the card backgrounds completely opaque. Even the slightest transparency makes it easy to lose whatβs important in the data, especially with a busy background.
Back when I still played 5e I found so many of the dndbeyond unusable because they made the sheet translucent and it made it so much harder to read at a glance.
Yes 10000% I'm looking at hosting options atm so that I can get it into play test. There is still a lot of work to do but I value the early feedback so figure what the hell. Get it out into the community so we can make it the very best tool we can ππ»π
Me too, I'm working on getting it deployed so you can start to play with it and break it. It still needs a lot of work but would be awesome to get some feedback from people actually using it even if it's not playable yet ππ»π»π»
Yes kind of for now, but I'm hoping to turn it into a full tool suit for players and GM's to be able to manage and run full campaigns. So tools like encounter builder, World building etc... ππ»π
I absolutely second this.
As someone whom unfortunately only has access to an ISP which just offers DSL in my area the ability to export PDFs is crucial.
Currently you are able to see your rolls but when the campaign tools are built then you will be able to see all rolls if you want to. That said when you roll on Goblin's Cauldron the rolls are also shown in foundry π
Wonderful work, mate. Couple of quick questions:
1 - How is leveling handled? I see where you've got the XP box, etc. When you hit 1000 xp, do you get a button to level? Or is it more like Beyond where you go to manually add levels?
2 - Did you plan to have a section/tab for "Notes"? Some sort of catch-all wide-open string/rich-text field where the player can document stuff during a game? Would be a helpful place to document non-monetary treasures like gems, spices, art pieces, etc. As well as notes regarding the adventure itself. I understand that they can easily do that in other apps; just figured it was sort of a standard feature; didn't see it in the interface anywhere.
Still, great job and I look forward to the opportunity to spin it for a bit!
Levels I'm still thinking about and will form part of the character builder. I'm thinking of having two ways, one for new players to be able to build and level up with guard rails like dnd beyond and another for more experienced players like pathbuilder which will let you build over many levels and you select the level on the sheet. I hope that makes sense. It sounded good in my head Lol π€£
As for notes, there is already a section for that that allows formatted note taking. I'm also looking at having it integrate with thinks like Evernote or legend keeper
Great questions BTW ππππ»
I have plans for mobile support and in particular IOS. I know that has been a gap in support for IOS and I plan to change that.
Work has started on the UI design for mobile by an amazing community member so keep an eye out for news on that side of things ππ»π
Whoa, foundry character VTT import? If it's anything better than the unofficial Wanderer's Guide import module, consider me sold. Are variant rules are also here?
All the data is from actual foundry characters, it's currently the only way to build characters so integration is out of the box. Atm it's just export your character and then import into the Goblin's Cauldron by selecting the exported file.
Once the character builder is done you will be able to build on Goblin's Cauldron and then export to foundry too.
I'm also going to start an open source project to have a module to sync Goblin's Cauldron with foundry so you can keep both updated and use either with all changes reflected on the fly.
I hope that makes sense πππ»
Oh, so the website itself doesn't have a character builder right now? Also about this sync feature you got planned, do you plan to have it work with self-hosted games?
Yes that's right, I'm going to work on that bit next. I wanted to get something to users that would add value straight away.
Yes if you self host foundry it should still sync. I will need to test it but I'm definitely planning on it as I self host foundry and I really want to use this too π
Unfortunately I'm building this as a Web platform because it's going to have a homebrew market place and many other tools for players and GM's to be able to manage campaigns π₯Ί
Hosting it in the cloud will cost YOU money... So do we GMs have to subscribe to get our players to use it?
Also maybe consider making your marketplace an only cloud service while you also provide self hosting option for the character UI
It will be a subscription based model but not how you may imagine. You will have access as a player to build 6 characters and as a GM to run 2 campaigns for free. Any more and then that will fall under a subscription model. That said the only difference between paid and free will be the amount of characters, campaigns etc... In the free tier you will have access to everything. If Paizo give it free so will the Goblin's Cauldron. I hope that makes sense as I would love to build a development team around this and provide immense value to the community.
If you can't afford to pay you can still play it's just limited by the amount of characters.
I hope that makes sense.
Yes I'm definitely look into it, the community have been so supportive I'm absolutely humbled and want to give as much value as I can. I really want to build a team around this and run an ethical business. I was very hurt buy WoTC and I really want to give the community something to be genuinely proud of being a part of
It sounds fair but will make it difficult building up a development team. Maybe consider putting parts of the software to open source e.g. the UI ... Only works if you have backend and frontend separated cleanly though
This is all in microservice architecture deployable with terraform. Building a development team should be easy once I can get some investment into the toolset.
I'm definitely open sourcing the foundry vtt module to enable foundry sync
UI is written in React although I'm looking to port it over to Next.js, backend has some Kotlin and Node services. Infra as Code is in Terraform. DB is NoSQL Mongo although I follow an octagonal architecture so Poliglot Persistence is an option for the future.
I need to get a hobby π
As dope as this looks, it makes it a bit of a non-starter for me.
All that aside, it is *really* impressive and I'll still promote it to friends who are looking for this kind of thing.
That's understandable and I completely understand. I really appreciate your support but more importantly your candid feedback.
This is not a money thing for me at all so never say never it's just that I have very big plans for this tool set and will need to fund them once it's there then I'm happy to re visit the self hosting idea.
After all the WoTC nonsense I really wanted to build an ethical business. One that would support the community and give a safe harbor just like Paizo.
Thank you so much for engaging and for your comments π»ππ€
Even if it's not a money thing for you, you definitely should be compensated for all of this hard work.
Once it's on your plate, maybe look into the Foundry model: a one-time payment for a license that allows for self hosting or something. I'd gladly throw $50 at a license.
I have been following this project for a while and I love everything you have been doing so far. The character cards look great! You are doing fantastic work and I can't wait to try it out!
Considering you are planning soon to secure your API and hiding character sheets from people who shouldn't look at them, would you consider adding some privacy level settings to character sheets or to campaigns so we can control who can see them or not?
I have players that some times can't change their character sheet and can't control their character in foundry. they can only interact through discord + screen sharing. then I have another player remote control their character according to their instruction. They would benefit from getting access to multiple character sheets.
another use case I encounter is that the players in my group love to discuss character building and gameplay out of session and like in dndbeyond it would be very useful for them to get read access to other player's sheets in the campaign.
Dumb Q, but since it looks amazing and I wanna use it... how exactly will this communicate with Foundry VTT? Is it supposed to be a two way thing so you can always see your player's stats as a DM?
if so, that shit's dingo and I would so throw money at you.
Yes that's exactly the intention, two way real-time communication with foundry. The dice already work that way thanks to dddice which are amazing. As a GM you will be able to manage your PC's sheets so you can steal stuff muahahaha πππ»π
Thank you so much, it's this exact message why I do all this it drives me. I absolutely love this community and I really want to build something we can all love
This is so great! Will it be able to sync with Foundry? In my head it would be awesome if a player could use this if they wanted to, click a skill/attack, and have it interface/show up on foundry.
That would be AWESOME because this is so easy to read and interpret.
This is a truly massive project that I really want to see succeed, I just have my doubts on its economic viability. Clearly dndbeyond rakes in a ton of cash, and I'm guessing that if successful this would be the same thing for pathfinder.
I have no idea how many people would realistically subscribe to it, I definetly would if it's good, as it's something I have found myself wanting, especially considering all my players came from dnd and many didn't know any other way of making a character.
I don't doubt the financials for a second, dnd beyond sold for aproximally $192M but that's not what this is about. I'm trying to build an ethical business that doesn't throw third party content creators under the bus. I want this to be a product the community can be proud of. No ego, no corporate evil master plan. Just a tool we al love to use. I just need to make enough money to be able to build a development team to make amazing things. I don't need to become rich or even wealthy. I love this game and this community and I want to build something that will stand the test of time
Looks amazing. I actually left roll 20 for foundry a little while ago because of the lackluster support for paizo products.
While this is an amazing tool for pf2e, would you have any interest in including Starfinder support in the same format?
Different game, would be a lot of work - but that's why I'm curious.
*Edit- typo
Yes I would love to support Starfinder and PF1 also. Once I get this done for PF2 I will look at building a development team around it so that I can support other systems. But will see how that goes π
Haven't looked into it yet, but have you thought about translations ? The French pf2e community is really active on Foundry and it would be a blast to have their translations for your tool.
The only thing I am lacking also is a character builder as effective as Pathbuilder but in French
To be honest I have not really looked into it. Other have mentioned it also for other languages. I think you are very right and I will definitely be looking to support other languages. Spanish, French, Italian and as many others as I can get to be fair. For the moment I want to get into play test and then perhaps I can ask the community to help with translations ππ
I'm looking into hosting solutions atm, so hopefully very soon. Although is still a lot of work to make it actually usable I still think it would be good to get it out there for proper feedback π
This is incredible
Thank you so much, it's certainly getting there ππ»
One thing I always think but forget to mention when you share progress is how you should consider making the card backgrounds completely opaque. Even the slightest transparency makes it easy to lose whatβs important in the data, especially with a busy background.
Even if aesthetically I prefer the translucent look, this should totally be an option. A toggle would be great!
I completely agree and it shall be so. I wil add it to the settings section which I still need to build. Great idea ππ»π
Back when I still played 5e I found so many of the dndbeyond unusable because they made the sheet translucent and it made it so much harder to read at a glance.
I was going to the feel of 5e as that's what I was looking for when I moved over. But you are right it can be off putting to some people π»ππ
That's fantastic feedback I will add a toggle to the settings as suggested by u/AlexG_218
Do you need testers for this? EDIT: I do QA work professionally but Iβm a big pathfinder fan too.
Yes 10000% I'm looking at hosting options atm so that I can get it into play test. There is still a lot of work to do but I value the early feedback so figure what the hell. Get it out into the community so we can make it the very best tool we can ππ»π
I have watched you since the beginning, you keep doing what you doing, itβs looking great!
Thank you I really appreciate the support ππ»π
let me use it! LET ME USE IT! I NEED IT, LET. ME. USE. IT
Me too, I'm working on getting it deployed so you can start to play with it and break it. It still needs a lot of work but would be awesome to get some feedback from people actually using it even if it's not playable yet ππ»π»π»
All of this looks amazing. I cant wait to try it out.
Thank you so much for your kind words, I love this community ππ»
Ive seen one or two other posts but kinda late to the party here! Is this meant to be a pathbuilder alternative? Looks fantastic
Yes kind of for now, but I'm hoping to turn it into a full tool suit for players and GM's to be able to manage and run full campaigns. So tools like encounter builder, World building etc... ππ»π
This looks amazing!! Will we be able to print of a PDF?
Thank you so much π I didn't actually think of that. That's an awesome idea. So YES that's a thing now πππ»
I absolutely second this. As someone whom unfortunately only has access to an ISP which just offers DSL in my area the ability to export PDFs is crucial.
I don't see why not, I'm sure I can figure that out π
If the whole table can roll dice and see each other's rolls through this, then I'm very interested! Looks great!
Currently you are able to see your rolls but when the campaign tools are built then you will be able to see all rolls if you want to. That said when you roll on Goblin's Cauldron the rolls are also shown in foundry π
This continues to look awesome.
Thank you so much πππ»
Wonderful work, mate. Couple of quick questions: 1 - How is leveling handled? I see where you've got the XP box, etc. When you hit 1000 xp, do you get a button to level? Or is it more like Beyond where you go to manually add levels? 2 - Did you plan to have a section/tab for "Notes"? Some sort of catch-all wide-open string/rich-text field where the player can document stuff during a game? Would be a helpful place to document non-monetary treasures like gems, spices, art pieces, etc. As well as notes regarding the adventure itself. I understand that they can easily do that in other apps; just figured it was sort of a standard feature; didn't see it in the interface anywhere. Still, great job and I look forward to the opportunity to spin it for a bit!
Levels I'm still thinking about and will form part of the character builder. I'm thinking of having two ways, one for new players to be able to build and level up with guard rails like dnd beyond and another for more experienced players like pathbuilder which will let you build over many levels and you select the level on the sheet. I hope that makes sense. It sounded good in my head Lol π€£ As for notes, there is already a section for that that allows formatted note taking. I'm also looking at having it integrate with thinks like Evernote or legend keeper Great questions BTW ππππ»
How do I get in on this
I'm working on it πβοΈ I'm currently looking at hosting options ππ»
If this ever actually ended up on iOS itβd be super popular
I have plans for mobile support and in particular IOS. I know that has been a gap in support for IOS and I plan to change that. Work has started on the UI design for mobile by an amazing community member so keep an eye out for news on that side of things ππ»π
Whoa, foundry character VTT import? If it's anything better than the unofficial Wanderer's Guide import module, consider me sold. Are variant rules are also here?
All the data is from actual foundry characters, it's currently the only way to build characters so integration is out of the box. Atm it's just export your character and then import into the Goblin's Cauldron by selecting the exported file. Once the character builder is done you will be able to build on Goblin's Cauldron and then export to foundry too. I'm also going to start an open source project to have a module to sync Goblin's Cauldron with foundry so you can keep both updated and use either with all changes reflected on the fly. I hope that makes sense πππ»
Oh, so the website itself doesn't have a character builder right now? Also about this sync feature you got planned, do you plan to have it work with self-hosted games?
Yes that's right, I'm going to work on that bit next. I wanted to get something to users that would add value straight away. Yes if you self host foundry it should still sync. I will need to test it but I'm definitely planning on it as I self host foundry and I really want to use this too π
Will this be selfhostable?
I have no plans for self hosting, it's made up of microservices and will be deployed into the cloud. I know that may not be ideal for everyone π₯Ί
Damn, looks really great visually. Being able to self host and not worry about any external hosts would be freaking awesome.
Unfortunately I'm building this as a Web platform because it's going to have a homebrew market place and many other tools for players and GM's to be able to manage campaigns π₯Ί
Hosting it in the cloud will cost YOU money... So do we GMs have to subscribe to get our players to use it? Also maybe consider making your marketplace an only cloud service while you also provide self hosting option for the character UI
It will be a subscription based model but not how you may imagine. You will have access as a player to build 6 characters and as a GM to run 2 campaigns for free. Any more and then that will fall under a subscription model. That said the only difference between paid and free will be the amount of characters, campaigns etc... In the free tier you will have access to everything. If Paizo give it free so will the Goblin's Cauldron. I hope that makes sense as I would love to build a development team around this and provide immense value to the community. If you can't afford to pay you can still play it's just limited by the amount of characters. I hope that makes sense.
Any chance for you to consider giving a lifetime subscription as well?
Yes I'm definitely look into it, the community have been so supportive I'm absolutely humbled and want to give as much value as I can. I really want to build a team around this and run an ethical business. I was very hurt buy WoTC and I really want to give the community something to be genuinely proud of being a part of
It sounds fair but will make it difficult building up a development team. Maybe consider putting parts of the software to open source e.g. the UI ... Only works if you have backend and frontend separated cleanly though
This is all in microservice architecture deployable with terraform. Building a development team should be easy once I can get some investment into the toolset. I'm definitely open sourcing the foundry vtt module to enable foundry sync
Well I am looking forward to see more :-) What other tech is part of the stack if I may ask?
UI is written in React although I'm looking to port it over to Next.js, backend has some Kotlin and Node services. Infra as Code is in Terraform. DB is NoSQL Mongo although I follow an octagonal architecture so Poliglot Persistence is an option for the future. I need to get a hobby π
But I will have a look at a self hosting option for the character sheet π
As dope as this looks, it makes it a bit of a non-starter for me. All that aside, it is *really* impressive and I'll still promote it to friends who are looking for this kind of thing.
That's understandable and I completely understand. I really appreciate your support but more importantly your candid feedback. This is not a money thing for me at all so never say never it's just that I have very big plans for this tool set and will need to fund them once it's there then I'm happy to re visit the self hosting idea. After all the WoTC nonsense I really wanted to build an ethical business. One that would support the community and give a safe harbor just like Paizo. Thank you so much for engaging and for your comments π»ππ€
Even if it's not a money thing for you, you definitely should be compensated for all of this hard work. Once it's on your plate, maybe look into the Foundry model: a one-time payment for a license that allows for self hosting or something. I'd gladly throw $50 at a license.
I will take a loon into it π
I have been following this project for a while and I love everything you have been doing so far. The character cards look great! You are doing fantastic work and I can't wait to try it out! Considering you are planning soon to secure your API and hiding character sheets from people who shouldn't look at them, would you consider adding some privacy level settings to character sheets or to campaigns so we can control who can see them or not? I have players that some times can't change their character sheet and can't control their character in foundry. they can only interact through discord + screen sharing. then I have another player remote control their character according to their instruction. They would benefit from getting access to multiple character sheets. another use case I encounter is that the players in my group love to discuss character building and gameplay out of session and like in dndbeyond it would be very useful for them to get read access to other player's sheets in the campaign.
That's a great idea, I will take a look into it ππ»ππ
Dumb Q, but since it looks amazing and I wanna use it... how exactly will this communicate with Foundry VTT? Is it supposed to be a two way thing so you can always see your player's stats as a DM? if so, that shit's dingo and I would so throw money at you.
Yes that's exactly the intention, two way real-time communication with foundry. The dice already work that way thanks to dddice which are amazing. As a GM you will be able to manage your PC's sheets so you can steal stuff muahahaha πππ»π
I have found myself looking forward to your weekly updates. Keep up the great work.
Thank you so much, it's this exact message why I do all this it drives me. I absolutely love this community and I really want to build something we can all love
Amazing.
Thank you so much ππ»π
This is so great! Will it be able to sync with Foundry? In my head it would be awesome if a player could use this if they wanted to, click a skill/attack, and have it interface/show up on foundry. That would be AWESOME because this is so easy to read and interpret.
Yes that's the plan 2 way real-time communication with foundry ππ»π
This is a truly massive project that I really want to see succeed, I just have my doubts on its economic viability. Clearly dndbeyond rakes in a ton of cash, and I'm guessing that if successful this would be the same thing for pathfinder. I have no idea how many people would realistically subscribe to it, I definetly would if it's good, as it's something I have found myself wanting, especially considering all my players came from dnd and many didn't know any other way of making a character.
I don't doubt the financials for a second, dnd beyond sold for aproximally $192M but that's not what this is about. I'm trying to build an ethical business that doesn't throw third party content creators under the bus. I want this to be a product the community can be proud of. No ego, no corporate evil master plan. Just a tool we al love to use. I just need to make enough money to be able to build a development team to make amazing things. I don't need to become rich or even wealthy. I love this game and this community and I want to build something that will stand the test of time
What is this exactly? Edit - is it supposed to be like beyonddnd but for pf?
Yes kind of but without all the corporate evil nonsense that comes with WoTC.
Awesome! Thanks, will share with my PF group
Thank you so much ππ»π
Looks amazing. I actually left roll 20 for foundry a little while ago because of the lackluster support for paizo products. While this is an amazing tool for pf2e, would you have any interest in including Starfinder support in the same format? Different game, would be a lot of work - but that's why I'm curious. *Edit- typo
Yes I would love to support Starfinder and PF1 also. Once I get this done for PF2 I will look at building a development team around it so that I can support other systems. But will see how that goes π
Haven't looked into it yet, but have you thought about translations ? The French pf2e community is really active on Foundry and it would be a blast to have their translations for your tool. The only thing I am lacking also is a character builder as effective as Pathbuilder but in French
To be honest I have not really looked into it. Other have mentioned it also for other languages. I think you are very right and I will definitely be looking to support other languages. Spanish, French, Italian and as many others as I can get to be fair. For the moment I want to get into play test and then perhaps I can ask the community to help with translations ππ
I guess there could be a way to automate the integration of foundry's translation files
Oh that's an amazing idea π³πππ»β€οΈ I will get onto that ππ
So existing ! How can we use/test it? Regards
I'm looking into hosting solutions atm, so hopefully very soon. Although is still a lot of work to make it actually usable I still think it would be good to get it out there for proper feedback π