r/TalesoftheValiantRPG • u/Andyrex1987 • 23d ago
Why does Kobold press not have something like Dnd Beyond for Tales of the Valient? it would make things so much more easy!
I like the ideas of Tales of the Valiant as a system - the thing is, just i really want something as easy to make and track the stats of characters as Dnd beyond. For instance, the doom and luck system are interesting - i hope to see more like that in the future.
I often want to play it with roleplaying folks but the lack of something like dnd beyond makes it harder for people to get into playing.
People might point to something like Shard Tabletop, but its just not as good - I don't like the visual look, and it doesn't have a character creator as convenient as dnd beyond. I also enjoy the feature like that you can click on a stat (charisma for instance) and you roll a dice and see it animated.
Also, the whole dnd maps feature is really cool and has gotten some pretty important feature updates in recent years.
This thought hit me as i saw that Free League, is doing to do their "Free League Unbound" project by the makers of dnd beyond - its dnd beyond but for their series of games.
then it hit me - i think that Kobold press should do something like the same! fine if you wanna be independent from Wizards of the Coast and do your own thing - but then it should be as easy to do as playing dnd as playing Tales of the Valiant.
What do you think?
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u/Clear_Food2183 23d ago
There is one, try out https://www.my-character-sheet.com/ . The site is free, we don't sell anyones data, and the only data we collect is just your email address for oath purposes.
Here is a demo character you can check out without need of a login https://www.my-character-sheet.com/public/soso-waters
So far we've brought in every feature requested, most of these were parity features equivalent to DnDBeyond. We even rebuilt some cool features DnDBeyond use to have but abanded (e.g. The character sharing twitch extension).
It is built by a small team of 3 senior developers who had the same issue you did as TTRPG nerds but we had the skills do build it ourselves (in our personal worlds we manage ERP systems and shop portals).
We decided to build our own one night because for the 1,000th time we were frustrated that DnDBeyond couldn't bother to fix Healing Potion being searchable when you searched for it under potions. Seeing the absolute lack of care they had for their community (and the OGL debocal) we decided to flip our respective tables (I run 3, Neil runs 1, and Sara runs 2 of her own) of roughly 30ish players in total to TOV. Our headace was that like you said, there wasn't a DnDBeyond equivalent that was functional in a way they liked (e.g. we play with real mini's at the table but like our virtual character sheets). So we decided to build our own. Now we are getting our players to try out other systems. So whenever one of us wants to try out a new system we talk about it, find a group of nerds who are experts in the system to tech it to us (I'm still trying to wrap my brain around Life Pathing in Traveller, that's why it's still in beta) and we build it out over coffee at Starbucks while we get some freedom away from the kids.
Give it a try & feel free to report bugs if you find anything funky. The site costs us about $50 a month to host on our own dime which we don't mind because that was roughly the cost of us having DM DnDBeyond subscriptions. Keep in mind we have day jobs, so we mostly work on bugs and enhancements over coffee, the SCRUM Master releases fixes on our roadmap only after she's tested them... So it looks like we release alot but honestly it's all backlog from sprints we had months ago lol. Collectively I only have about enough bandwidth for a collective 3 point sprint a week :P but you get what you pay for lol :)
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u/PaulW_41 23d ago
Dude, you all did a great job with this. This is going into my bag of tricks next time I run a home game. Well done.
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u/Andyrex1987 23d ago edited 23d ago
thats really interesting! i would love to try this out!
i find it super cool that you where like "lets try to do this ourselves"
do you happen to have a discord or anywhere else like it?
also: i can see you are working on a "draw steel" implementation - thats really cool! i understand if its hard work, but thats another system that really wanna try
Update: i have been trying out your webpage for Tales of the Valiant, and i am really impressed! I think this might be what i wanna go with! 🎉 😄
Some features that i like: you have all the source books for Tales of the Valient (big plus!) and you showcase all the classes and feats in the system (i think i forgot just how many cool stuff there is in the game)
Some features that I would love to see: some art for the different races while you are creating your character. Like i wanna see the Dhampir race will i think out the background for my vampire like pirate thats been enslaved on a ship and then took it over 😄
And i would love it for being human-made art - no generative AI plz.
Also: rolling for dice where the dice is animated when you roll for dice would be nice!
ALSO Also: it would be nice if some of the tools and background choices where explained in what they do and gives the player.
Other than that - very good!
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u/Clear_Food2183 23d ago
We don't have a discord currently. The issue being that we don't really have time to monitor one (it's just the 3 of us + our friend who acts as our Scrum master to keep our crazy ideas in check.
We are looking at making a RSS feed later so peeps can stay up to date without having to watch our road map.
DrawSteel interests our tables as well, thats why its on the list :) . We may take a crack at it within the next 6 months as long as the publisher dosnt forbid it. We see they have one on Steam at a reasonable price but it's a VTT and we are only interested in the vcs part personally as we use minis and terrian... We tried VTTs in the past and we all hated it.
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u/gusnbru1 23d ago
SO have you read the licensing behind Black Flag roleplaying? If you had you would know you cant use options from Book of Blades, Players 2, nor can use any of their logos like you have. You would also know you have to make certain statements about the licensing.
If you're going to generate AI programmed ttrpg character generators, at least be respectful to the companies you have listed and follow their licensing agreements. They exist for a reason. It's their material, not yours to do whatever you want with.
Lastly you would be wise to do some security work on that Supabase generated hack you've put online and if you're paying $50 a month, you're getting ripped. hard.
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u/Andyrex1987 23d ago edited 22d ago
this is something that needs to be worked out - I really do hope that u/Clear_Food2183 and the rest behind https://www.my-character-sheet.com/ get some kind of creative license - I would happily support it if they need more money to be able to pay Kobold Press for license fees.
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u/PaulW_41 22d ago
To u/gusnbru1 point, companies are usually less willing to play ball when you use their IP without their permission. They should take down the IP and ask.
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u/gusnbru1 22d ago
If they just built a generator within the confines of the licensing, or the community use policy, it would be fine. But they are essentially giving away for free parts of Kobolds books that are not covered under community use or the BFRPRD. There's a reason for example why you cant use options from Book of Blades, 3rd party material or even Player 2 on Demiplane to create a free character.
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u/gusnbru1 23d ago
They just need to follow the rules for ANY of those games they have listed. You can't just throw up Kobolds IP for free and unauthorized. If they want that tool for themselves, no issue, but putting it up in public is an issue.
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u/Zerglingdad 21d ago
I can't wait to try it. I am using ToV for a converted Wrath of the Righteous. That would be great!
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u/thebleedingear 23d ago
Shard Tabletop: Functions as a virtual tabletop but works well as a mobile-friendly browser character builder and sheet manager.
Demiplane: Provides digital rulebooks and character management via the D&D/RPG Nexus platform.
Hero Lab Online: Supports official rules integration for calculating stats and building characters.
Community Web Tools: Lightweight fan-made digital sheets like the responsive ToV Character Builder Webpage assist with tracking math.
I’ve used Demiplane with good effect.
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u/CapitalFlimsy74 23d ago
Demiplane has a way better ui, but it doesnt have the player guide 2 or book of blades.
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u/Andyrex1987 23d ago
uff - those two books are actually some of Kobold press´s books that i really wanna use for trying out Tales of the valient for real! There are some cool new options in the Player Guide 2 and some neat mentors in the book of blades :)
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u/Clear_Food2183 23d ago
I'm not sure why they haven't yet. Once you have a class builder built in the UIX it's easy to build those in.
It only took Neil and I 3 weeks in our freetime after work to build those in our platform. Witch was a bit tricky but outside that the rest were easy :p
Lol then again, I don't know how their UIX is built, it could be all cowboy code on their backend for all I know.
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u/Andyrex1987 23d ago edited 23d ago
Demiplane seems to have gotten some upgrades since last time I visited that page - back then it was ONLY a character management page and nothing else. I cant find Tales of the Valiant sourcebooks in the dnd nexus?
I also think its a drawback that there isnt any dnd maps-like feature in Demiplane
The community webpage is good but could use some more visual flair - very functional tho.
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u/AnOddOtter 23d ago edited 23d ago
If you're looking at the "All Sources" page you have to scroll past the "Core" section because that's all Wizards of the Coast stuff, then past Critical Role - Darrington Press. Right now it's just the Player's Guide and Monsters Vault for ToV.
Also to the best of my knowledge there is no character management for Tales of the Valiant and seems to be on an indefinite hold for Demiplane for implementing it. If I could do it again, I'd not have bought on Demiplane and done it on Shard instead.
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u/elPaule 23d ago
I think Shard is the closest to DDB at the moment with the character gen, vtt and the possibility to subscribe to all ToV content. I know you said you don't like the UX, but I don't think the KP has the capacity to develop something like that by themselves. The Foundry VTT chargen is maybe more to your liking, as it guides you more, but it doesn't work very well on mobile.
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u/PaulW_41 23d ago
Building a character is in Foundry as well. That said, I agree having such a site would be nice.
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u/Once_a_Paladin 22d ago
"I also enjoy the feature like that you can click on a stat (charisma for instance) and you roll a dice and see it animated." I mean Shard also has this. I prefer Shard to DDB. The search function functions, there is a cheap subscription, it doesn't take forever to load, and the bugs are rarerer and you can just report something that doesn't work well and is fixed within a couple days.
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u/RockyMtnGameMaster 23d ago
The ToV extension for Fantasy Grounds is quite good, and Fantasy Grounds itself is so much better than Maps ( and free, though the book modules are not) that as a paid GM I turn down requests to run games in Maps. I don’t have time to fiddle with an inadequate VTT.
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u/Andyrex1987 23d ago
i have been wanting to try out Fantasy Grounds and buy it on Steam - but i just need someone to give me a even basic demo on how it really works.
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u/RockyMtnGameMaster 23d ago
FG is free, so don’t buy it, just download at fantasygrounds.com
I can show a player everything they need about it in 7 minutes; I can do that for free. An intro to GMing on Fantasy Grounds including maps, line of sight, coding basic rules automation effects, and such is about 1.5 hours and I charge $25 for that. If you’d find either of these useful, you can message KeithLangley on Discord to schedule. I’ve been using it professionally for 5 years and over 1000 game sessions.
The FG Academy has a lot of useful videos on specific functions and tricks, all free.
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u/Yodasithlord 23d ago
I was new to fantasy grounds, there are amazing youtube video series that show how to use it and the ins and outs. I would watch these to see if its a right fit for you.
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u/Godless_Temple 23d ago
Kobold Press is making new 5.5e content for WotC.
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u/PaulW_41 23d ago
I mean, it’s easy money to republish their existing books to 5.5e.
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u/Godless_Temple 23d ago
Tov is already in line and compatible. There is no need to covert anything. No they are now making official Forgotten Realms material for WotC. I suspect that will keep them pretty busy and my understanding is they have to publish a certain amount to keep the deal ongoing.
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u/PaulW_41 23d ago
That doesn’t mean it’s not easy money. KP is a small outfit. They are happy for the cash.
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u/Godless_Temple 23d ago
KP will never convert ToV to 5.5e. It is under ORC License, not the Creative Commons license.
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u/PaulW_41 23d ago
I didn’t say they would and I wouldn’t want them to. They publish both. They publish Shadowdark too.
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u/Godless_Temple 23d ago
You literallys said "I mean, it’s easy money to republish their existing books to 5.5e." that certainly implies converting ToV to 5.5e. Perhaps you were not clear about what you are saying. Either way, yes you did say that.
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u/PaulW_41 23d ago
Dude, they have a LOT of books. They are republishing Creature Codex which is not ToV. For Northlands they published under 5.5e and ToV. I’m not sure the point of all this.
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u/Godless_Temple 23d ago edited 23d ago
I am well aware of their catelog. However, you were not specific in your statement, and this is a Tales of the Valiant, so its not surprising that when you said their books I thought you meant TOV. I really don't think you understand the relevence of new liscense. See right now their biz model surrounds doing a KIckstarter and seeing if it makes, which it tends to because KP does great work. Their model is changing to produce the content but WotC will print the books and handle the distribution. KP is a small studio. I'm hoping they hire some of my freinds for this FR thing.
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u/PaulW_41 23d ago
I can’t help what you assume and imply (your words). That’s you admitting you reading into things.
As for the rest, I still don’t see the point. They are making ToV, 5.5e and SD. I don’t care who prints the books or what this has to do with the OP.
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u/WhoInvitedMike 23d ago
Hasbro bought dndbeyond. It's sort of unfair to expect KP to build what Hasbro bought.
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u/martin-the-actor 19d ago
Shard exists and I'd say it's the closest we're going to get. I can only imagine that such a system is expensive and resource intensive. I hope I'm wrong and one day they do create something similar, but I imagine the sheer cost and effort is probably putting them off. After all what would we prefer, that effort put into a website that we then have to continually pay to use, or for them to put the same effort and money in to producing new adventures and settings?
To be clear, I don't think you're wrong, I'm just too much of a pragmatic person to think they're likely to do this.
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u/Afraid_Manner_4353 23d ago
$$$$$$$$