Compendium Change Concepts Confuse Concerned Citizens
Added 2019-09-01 22:05:17 +0000 UTCA quick'n'dirty Plutonium update as my weekend has once again been monopolised by that annoying "real life" thing: version 0.0.3 comes with creatures, spells, and items pre-loaded to the compendium for your browsing pleasure. In addition, "Variant & Optional Rules" may now be imported to the journal.
The compendium additions I'm not yet entirely happy with, but I'd like to see feedback on this first incarnation before doing anything further. There are a few options I'm considering, each with their own pros and cons:
- Have each source split into its own section. Breaking it up makes everything load quicker, and allows the user a relatively easy means to disable content they don't want (by editing the "module.json" file). The downside is that the compendium becomes harder to search; one needs to know exactly which source a creature/etc. originates from in order to be able to locate it. This is, however, the option I'm currently leaning towards.
- Keep the current "creatures/spells/items" category-only split, but trim down the contents of each as much as possible--remove any creatures or items which are adventure-specific. This provides a solid "general use" package, although is unhelpful for running official modules.
- Keep the current "creatures/spells/items" category-only split, and add the source of each thing to its name. For example, "Fireball" would become "Fireball (SRD)." This would ensure unique names, and make search results slightly easier to parse (hopefully). This is worse for general use, but supports official modules, and keeps everything in one place for easy searching.
Hopefully some of that makes sense, because I'd love to hear your opinions as to why each of these is a dumb idea and that you've come up with a much better solution.
Beyond fixing the compendium up, I'd like to add support for "custom folderisation" of to-be-imported items. Rather than dump everything into the directory root, one could choose a path with variable bits (e.g. organise by creature type or names in alphabetical order, similar to what's available in <removed>).
That, and getting back to work on this character sheet.
Until next time, stay safe out there.