a5e.tools Announcing Level Up Gateway

Excellent! Very exciting news, can't wait to see it in action.

I never considered subscribing to a VTT but THIS one may make me change my mind, it seems great!

Morrus said:

We asked the 3PPs about being added to A5e.tools a year or so back and they indicated they weren’t interested. I don’t know what will happen down the line regarding Level Up Gateway.

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I have no specific recollection of this conversation (if it even included me, which it may have; it's been a busy last couple of years and my memory is lousy at the best of times).

As it currently stands, though, I'd certainly be interested in getting my content into tools sites or character builders. The issue would be the work involved in getting it formatted for inclusion, which I sadly just do not have the time for (PMG is not my day job), nor do I have the budget to pay industry-standard hourly rates for data entry. (A bit more context: PMG is profitable, but only just; I run very close to the break-even line and tend to roll a lot of the proceeds from one project into the production budget of future ones.)

So at least as it exists today, it's not a question of interest, but it is very much one of resources. Now, if some folks wanted to do the data entry on a volunteer basis, and that was okay with EN Publishing, I'd certainly be willing to provide access to the files necessary to make that happen. If there'd be a way to easily convert the foundry VTT modules I have paid for into whatever formatting is necessary to support the tools site or character builder, I'd also be open to that.

There's also been some discussion among members of the A5E 3PP community about doing a reference document of some kind to help newer folks use our content in their own work—that's had the same bottlenecks: time and money. If we ever get that put together, I'd be delighted to see the PMG content from it used to populate a tools site and/or character builder.

TL;DR: The interest is there, but I am but one man with a shoestring budget!

If no 3rd party or homebrew support (so we can just add it ourselves) then that's a real shame and probably going to end up being a hard pass. If that support is there then it's worth it. Although yet another full vtt is a hard sell when all people really need is a decent character builder.

Morrus said:

We asked the 3PPs about being added to A5e.tools a year or so back and they indicated they weren’t interested. I don’t know what will happen down the line regarding Level Up Gateway.

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Well, will Gateway have the ability to add your own things to it? I can understand not wanting to add 3pp material into the program, but I'd like to be able to manually input stuff.

foxblade said:

If no 3rd party or homebrew support (so we can just add it ourselves) then that's a real shame and probably going to end up being a hard pass. If that support is there then it's worth it. Although yet another full vtt is a hard sell when all people really need is a decent character builder.

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Eh? It’s a character builder.

We want to add extra vtt functionality later (because having it all interact — for those that want that, is awesome), but it’s a character builder.

For building characters. For free.

If you don’t want to use it, that’s cool. There are other options out there. But for those who do want to use it, it’ll be there. Plus it’s something we’ve promised for a long time.

Faolyn said:

Well, will Gateway have the ability to add your own things to it? I can understand not wanting to add 3pp material into the program, but I'd like to be able to manually input stuff.

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I don’t know at this stage. Right now Alexander is working on implementing the A5e rules. Once we have a stable, solid base platform we can think about doing extra fancy stuff.

foxblade said:

If no 3rd party or homebrew support (so we can just add it ourselves) then that's a real shame and probably going to end up being a hard pass. If that support is there then it's worth it. Although yet another full vtt is a hard sell when all people really need is a decent character builder.

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I would be perfectly fine with adding that material myself, if the software supports doing so.

Morrus said:

I don’t know at this stage. Right now Alexander is working on implementing the A5e rules. Once we have a stable, solid base platform we can think about doing extra fancy stuff.

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Well, fingers crossed!

Morrus said:

We asked the 3PPs about being added to A5e.tools a year or so back and they indicated they weren’t interested. I don’t know what will happen down the line regarding Level Up Gateway.

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It was definitely a thing last year, yup!

I never responded because I got hung up on the question you posed about the concerns on two points.

1) "Approved" 3pp materials, which would imply that some material is 'better' than others which you didn't want to do and I wholeheartedly support, since you'd need to read over material and weigh in on whether it was appropriate.

2) "Open Submission" where users just put anything they want on there for everyone's use. While more egalitarian, it leaves you open to issues of liability or perceived support for things you and your company might not approve of.

(Not that anyone I know of in the 3pp community would do such a thing, but the 'Time to Penis' factor has to be weighed. Which is an MMO Game Design mantra measured in milliseconds before someone draws a penis in a game where you can move objects, paint, or otherwise alter elements of the game world or design a logo for any purpose.)

And after being hung up on that question I forgot to respond... for months.

Ultimately I don't think there is a really solid answer. But if you open up the interface to the community, whether full or 3pp specific, I promise the Esper will be available to everyone. And so will the Champion, Gunslinger, Sentinel, and Warcaster at some point after Martial Artistry's release.