We’ve recently announced that Character Sheets are on their way in the new Data Delve update at the end of this month. While it will be possible to create your own sheets from scratch, we want to have a robust library of community-created sheets that anyone can use without needing to know that “HTML/CSS” aren’t a type of government agency.
Since we rolled out the new sheets to the Dev Server for our Mentor subscribers to start testing, we’ve seen a flurry of activity in our public repository, with lots of excellent new sheets being created. We’re ecstatic to see such a generous outpouring of talent from the Roll20 community, and we want to reward those who are taking the time to really make an impact.
So today we’re announcing a little contest. Submit a Character Sheet template to the public repository by May 16th (that’s about two weeks from today), and you’ll be entered to win one of the following prizes:
Grand prize: A free Roll20 t-shirt from our newly-launched Teespring campaign, plus a 30-minute Google Hangout with the Roll20 Dev Team. We’ll discuss whatever you want: ask us questions about how Roll20 got started, give us suggestions so we can better support your favorite game, or just tell us about the devious trap you sprung on your players last night. You’ll have our full attention for half an hour; use it wisely!
Two runner-up prizes: A free Roll20 t-shirt from our Teespring campaign
Plus, everyone who submits a valid entry into the contest (i.e. a finished template) will get a special Roll20 Achievement on their profile showing how awesome they are for giving back to the community. So there’s no reason not to try!
The Roll20 Dev Team will judge the sheets based on the following criteria:
Functionality: Does it have most of what you need to play a game? Does it have handy roll buttons for common checks? Does it have fields that auto-calculate common values?
Ease of use: Is the layout easy to read? Does it look familiar to (although not duplicate exactly) the paper sheet for the game?
Aesthetic: Layout, design, how good does it look, etc.
Here are a few of the finer details:
To submit a valid entry, you must submit a finished (usable, robust, valid sheet.json file, etc.) template to the public repository via a pull request submitted before 11:59PM CDT on May 16th, 2014. If you’ve already submitted a complete sheet to the repository, you’re already entered in the contest. See the “Contributing” guidelines in the repo for more details on how to submit a sheet.
If multiple people work on the template, we’ll do our best to accommodate that with the prizes (e.g. we’ll buy each of you a shirt). Maximum 3 contributors to each sheet, though. And if you win the grand prize, there’s just one 30 minute Hangout, so you’ll have to share our attention.
If you aren’t a Mentor (and thus don’t have Dev Server access) but you want to build a sheet, you can still do so. The documentation for building the sheets is public. However, your best bet would be to team up with a Mentor so you can test the sheet on the Dev Server, since it will be a little hard to get something made without seeing it in action.
We look forward to seeing all the great sheets the community makes in the coming weeks!