Expansion and Future Projects - Poll
Hey Everyone!
As you have no doubt noticed, we have been working on hiring some new people for the FA team. One of the reasons for this is that we are interested in not only increasing the amount of our normal content, but expanding our focus as well. We have had a number of ideas and backburner projects sitting around for a while and we anted to know which of them you all would be interested in!
We've put together this poll so we can show you what we've been plotting, and so you can let us know what you want! You can vote for as many of these projects as you are interested in.
Please note that these are very long term goals, and that they are in addition to what we already produce: Assets and Tokens will always be our main focus, and we have no plans to change that.
Also note, not all of these projects would fit into the existing tiers or even the existing Patreon. If there is enough interest in something we will then start working on how best to implement it.
Projects/Expansion Ideas:
Battlemaps
Regular releases of finished battlemaps (~4/month) with variations for higher tiers. This would most likely require us to make a separate "FA Battlemaps" Patreon as we already have ~4+ releases of Assets/Tokens here and 8+ would just be too much. Also if you are only interested in Battlemaps, you would not be paying for Assets/Tokens, or vice versa.(Forgotten) Adventures
Short written adventures that come with Battlemaps, Statblocks, Tokens & Items attached. Plug&Play Side Quests, 1 Page Dungeons or Larger Adventures - multiple smaller adventures tied to each other.Large Scale Map Assets
Assets and CSP Brushes for making maps at the city and world map scale.Token Modification App
An app that allows you to recolor existing FA tokens and make some alterations to some selected tokens, like swap Hairstyles, Weapons or some other small adjustments.Character Token Maker
An app that allows you to build a custom medium humanoid token. You would be able to choose your size, body type, hairstyle, ears, tail, wings and other features, as well as weapons, various armor pieces and other miscellaneous equipment to create unique character tokens.
Rough mockup to get you an idea what it might look like (Just with much nicer and polished UI)
Portrait Maker
An app that allows you to make custom character portraits in the FA style. Similar to Character Token Maker above, just for Face Portraits, you could choose different facial features, hairstyles, colors, some accessories etc. to create Unique character portraits for your game.
Artstyle for this is NOT decided yet - This is just a very early testing preview to get you some idea of what Portraits might look likeAnimated Tokens
Add motion to our extensive library of creature and humanoid tokens - bringing them to life in your (Foundry) VTT of choice.
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Of course we are open to ideas and if you think you have a great one for us to consider, please let us know!
Also all of these projects are basically just ideas at this point and everything is subject to change. All of these would require quite a lot of time investment, so we obviously cant really do them all at once :D We hope this poll will help us decide on what to focus on first based on your feedback ^_^
As always thank you for your great support and we hope these are at least as exciting for you as they are for us!
You can select multiple options :)
Comments (38)
I really surprised animation isn't more popular o.O
Every one of these options is great... I'd love to see animated props and tokens for Foundry
Love! All of this!
Please make Portrait Maker available from desktop and insert inside the complete randomizer to have an ability to make npc portrait on the fly. For example, for each category fix some options and randomize all others. Fix race and class and randomize others. To have an ability to stack your tool with the "Not Enough NPCs" foundry module. As an option please write a module for foundry to generate a character portrait for foundry npc sheet at app server (some dice icon near the portrait) and insert it in the sheet (you can provide pop-up to ask what options to fix before randomization). You can bind it with login in patreon somehow, for example, to make it interesting for you (the same for both apps, portrait maker and token maker). In any case, I downvote the model "pay for tokens" and upvote free access for patreons. Also you can somehow bind both tools (Portrait Maker + Token Maker) to easily generate in the same time both the portrait and the top view (token). Better will be just one app for both. So you will get an npc complete appearance maker available for patreons. And please - make it lets dark, to have an ability to select any custom background. Preview pictures are too dark.
I feel like tokens are always the bottleneck for creativity. Sure map making assets are cool and all, but you can swap and change assets and go about it in a creative way without stopping your progress. If you simply don't have a token for the creatures you want to use then that's that. So yeah, the token maker would be awesome.
Just to clarify, as state in the post, Token maker wouldn't include creatures, only humanoids.
I've been clamoring for overland map assets for years, so I'm SUPER happy to see that's being discussed :) "You need to update the WoW style assets Stryxin!!!" :D
I'm another one who is here mainly for the DungeonDraft assets.
Large scale map assets suitable for Wonderdraft perhaps? Since the other assets are available for Dungeondraft? :)
As of now, I have 0 experience with Wonderdraft, so I cant promise anything. As with battlemap assets CSP would be our primary software of choice, but if wonderdraft allows for painless integration, we would most likely try to do that.
I'd avoid Token Vault App like a plague. This is an exclusively online project, that doesn't even have a plan to respect existing memberships of users and works on an exploitative "pay per token" basis. In general, never support a software project unless it's a buy once business model and works offline. This is the very reason both Foundry and DungeonDraft completely obliterated competition in their respective niches. Not to mention FA has a tier with CSP files for tokens so whoever wants customization, already can. I'd go for animated tokens from the list above. I'd also suggest something that ain't there which is going for other settings than D&D (Pathfinder, Warhammer, maybe even Sci-Fi settings).
I wonder why you dont partner with an existing token maker app like https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thetokenvault/the-token-vault instead of trying to create a standalone application
Token Vault has it's place, Ryan is a great guy and more power to him, but we have our reasons why we are not going to join the project even tho we've been approached. Monetization of token vault simply doesn't line up with our values/tenets. As you might've noticed we have a somewhat unique approach to monetization compared to majority of other TTRPG creators, as we provide 90% of our content for free because Accessibility is very important to us. Not to say their approach is wrong, it's just not a good fit for us that's all :)
My interest in FA has always been tokens (monsters, NPCs) and assets (doors, objects, etc.). My vote is always going to be for MORE tokens and assets before features like apps and integrations.
As stated in the post itself: Please note that these are very long term goals, and that they are in addition to what we already produce: Assets and Tokens will always be our main focus, and we have no plans to change that. These are some of our "passion projects" we would like to realize. It's a bit for the sake of our own sanity :D As working on the same thing over and over can be exhausting and burnout can come quickly even when you love what you do, so a little bit of change of pace once in a while is very helpful.
Seeing as it isn't on the list, with more artists on board I'd love to see more tokens to support more monster types (ie monster manual, volo's and possibly popular 3rd party). The different coloured tokens rarely interest me, I'd just like more monsters covered.
More than any of these, I'd love to see an asia (China/Japan) inspired asset pack.
As stated in the post itself: Please note that these are very long term goals, and that they are in addition to what we already produce: Assets and Tokens will always be our main focus, and we have no plans to change that. These are some of our "passion projects" we would like to realize. It's a bit for the sake of our own sanity :D As working on the same thing over and over can be exhausting and burnout can come quickly even when you love what you do, so a little bit of change of pace once in a while is very helpful.
I love the mockup of the portrait maker, if you do eventually get to do this, please have at the start/default non-European features and a variety of skin tone. You can blow every other rpg asset maker out of the water if you have non-European/white features from the beginning. Same with the token maker, even if drop down, can still show some aspects of that. Excited for what you all are planning to do!
The prototype of the Token Maker has everything recolorable, including the skin, they are not predefined colors but a color picker with pretty much full color spectrum. We would follow the same approach for Portraits - skin, eye/hair, lips color etc. would all have color picker instead of pre-baked color options. Inclusiveness was always important for us so we will do our best to include as much variety as possible ^_^
I chose "Battlemaps", but that's because it seems to include the things I want most: more assets for use with DungeonDraft. It's not the Battlemaps I really want, it's the assets. Just so that we are clear on that.
As stated in the post itself: Please note that these are very long term goals, and that they are in addition to what we already produce: Assets and Tokens will always be our main focus, and we have no plans to change that. These are some of our "passion projects" we would like to make happen. It's a bit for the sake of our own sanity as well :D As working on the same thing over and over can be draining, so a little bit of change of pace once in a while is very helpful, I really enjoyed making the Portrait mockups for example.
Animated tokens will be the future in mapmaking I guess. So FA style would be nice!
The suspect of FA large scale assets for Wonderdraft made me all giddy in a heartbeat. 😃
The portrait maker is a fabulous idea - I can't think of anything else out there that does this, and finding custom art for adventures is always a big time-drain, often ending in disappointment. Your tokens are great, but I don't use top-down tokens, so they're not for me...whereas the portrait maker I think has pretty much universal appeal, whatever sort of tokens or maps you use as a DM. Beyond that, it would also appeal to players who are probably under-represented in this (given most mapmakers are probably DMs!)
Interesting - also for me I was really thinking about a PC-installable "app", rather than a mobile app which is really not that useful from my side of things... As an addendum, I'd agree that the look of the FA portraits is much better, but I'd still consider having both to get a variety of looks for characters and NPCs...I think having everything in the direct face-on Worldspinner look is a bit like a police line-up....
There are some really exciting possibilities here, thanks for collecting our opinions. For me - I think the most important thing will always be monster/npc tokens and modular assets/brushes for the creation of maps. My primary vote would be to double down on those things and do them even better, which leads me to vote for Animated Tokens and Large-Scale Map Assets. All options sound cool, but I would personally be hesitant about any of the 3 "app" options, as I know first-hand the amount of work involved in creating something like that and I have the sense that most of your community members are handy enough with Photoshop/CSP to mod tokens pretty easily without an app to do it.
Well, like mentioned above, these are more like "passion projects" that we wanna work on on the side so we don't go crazy from doing the same thing over and over :D but the main focus are still Tokens and Assets, we dont plan on changing that. We have a working prototype for Character Token Maker so we've got some idea how that's gonna work. Ultimately it's nothing as complicated as Foundry :D it's basically similar to one of those old flash "Dress up" games where you just switch between different options, just a little bit more involved :) From what we've seen a pretty small portion of our community is actually able to modify our tokens, even tho it's pretty simple... - That's why token modification app idea was thrown in there... But thinking about it now with this bit of feedback, I should probably just make a tutorial how to do it shouldnt I ... :D For the "Portrait maker" app, before it's actually an app, it would also likely start as a CLIP file to test it out and as a proof of concept and maybe the actual "App" wont even be needed... :D Thank you for your input! ^_^
I couldn't help it I had to vote for all of them. I would love to use each and everyone of them in my games =D Well it was hard but I took away 3 of them. I really would like to see the Token and Portrait Maker though. Those look awesome.
Well, I'm glad it's hard to choose because that hopefully means we have good ideas :D But voting for everything is the same as voting for nothing, so maybe just take the least favorite out? :D
Large scale map assets? yes. Top down you say? very yes. Colorable maybe? very very yes. Assorted roof textures? hecks to the yes.
I love big maps, but create my own chars with FA assets would make my game to the ultra extra level :)
For Character token maker with Tasha's book incoming for DnD players who will be able to play anything could be a bless!
Would be awesome with a combination of the token and portrait maker
I am incredibly pleased to see you grow. Thanks for your hard work. Really! As an active user of your assets for my maps, I would be interested in the option with an EVEN MORE amount of assets, but this will already be the case as I understand it. 1) It would be nice to see more tutorials or videos on how to create maps, perhaps as a permanent column. I gathered a lot of information from those that have already been done. Separately, I would love to watch a video about level design. It is obvious to everyone that there should be a toilet in the building (or nearby), and that doors and windows should be placed exactly on the grid. But there are many other interesting features especially with regard to the buildings and their architecture. 2) I know that it is far from the main field of activity, but good looped sound ambiences are always valuable, I often miss them. Forest sounds, cave sounds, forest camps, etc. 3) It would be nice to see a little work on existing assets, through their minor changes. Connect two assets to create a third. Add something small and get something new.
EVEN MORE assets is the default :D as mentioned in the post, these would not affect our asset/token production, as these are long term projects that we are going to work on in the background when we have some free time. 1) Tutorials and such were not really included in the poll because we sort of already started doing that with the recent Assets Styleguide release, we plan on expanding that with Tokens and Battlemaps :) 2) Unfortunately music/sounds it's not likely an avenue that we would expand into, simply because I have 0 experience or knowledge :D I'll leave that up to some more qualified people and stick with drawing for now :) 3) Not sure I really understand this point, could you elaborate?
Big vote for Large Scale Assets and a cooperation with Wonderdraft :-)
Maybe you could collaborate for large scale Map Assets with Project Deios https://www.dungeonfog.com/deios/