Homebrew

Homebrew is rules content you write yourself, such as magic items, gear and spells, that RollQuest puts on character sheets like its built-in 5e rules.

For: Game Masters · Plan: Pro · 7 minutes

In tabletop games, homebrew means rules a group makes up for itself: a magic sword from your own adventure, a spell a player invented, a background that fits your world. In RollQuest you gather it into a homebrew pack, which RollQuest checks and then offers to your players as items for their character sheets, with the bonuses worked out, so nobody types the numbers in by hand. Reach for it when your campaign has something the built-in rules don't, such as the cursed blade the party found last session, and you want it to work on sheets like any other item. As the Game Master (GM), you write the packs and choose which games use them.

Homebrew packs aren't the same as content packs. A content pack is a game's scenes and maps; a homebrew pack is rules content for character sheets. Share a whole adventure or a ready-made tavern as a content pack; add a new magic item or rule to your players' sheets with a homebrew pack. See Publish a content pack.

What a homebrew pack can hold

A pack is a list of rows. Each row is one piece of content, such as one magic item or one new field, with a short ID of its own called its key. A pack extends one game system, the set of rules a game is played with, such as 5e (see Game systems). It can hold:

• items: spells, gear, weapons, magic items, feats, species, backgrounds and class features,
• fields and calculations: new numbers on the sheet, and formulas that use them (see Calculations and values),
• effects and toggles: bonuses that apply while something is on, such as +1 to armour class while a ring is worn; a toggle is the switch on the sheet that turns one on or off,
• creatures: a monster's numbers, which a token on the board uses rather than a character sheet,
• extra features or choices for an existing class.

It can't add a whole new class of its own.

Open My Homebrew

My Homebrew is where your packs live. In a game you created, open the menu (the three lines at the top left) and click My Homebrew under Game Master tools. It only appears when your plan includes homebrew. It lists your packs and shows how many you've used, such as 3 of 20 packs.

Start a pack

You write a pack as JSON, a plain-text format for structured data, and RollQuest checks it before it creates anything, so a mistake can't reach a player's sheet. The New homebrew window walks you through it.

1. Click New homebrew (or Start your first pack).
2. Which system are you extending? Pick the system. Download the contract gets the rules a pack must follow, and Download the seed pack gets a starting file.
3. How do you want to start?
   • Copy rows that already exist: pick rows from a pack you can reach, such as the 5e rules RollQuest comes with, and change them. Each copy gets a new key, so it can't clash with the original.
   • Write it from scratch: write the file yourself from the contract and the seed pack, then come back through New homebrew when it's ready.
   • I already have the JSON: you've written the file already.
4. In Check and create, Choose a file (JSON, up to 2 MB), or paste the JSON into the box, and click Check this pack. RollQuest lists anything that needs fixing; fix it and click Check again.
5. Click Create pack.

The contract is a document that lists exactly what RollQuest accepts for that system. It changes as RollQuest does, so download a fresh one for each pack. The seed pack is a small example with two items, to copy and edit.

You need a verified email address to create, edit or retire a pack. A new pack is private to you.

Change a pack

Each pack in the list shows its version, revision and how many items it holds. The version, such as 1.0.0, is a label you write in the pack yourself. For the revision, see Add it to a game, below.

• Edit changes its Name, and everything else as JSON. Save changes makes a new revision.
• Fork copies rows into a new pack of your own, with a Name, an optional Slug and a Key prefix so its rows don't clash with the original. The slug is a short ID for the pack; the key prefix is a few letters added to the start of every copied row's key. Fork a pack when you want a variant of it and don't want to change the original.
• Retire hides the pack and gives you back its slot, one of the packs your plan allows. It isn't deleted, and you can't retire a pack while a sheet, a game or another pack still uses it: the window lists what's holding it.

Add it to a game

A new pack isn't part of any game yet. To use it, you add it to a game. The app calls this binding the pack to a table: "table" is its word for one of your games. Each game is set up on its own, so a pack can be in one campaign and not another.

Binding offers the pack's inventory items (gear, weapons, spells, feats and class features) to that game's players, so they can pick them for their characters. The other things a pack can hold, such as value fields, calculations and toggles, don't reach anyone's sheet this way.

1. In the game, open My Homebrew and click Bind to this table on the pack.
2. Where should its items appear? Choose the step of character creation they belong in, or leave them for the inventory catalogue, where players find them during play.
3. Click Bind pack.

Some creation steps let a player hold only one choice. If you pick one of those, the window warns you that choosing an item from the pack replaces whatever the player picked there before.

Every time you save a pack it gets a new revision (r1, r2 and so on). The game stays on the revision you bound, so editing the pack mid-campaign doesn't change your players' sheets until you decide it should. The pack's row shows the revision the game is pinned to, such as Pinned r3. On a bound pack:

• Move this table to r4 (for example) moves the game to a newer revision. From then on, players are offered the new version of its items, but nothing already on a sheet changes.
• Preview re-stamp shows what the game's revision would change on sheets that already have the pack's items, then Re-stamp applies it, updating those items to match.
• Preview applying to sheets without this pack shows which sheets would gain it, then Apply adds it. Use it for characters that have never picked anything from the pack, such as ones made before you bound it.
• Turn off for this table hides it for now; Turn back on brings it back on the same revision.
• Unbind takes it out of the game. Items already on sheets stay. Binding again pins the newest revision: you can't go back to an older one.

Moving to a new revision and re-stamping are separate on purpose: the first changes what players are offered from now on, the second changes items already on their sheets, and it shows you every change before it makes it.

Who can see it

Your homebrew is always private. Players in a game it's bound to can use it there. Other GMs can't see or fork it.

Related

Game systems · Calculations and values · Inventory and money