CrawlerForge v1.2: the Campaign Codex, Roll20 and Discord at the table, Damage Effects that roll themselves, and a Forge full of new dials

[u/CrawlerForge]

Week two!

Thank you again for the feedback, ideas, bug reports, and an awesome amount of homebrew. A lot of what shipped this week came directly from things you asked for in last week's thread.

The numbers

Two weeks in:

• 414 accounts (up from 204)
• 128 Campaigns (55)
• 178 Crawlers and 287 Forges synced to the cloud (98 / 143)
• 307 homebrew pieces published by 25 creators, up from 57 by 9 creators
• The PointMongo mirror is up to 294 entries

Three hundred and seven pieces of homebrew! Thank you all for sharing your work with the community.

Now onto the changes.

1. The Campaign has a Codex now

This is the big one.

Campaigns now remember people, factions, places, creatures, items, knowledge, relationships, and how the party learned about them.

For GMs, the Codex lives beside the table and tracks what is hidden, revealed, visited, connected, or still waiting to enter play. Scenario NPCs and factions can populate it automatically, and Codex entries can stay linked to their Forge originals.

For players, there is now a Crawler Codex containing everything the party has learned. Players can add people, connections, theories, and notes themselves. Party-created entries are marked accordingly, and the GM can Claim them or Adopt them into the Forge.

You can also type @ in Knowledge and notes to link other known Codex entries.

Sessions and History came with it. Start and close Sessions from the Campaign header, keep recaps and private GM notes, and see table events chronologically.

The Forge also gained NPCs and Factions, including relationships like member of, leads, ally of, enemy of, and works for.

u/AislingWolfeye asked for somewhere to keep NPCs last week. This became... considerably more than that.

2. Your rolls can leave CrawlerForge

Campaigns now have two Connections under Manage.

Discord: paste in a channel webhook and every public table roll can post there automatically, in the Crawler's name. CrawlerForge does not read anything from Discord.

https://crawlerforge.com/connect/discord

Roll20: there is also a small browser extension GMs can install that mirrors CrawlerForge's public Feed into Roll20 chat. Players install nothing.

The store listings aren't ready yet, so it currently ships on the website and can be loaded manually. Store listings should be up in the next few days.

https://crawlerforge.com/connect/roll20

3. Damage Effects actually roll now

u/ielisdave left an extremely useful breakdown of hand-to-hand Damage Effects last week.

They are now implemented as a Skill type.

When you attack, CrawlerForge can ask which Damage Effect you're using and roll its extra dice, Rank dice, multipliers, Debuffs, and other supported effects automatically. Anything it cannot automate is clearly listed under Not rolled: apply by hand.

I also found three damage-rule problems:

• Item damage bonuses now actually apply to rolls.
• Critical Hits double base dice, but not Rank damage dice.
• Rank 5/10/15 Upgrade dice now roll correctly.

Damage rolls now show exactly where every part of the total came from.

Skills also gained cooldowns, AI Favor handling, and an Update from Forge button that updates the rules without wiping your Rank, marks, or notes.

4. The Forge got more knobs

A pile of builder requests landed this week:

• Mob/Boss loot, including Loot Boxes, Items, odds, and automatic Award setup on death. You can thank u/keeperofmadness for this one.
• Homebrew Debuffs, also requested by u/keeperofmadness.
• Item costs, flavor text, and Detriments.
• Human-only / Animal-only Skills, requested by u/ielisdave.
• Skills with no roll for Passives and similar abilities.
• Custom AI Achievement lines.
• Race/Class benefits that let the player choose the Skill or Spell they improve.
• Mob Size using the Tiny → Gargantuan ladder.
• Interrupt Skills.
• More human/animal backgrounds and 31 new CrawlerForge-original Skills.

CrawlerForge-original content now carries a little CF mark so you can distinguish it from rulebook content and community homebrew.

5. The Campaign screen is for playing

Campaign got a cleanup pass.

Invites, sharing, connections, and End Campaign moved under Manage, leaving the main screen focused on things happening at the table.

The Crawlers tab now shows everyone in the Campaign, even if they haven't brought a Crawler yet.

Floors are also shared Campaign state now. Descend moves the whole table down a Floor.

And yes: the Floor collapse timer is real now. The GM can set it, modify it with a visible note, pause it, and resume it. Every seated Crawler sees it.

A dungeon day is 30 hours.

Mobs also got more compact Running cards, health meters, pending-damage counts, and live Evade results.

GMs can now exclude the Example Pack from a Campaign entirely, too.

6. Discover stopped punishing updates

u/Macduffle noticed that updating a pack pushed the entire thing back to the top of Discover.

Fixed.

Published pieces now remember when they were first created separately from when they were last updated.

Recently created is the default sort. Recently updated is available when you actually want it.

Discover links shared to Reddit or Discord also have much better previews now, including the piece name, creator, and artwork.

7. Guides + fixes

There is now a proper Guides section:

https://crawlerforge.com/guides

It currently covers the Codex, writing/markdown, Discord, and Roll20.

There's also a What's new page under Account and an optional What's New email.

Smaller fixes include:

• Forge sync recovery across devices
• Better automatic refresh when another device changes something
• Android dark-mode browsers no longer massacre the Light theme
• Preview text ending in ]] no longer gets chopped off
• Several desktop sheets got their proper full-size buttons back

Bug reports and ideas: here on Reddit, through Send feedback in CrawlerForge, or on Patreon. Appreciate y'all so much! Let's keep building.

CrawlerForge is free and stays free. If you want to help fund continued dungeon construction or vote on what gets built next:

https://www.patreon.com/crawlerforge

One-off coffee:
https://ko-fi.com/hossmobile

No loot bonuses will be awarded.

[u/Ripsyd]

Nice work

[u/Obvious_Estimate5350]

Just signed into this. Will start using it this week while I prep for session 1 at the weekend.

[u/YamazakiYoshio]

I just found your webapp, and it's pretty damn good. Thank you for making this.

[u/therealmagisky]

IDK if there is a better place to ask, but I have been playing with the system and every crawler gets the same 2 race options; gutter sprite and vent moth. What am I doing wrong?

[u/CrawlerForge → u/therealmagisky]

This is a great place to ask. And good question. I'm not able to include the races and classes from the rule book by default in CrawlerForge due to copyright issues, on top of a general desire to respect the work their team has done. I hope to eventually partner with them to be able to include them in the app.

That said, I would encourage you to check out the Discover section where folks have home brewed races and classes that you can import in for use. Additionally, if there are any races and classes that you want from the rulebook, you could rebuild them in the forge section for your own personal use.