DTRPG x Roll20 Update
Hello Publishers and Creators!
Since we announced that we were joining with Roll20, we have been working on some pretty incredible things. We have been extremely busy reorganizing and shifting some responsibilities, so we apologize if we’ve been a bit quiet externally, but we want to take a moment to answer some questions we have been receiving.
It sounds like you’re all one company now.
Yes, we are. We have joined together as one company of 80+ people, now operating numerous sites and products. We are doing a lot of work internally to unify these products in alignment with our collective goals, and we are excited by what we can deliver. By this February 16, for example, we will be unlocking the ability for DMsGuild and Pathfinder Infinite creators to sell their Roll20 content via those sites, and our teams are deeply involved in re-imagining a new, unified marketplace built on PHNX technology (see below).
Yet while you may see Roll20 logos and marketing on DriveThruRPG and vice versa, we are still effectively managing separate sites and platforms through separate teams. Over the past several months, some of those teams have been slowly coming together to think about how we can provide an even more efficient service across all of our platforms. We are thrilled to work together to support and serve our partner clients and customers better than ever — and also in some new ways entirely.
While Publisher Relations is still your contact for anything DriveThru-related, it is also now part of a larger Content team, so you may start seeing “Content” included in emails or meetings, particularly if your work involves the Roll20 Marketplace or if you have questions about converting your game content to the Roll20 platform.
Why are your emails @roll20.net? Do I have to update my address book?
To have all of our emails together under one place instead of our Tech team operating two different company email accounts, we decided we should all use the same one. Previously, Roll20 had more employees than OneBookShelf, so we moved our onebookshelf.com emails over to roll20.net.
Please update our emails to @roll20.net if you can. However, if you forget and use an older onebookshelf.com email, that’s okay — it will still forward to us.
Why am I being paid by Orr Group? Is it legitimate?
Yes, Orr Group LLC was the name of the company that operated Roll20. That company’s name has been changed to Roll20, LLC, but that change takes some time to propagate out to all the financial accounts, so for a little while longer you may see payments of marketplace earnings coming from “Orr Group.”
What about “Phoenix” (the new site design)? Is that ever launching?
Yes! Phoenix (aka PHNX) is still in the works. In fact, as part of our re-organization, PHNX has been given a new boost. We have significantly more development resources at our disposal now, given the combined legacy Roll20 and legacy OneBookShelf dev teams, so things are moving along much more quickly. The customer-facing work on this massive project is now close to being done.
If you want to see what’s coming, check out our Preview site. We have prioritized the shopping and buying experience, which is of course crucial to our business. Then, at some point within the next six months, we will have a development team splitting away to focus solely on bringing publisher tools over to PHNX.
We’re now designing our future tools with all partners in mind, including publishers, community authors, and Roll20 creators alike. For example, all creators will have access to our sales analytics tools, which includes the dashboard seen below. Certain components of these tools will need to remain publisher-only, but our goal is to keep that list of items as short as possible.
As we go through publisher tools and convert them to PHNX, they will all get a facelift at the very least. In some cases, we’re going to give them a complete overhaul to make them easier to use, and that may include entirely new or additional functionality.
What is to be expected in the future?
As noted earlier, you may start seeing different branded logos across both marketplaces, but as a creator or publisher on any DriveThru marketplace, you will still experience the same DriveThru as before (though we have lots of improvements coming!). We want to open up new options for you to create Roll20 modules, character sheets, compendiums, and more, but that won’t change the way you interact with DriveThru now.
As other changes occur, we will communicate them with you as soon as we can. For now, though, except as we’ve outlined above, nothing has changed for you as a publisher or creator aside from the name you see on your payments. You will still reach out to the same Publisher Relations team, and we’ll still provide the same services and options as we ever have.
