LMoP: Tokens removed after each update

[Trenloe]

I see... thank you. So it is something new that affects only 5e because of the new encryption drive... makes sense. I never noticed losing that info on home made modules with 5e before, so it must be related only to new Phandelver module.

This is not specifically related to the 5E modules, it will affect all ruleset modules. Nickademus in post #4 above gives the reason - when a module is updated the campaign moduledb information gets deleted. This moduledb information tracks changes made to module specific entities within that single campaign. If the module changes the changed data in moduledb could become completely inaccurate/cause errors (it might be referring to entities that no longer exist, or the wrong entities), thus any changes made to a module within a campaign have to be reset to avoid such issues. Unfortunately, the upshot of this is that additions GMs have made to the module data will be removed.

Why this is being seen more in 5E modules is that, as damned points out above, there are currently regular updates to the new 5E modules to fix issues reported by the community. Normally modules wouldn't have so many updates pushed, but the whole 5E product format is being refined and sometimes needs an update to the modules.

[alfarobl]

This is not specifically related to the 5E modules, it will affect all ruleset modules. Nickademus in post #4 above gives the reason - when a module is updated the campaign moduledb information gets deleted. This moduledb information tracks changes made to module specific entities within that single campaign. If the module changes the changed data in moduledb could become completely inaccurate/cause errors (it might be referring to entities that no longer exist, or the wrong entities), thus any changes made to a module within a campaign have to be reset to avoid such issues. Unfortunately, the upshot of this is that additions GMs have made to the module data will be removed.

Why this is being seen more in 5E modules is that, as damned points out above, there are currently regular updates to the new 5E modules to fix issues reported by the community. Normally modules wouldn't have so many updates pushed, but the whole 5E product format is being refined and sometimes needs an update to the modules.

Ok. Then the Update process is really crappy from GM perspective... it should warn as I said and not update modules unless GM says it is Ok... doesn't make sense to lose all information because a small detail gets updated. Will take much more care before updating from now on. Hope it gets fixed soon!

[Nickademus]

Well, the update is to fix bugs in the new product. It's a catch 22, but you are probably better off updating for the next month or so.

[hereander]

The whole situation is kind of a dilemma. I want to prepare a lot of custom stuff in my campaign. On the other hand I do want to get all the borked stuff fixed in a product that costs me 120 bucks as a whole (and there was/is still a lot of stuff that hit me and my group last night).
Enough ranting... get it done, make us happy!

[JohnD]

I would make myself a secondary module, calling it LMoP Expansion or something. I would make all my additions to that module and jump back/forth between my secondary module and the official LMoP as needed within each session. You can have multiple modules open at the same time.

[Moon Wizard]

Well, this is actually a very interesting discussion, as I think this highlights a situation with no clearly perfect answer. Plus, it is one that has apparently been there for some time (from Nickademus).

To give some background. The FG data structure is just an XML file (for campaigns, modules, module overrides (moduledb files), ...). The situation with the modules is that when the module XML changes, there is no guarantee that the path structure remains the same for the updated module. To the FG client, it doesn't know whether a record is an NPC, an item, a note, etc.; it only knows that there is an XML tree to load/save. The ruleset provides all the logic and context to the data.

The reason why the moduledb changes are thrown out when a module is updated is that an NPC record (say Orc) could have been deleted and replaced with another record (say Dragon) with the same campaign ID. Then, on the new export, if the module overrides were applied, then the dragon would get any changes previously applied to the orc. Now, if the IDs are fairly static, which I would say happens in most scenarios, then there is no problem. However, it could be jarring to the GM to find overwrites on records unexpectedly. Since the FG client has no context for the data, it can't "interpret" whether to apply the module override changes or not. It either does or does not.

So, what's the right answer?

I'm leaning towards simply applying the module overrides always. (There will still be a backup made of the original override file, as well as a note in the console; just like it does today.) It seems like it would be better in 90% of the cases, and worse in 10% of the cases.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
JPG

[Trenloe]

I'm leaning towards simply applying the module overrides always. (There will still be a backup made of the original override file, as well as a note in the console; just like it does today.) It seems like it would be better in 90% of the cases, and worse in 10% of the cases.

Thoughts?

I think this would be a better approach than just throwing all of the changes out. Would there be a way of adding a warning in the chat window the first time a campaign was loaded after a module update where there are changes in the campaign moduledb records for that module?

[alfarobl]

I think this would be a better approach than just throwing all of the changes out. Would there be a way of adding a warning in the chat window the first time a campaign was loaded after a module update where there are changes in the campaign moduledb records for that module?

+1 to provide some kind of warning before updating a module that could wipe your campaign.

[Trenloe]

+1 to provide some kind of warning before updating a module that could wipe your campaign.

Moon Wizard's suggestion is that the wipe no longer happens, so this wouldn't be an issue. And just to be clear - your campaign was never wiped, it was purely edits made to modules that were being lost when a specific module was updated. His concern going the approach of not removing module edits on a module update is that links could be broken or an edited something becomes something else (he gives an example of an edited orc becoming an edited dragon), and links point at something different (the classic example of this is encounter links point at the wrong encounter). Hence my suggestion of a warning after loading the campaign that the module has been updated and that links/edits will need review (if there had been any edits done to the module within that campaign).

[alfarobl]

Moon Wizard's suggestion is that the wipe no longer happens, so this wouldn't be an issue. And just to be clear - your campaign was never wiped, it was purely edits made to modules that were being lost when a specific module was updated. His concern going the approach of not removing module edits on a module update is that links could be broken or an edited something becomes something else (he gives an example of an edited orc becoming an edited dragon), and links point at something different (the classic example of this is encounter links point at the wrong encounter). Hence my suggestion of a warning after loading the campaign that the module has been updated and that links/edits will need review (if there had been any edits done to the module within that campaign).

Also just to be clear on my side... I was in the middle of a Combat and all the locations of my tokens and Maps reverted to zero. Lost all Maps that my players had open and marked as open, all masks from images, tokens, to me it was bad. I had to back track all moves and try to remember where were they. I was running 3 different campaigns at that time with same module, so you can imagine how happy I was with the update. I would love a warning before doing that to my running campaigns. It is not a book update but a live session and I hopped that FG was going to handle session tracking with an update system like this I rather use my own campaigns where updating books or rules do not ruin my game. Right now this was my first pre-made adventure and I can tell you I don't like it like it is... no warning nothing.

And It seems it is not 5e only issue, so I wonder why should I buy pre-made modules... they dont get updated ever, so nobody noticed this problem? this only happens because LMoP is special module that we beta test? Not happy here. My first experience buying a module was really bad IMHO.