The new Tabletop Almanac - Alpha Version

Back in July I mentioned that I'm quietly working on the next version of TA. It's still quiet, but it's now something you can actually open: the alpha of the new Tabletop Almanac is online at https://new.tabletop-almanac.com

Before you click: this is an alpha. Not a beta, not a soft launch. It's read-only, there are no accounts, things will look odd in places and some of them will break. The current TA and GMG are completely untouched by this, nothing changes for your games. I just want you to be able to see where things are going and tell me what feels wrong before I build the rest on top of it.

What's actually new

Everything. The backend is a complete rewrite and so is the site, there is no shared code with the current TA. That's also why it's an alpha and not "TA with a new coat of paint", every feature has to be built again and I'd rather show it in pieces than disappear for another year.

What you can do right now

• Browse the whole 5.2 SRD without an account: 331 statblocks, 339 spells, 807 items and 44 conditions
• Search and filter them, e.g. statblocks by CR, creature type, size and source, spells by level and school, items by type and rarity. All of it lives in the URL, so a filtered list is just a link you can send to someone
• Open a statblock and read it as a proper page instead of a form
• Roll from that page. Every ability check, save, skill, initiative and every dice formula inside an action is a button, the result shows up as a toast with the individual dice and the total
• Switch between day and night mode, English and German, and it works on a phone (but maybe not particularly well yet)

What you can't do yet

• Log in. Your existing TA account doesn't work here, account creation is closed and there is no homebrew content, only SRD
• Edit or create anything. The edit buttons are there, they just tell you "not yet" 😅
• Open a spell, item or condition page, the lists are there but the detail pages are still placeholders
• Anything Pathfinder. The 5e/PF2e switch exists, PF2e just shows an empty page until the PF backend follows
• Parties, characters, encounters, the DDB importer, … basically everything that makes TA useful today

What's next

The next thing I'm building is editing, section by section on the statblock page (actions first, because that's the hardest one). After that come accounts and moving over the existing content, and only then will the extensions switch to the new backend. I'm not putting dates on any of this, the old version has taught me better than that.

Feedback

If something looks broken, feels slow, or you just think "why is that there", let me know here in the comments or on Discord. And please don't bookmark anything on there yet, ids and URLs might still change.

thank you for sticking around, Josh