[Metadata Source Plugin] DriveThruRPG

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I wrote this plugin to bring some semblance of order to my nearly 2k TTRPG PDF collection. A lot of those PDFs are purchased from DriveThruRPG, and they have an API, so I thought "how hard could it be?". I'm satisfied with how it's working, and figure it was time to share.

And when I say wrote, I mean I took kiwidude's FictionDB plugin and mangled it into this.

Main Features:

• Can retrieve Title, Author(s), ISBN, Comments, Publisher, Publication Date, and Cover
• Configure whether to add DriveThruRPG item categories and filters into the book Tags
• Configure whether to add Artists, Editors and/or Contributors into the book Author(s)
• Retrieves a DriveThruRPG id, which can be used to directly jump to the web page for a specific book (from the book details pane)

I'll post a link to a GitHub repo as soon as I get that set up, so you can point and laugh at my code.

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This is a placeholder post for potential future test builds

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Well, apparently my karma or post count or whatever is still too low to edit messages, so here's the GitHub link in a new post.

https://github.com/quickwick/driveth...calibre-plugin

[Epsilon Rose]

This plugin seems like it could be really useful for adding a bunch of TTRPG material, but there are a few things I'm unclear on and a few requests I'd like to make.

First, you said that it's possible to add DriveThruRPG item categories and filters, but what exactly does that cover? Whatever they cover, downloading the meta data seems to pull in a lot of duplicate and not particularly helpful tags, so it might be nice if we could have a bit more fine grained control over what gets imported, at the settings level. I'm hoping there might be a way to clean up some of the manual cleanup that way.

Beyond that, it would also be really useful if there was a defined way to include the rule system in such a way that you could tell it's a rule system without comparing it to a list of rule systems. The goal would be to have some way to easily sort or filter by rule system, just like you can sort and filter by author and publisher. My naive suggestion would be co-opting the Series field, since it's a dedicated field and TTRPGs are unlikely to make use of it, but I'm rather new to Calibre and I don't know if something else, like structured tags, would be better.

By the same token, would it be possible to automatically add a TTRPG tag to any content that has its meta data downloaded, so it would be easier to separate out TTRPG material from regular books.

Finally, the whole process seems very manual, especially if you need to find the DriveThruRPG ID, manually copy it into the Id field, run the download for a single file, and then manually clean up the tags field. (And it's even worse if you can't copy and paste, for unrelated reasons). Is there any way to automate the process a bit more, or at least make it a bit less individual?

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First off, thanks for the feedback. It's good to know at least one person out there has tried it.

Originally Posted by Epsilon Rose

First, you said that it's possible to add DriveThruRPG item categories and filters, but what exactly does that cover? Whatever they cover, downloading the meta data seems to pull in a lot of duplicate and not particularly helpful tags, so it might be nice if we could have a bit more fine grained control over what gets imported, at the settings level. I'm hoping there might be a way to clean up some of the manual cleanup that way.

There are two fields included in the item metadata returned from the DriveThruRPG API that include tag-like entries: 'Categories' and 'Filters'. I added options in the plugin settings to include the contents of one or both into the Tags. In this case, we're entirely at the mercy of what's included in the API output. I agree that they are sometimes not particularly helpful, which is why I made them optional. Do you have some specific suggestions about how to include fine-grained control?

Originally Posted by Epsilon Rose

Beyond that, it would also be really useful if there was a defined way to include the rule system in such a way that you could tell it's a rule system without comparing it to a list of rule systems. The goal would be to have some way to easily sort or filter by rule system, just like you can sort and filter by author and publisher. My naive suggestion would be co-opting the Series field, since it's a dedicated field and TTRPGs are unlikely to make use of it, but I'm rather new to Calibre and I don't know if something else, like structured tags, would be better.

I agree, it would be useful. My solution for this was to add two custom columns to my RPG Calibre library. One column is of the Type "Text, but with a fixed set of permitted values". I populated that custom column with values that make sense to me based on the items in my library: Adventure, Art, Bestiary, Character Sheet, Map, Quickstart, Reference, Rulebook, and Supplement. After I add a new item, I just click the column and pick the appropriate value from the drop-down. The second custom column is of Type "Comma separated text, like tags" and I use that one to enter System names (like '5e D&D', 'DCC RPG', 'Traveller', 'Troika!', etc.).

Originally Posted by Epsilon Rose

By the same token, would it be possible to automatically add a TTRPG tag to any content that has its meta data downloaded, so it would be easier to separate out TTRPG material from regular books.

Maybe? Probably? I solved this by making a Calibre library just for my RPG books & materials, separate from my regular books. It's also trivial to select multiple books, Edit metadata in bulk, and add a tag to all the books.

Originally Posted by Epsilon Rose

Finally, the whole process seems very manual, especially if you need to find the DriveThruRPG ID, manually copy it into the Id field, run the download for a single file, and then manually clean up the tags field. (And it's even worse if you can't copy and paste, for unrelated reasons). Is there any way to automate the process a bit more, or at least make it a bit less individual?

For one, you don't have to acquire the DTRPG Id and copy it into the Id field, you can always try your luck with search by Title. I usually start with Title search, and then switch to manually entering the Id if Title search fails. You can also try your luck with selecting multiple titles and downloading metadata for all of them at once, but I don't know how that would interact with the "Keep more than one entry per souce" option, and frankly I'm afraid to try.