We’ve been using Roll20 to for the Mapping ability, Discord for communication (Roll20’s lag is real), and D&DBeyond for our character sheets.
Chrome has an extension, Beyond20, which integrates D&DBeyond with Roll20 pretty seamlessly.
Figured both of these out after spending another few hours with the program and in the support files:
- Linking tokens to character sheets is not intuitive, but once you know how to do it, it doesn’t take too long. Create a character. Put a token on the map. Link the token to the character. Link one of the colored bars to a stat like HP (which is done through a drop-down menu with over a hundred choices, listed alphabetically, even though HP is the obvious one). Now go back to the character sheet, while that token is selected, and call that token the default token for the character. Having done that dance, now you can just drag the character sheet onto a new map, and the correctly-linked token will show up.
- Showing sheets to other players is apparently something users have been asking for for years. AFAICT, the only way to do it is for the GM to give everyone the right to control and edit the character, and then they can all look at it. So it’s something to do on a temporary basis.
There are lots of moments using Roll20 where you go, “oh wow, that’s neat!” but they always follow a few minutes of trying to figure it out in the first place.
I ran a session for my pre-Covid group using Roll20 and we didn’t like it much. The video/voice functions were not working properly for all players and the interface is not intuitive. It also required a ton of setup on my end and “lots of setup” is not my particular style of DMing. If you’re not artistic (I am not artistic) you have to do a lot of work finding usable assets on the internet and properly sizing them to the Roll20 grids. This is fiddly and annoying to do.
We’re going to give it one more shot but will probably switch to a something like Google Meet and just have everyone use paper character sheets and roll their own dice.
That makes sense. I’m not especially artistic, but I love fiddling with things, so it’s been pretty frustrating/satisfying for me.
Took me about 45 minutes of frustration to realize that the native video/audio doesn’t play well with Firefox, for example. When I switched to Chrome, it worked great.
Roll20 was just too complicated for me.
I just started using videoconferencing app with actual pen and paper with an online dice roller.
It works OK but requires more administrative time than normal.
We’ll see if people get sick of it.
Okay, having run several sessions, roll20 is really growing on me. The setup is intense, but worth it: my players all have their most common combat actions in a quick-menu on the character sheet, and can make a weapon or spell attack with a single click, giving both their attack roll and their damage. I can ask for wisdom saves from the party and get them really quickly. And if someone’s struggling, I can open their character sheet and make the roll for them. Meanwhile, it’s really easy to upload images, and there’s a robust community; I have a few dozen NPC images that I can pop up on the screen when they’re talking to someone new. And there’s music and sound effects in the background.
It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good.
After our second session I decided to throw out the map system entirely. I’m going to plug in my drawing tablet and scribble on a blank grid like I do when I run sessions in the real world. I’ll still use the tokens for bad guys and probably maintain a set of image resources like barrels and trees and stuff.
The integration between character sheets and rolling IS very nice. Initiative tracking is picky as hell and doesn’t always work seamlessly.
Yeah, that slowed me down. I need to figure out why sometimes a player clicks on Initiative and it adds it to the turn tracker, and sometimes it doesn’t.
We were trying out Roll20 for one of my groups on Sunday (see next paragraph), and it appears that the trick is that a player has to have specifically selected their token on the map, then click on Initiative, for it to add to the turn tracker.
As to why we were trying Roll20: I have an old D&D group, with which I had first started playing RPGs back in 1982. We’re spread out between Wisconsin (where I grew up) and Illinois now, but we get together to game a couple of times a year, including a spring gathering which we usually have at my house; this spring’s gathering was supposed to be next weekend.
For a few weeks now, we’ve been discussing trying to do a few games online, since we can’t do face-to-face. Several of us take turns GMing for the group, using a couple of different game systems; the guy who runs our 5E D&D game is pretty experienced with Roll20, and he volunteered to set things up to run his game for us using it.
The test run we did was kind of fraught. The biggest issue is that one of the players lives in a rural area in Wisconsin, and his broadband isn’t particuarly robust. Roll20 is apparently pretty data-intensive, and he could rarely hear us chatting (or be heard), and using his video was right out. Even when all of us turned off transmitting video, to make things easier for him, it really didn’t help much.
Another of the players only uses an iPad; she doesn’t have access to a desktop or laptop computer. While Roll20 does work on her iPad, it’s fussy (especially for using the map), and it keeps disconnecting her audio.
I think that, if the entire group was (a) on really good broadband connections, (b) all on actual computers, and (c) everyone was really facile with using their computers (a couple of the players keep struggling with the commands), it would be different, but I can foresee that this game is going to be painful to play.
(Parenthetically, I’m going to be running a Fate game for the group, as well. I refuse to try to run it with Roll20; I set up a Discord server for the group. We’re sticking with voice chat only, but it’s working brilliantly so far, even for the guy with the crappy internet, and the woman on the iPad.)
Oh man, don’t get me started on Roll20’s integrated voice chat. Buggy as hell and there’s always one player (different every time it seems) who can only hear a couple of people. We use discord for voice.
Dude. Post #17.
I wonder if anyone would be interested in a Doper campaign.
That might work if it was organized by timezone. If someone in Pakistan is running a game it might be awkward if they are starting at 4 PM which is 4 AM to me.
:smack: In my defense, I’ve watched a half-dozen videos with tips, played through the tutorial twice, and read a lot of articles on the forums about how to use the program. I missed your tip earlier. Thank you for offering it!
I just joined a campaign using D&D Beyond that plays through Discord.
The DM isn’t good, but I’m going to stick with the campaign maybe until I get a hang of it and try to start my own.
I really don’t want to game master but it’s so hard to find a decent one.
I’m interested in Fate because of the flexibility of the system and Blue Rose because of the romance.
OK so I finally got comfortable enough to use roll20 to take advantage of the free Lost Mines of Phandelver module.
I got the Pro subscription.
Can i use my pro subscription to mimic classes from the Player’s Handbook and monsters from Mordekainen’s Tome of Foes?
BTW, I love the fact that you can buy module sets with all the maps, monsters and storyline pre-loaded. It’s almost as good hiring a professional GM.
I wish someone would update some of the “classic” modules like the Giants-Drow-Lolth series.
What is the best module to buy on roll 20 today?
No. Those are entirely separate issues. You can purchase any WotC book through Roll20 and have the info pre-loaded into your Roll20 Compendium, but that doesn’t require a pro subscription. The pro subscription gives you extra bells and whistles within the Roll20 engine (dynamic lighting and such like), but doesn’t come with any extra content for any particular game.
As a mostly GM, I really like having the maps, tokens, player handouts, etc., pre-made. The “fog of war” feature is great for dungeon crawling adventures.
The Giants segment of that actually has been updated, and is available through Roll20 as “Against the Giants”, on its own or as part of the “Tales From the Yawning Portal” bundle (which, in dead tree form, is an adventure book from WotC).
I don’t know if it’s the best, but the aforementioned “Tales From the Yawning Portal” is, IMHO, a pretty good deal. The book updates a number of “classic” dungeons to 5E. Which means, in the Roll20 implementation, it comes with a wide variety of maps, tokens, monsters, treasures, and other assets. It’s also implemented as a bundle of “add-ons”, which in Roll20 means that you can easily add them to an already in-progress game. (Most adventure modules on Roll20 require you to create a new game with them to use them). It’s also only $29.95, which is cheaper than many of WotC’s adventures.
I began running Dungeon of the Mad Mage last night. Purchasing the content on Roll20 made set up a lot simpler.
We’re still using Discord for voice and video and D&D Beyond for character management. I cannot recommend the Beyond 20 add on for Chrome enough. It integrates D&D Beyond and Roll20 nearly seamlessly.
OK so I just bought the player bundle and the monster bundle. I am still not getting some of the races/classes like the aarakokra and the less gimpy versions of monk. Is there another supplement book I need?
Is there any way to home brew magic items?
I am running Lost Mine of Phandelver (LMOP) for my kid and his friends so they don’t spend so much time playing video games during this shutdown. I’ve run this module live and this is a lot easier. If only there was some way to mute players from my end, it would be great.
What else would you recommend I look at from marketplace? Anything you consider a “must buy”
I saw that. I bought the add on for $5.
Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury are free to play right now and I don’t anticipate ever running them again considering how good LMOP is for teaching people the game. I purchased Against the Giants for $5 and if it turns out that i have to buy a bundle it’s only $5. The G1-2, D1-3, Q1 series is the best module I ever ran.
I am not going to home brew any campaigns in the near future. What else would you suggest I buy?
What neat tricks do you wish you knew when you first started using roll 20?
I have Curse of Strahd and Storm King’s Thunder in addition to the aforementioned player bundle and monster bundle
I am not familiar with D&D Beyond What does it offer that roll20 does not?
I was thinking of getting Dungeon of the Mad Mage but the price tag deterred me. The $50 modules seem like a lot for what you get (except maybe the Tyranny of Dragons set) compared to the physical version.