Online Dungeons & Dragons Quickstart?

[gdave]

@Damuri_Ajashi

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.

D&D Beyond and Roll20 are completely different animals.

D&D Beyond is an online tool for digital management of D&D content. WotC (for whatever reason) doesn’t sell PDFs of its books. Nor does it maintain a System Resource Document for D&D, unlike most other RPGs. (Caveat: The Basic Rules are available as a free PDF and through an SRD, but that only gives you the, well, basic rules and a small subset of races, classes, and monsters).

Instead, if you want a digital copy of the material, you have to subscribe to D&D Beyond, and then buy the digital copy, which generally costs as much as the physical book. I personally think it’s a terrible set-up, but a lot of folks like it. One big advantage is that you’re not getting separate PDFs for each book - you’re getting a single, integrated, searchable digital document/user-friendly database, which incorporates all of your purchased material.

It also has digital character sheets which integrate all of that info. So, you don’t need to keep looking up your class features or spells or magic items - just click on it on your character sheet, and you see the write-up.

But, none of that directly lets you play online - it just puts the information at your fingertips.

Roll20 is a “digital tabletop” that lets you and your players share a common map, tokens, art assets, dice rolls, etc. But, it doesn’t actually come with any of that - you have to purchase all of that stuff separately.

It’s my understanding (but I have NO experience with it) that D&D Beyond has a native capacity to interface with Roll20, so if you have bought material on D&D Beyond, you can import it into your Roll20 account. But! D&D Beyond, again, isn’t a digital tabletop. If you have maps and art you got through D&D Beyond, they won’t be formatted to be usable as playable maps and tokens on Roll20. You can, though (I think), bring character information over, so that if you built a character in D&D Beyond using material you bought through that service, you can create that character for a game in Roll20 and keep the info. I think.

So, you might wind up buying a physical book from WotC. Then buying that same material in digital format through D&D Beyond. Then buying that same material AGAIN through Roll20.

BTW, as to your comment about what you’re getting for the money, keep in mind you’re not just getting the written information, you’re getting maps and tokens and other assets that are already formatted and ready to plug’n’play in a virtual tabletop. You actually don’t need that - you can scan and import and format the maps from the books yourself, and make tokens using artwork online, but it’s a LOT of work.

[gdave]

@Damuri_Ajashi

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?

The various races and classes and other player info are scattered through a bunch of books. I’m honestly not that familiar with how Roll20 bundles character stuff (for characters, I and the folks I play with either just use the free Basic Rules or use offline resources and manually add stuff to the character sheets). But, for all of the official options, you’d need material from: The Players Handbook; The Elemental Evil Players Companion (aarakokra, among other things); The Sword Coast Adventurers Guide (“the less gimpy versions of monk”, among other things); Xanathar’s Guide to Everything (more of “the less gimpy versions of monk”, among other things); and Volo’s Guide to Monsters.

Is there any way to home brew magic items?

I’m not very conversant with this, but at the least, you can write something up, share it with a player, and they or you can manually edit their character sheet and manually add the info.

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.

I’m not a aware of a way to manually mute a specific player in Roll20, but you can disable incoming broadcasts in the Setting tab (gear symbol in the upper right). That’s one of several reasons why I prefer Discord for the voice chat element.

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?

If you’re not homebrewing anything, and just running straight out of the box, I don’t think anything else is a “must-buy”.

What neat tricks do you wish you knew when you first started using roll 20?

The one I see cited most often is adding characters to the initiative order. If you launch the Turn Order interface, and everyone first clicks on their own token, then goes to their character sheet and clicks on “Initiative”, Roll20 automatically rolls their initiative and adds them to the Turn Order.

The maps have multiple layers (GM Info, Players and Tokens, Map and Background). You are supposed to be able to move assets between layers, so you can have a token on the GM layer that only you can see for a hidden or invisible creature, and then move it to the Player and Tokens layer so the players can see it when it pops out. Every time I try to move stuff between layers, though, it borks the map. I’d recommend not doing that.

If you go to the Compendium (the “i” in the circle in the upper right), you can drag and drop class info, spells, gear, and whatever directly into character sheets.

When you go to a new map, players can add their tokens to the map themselves by dragging and dropping their characters from the Journal tab onto the map. You can add tokens to the map by doing the same with monsters and NPCs.

You can change the position of the maps in the map menu at the top. The interface for moving the characters from one map to another is a bit clunky - you have to drag and drop the “Characters” banner, and you might have to use other maps as waystations if the icons for the two maps you’re switching between are physically far apart in the interface. Moving the map icons themselves near each other, then moving the “Characters” banner, is sometimes easier.

If you left-click and hold on a point on a map with the pointer tool and simultaneously long-press the Shift key, it re-centers everyone’s view of the map on that point.

You can use the “Advanced Dice Roller” tool to roll different numbers of dice and add modifiers. You can also just type r/d20+3 or whatever in the chat window and that rolls a die with modifiers.

For D&D sheets and games, there’s a setting buried somewhere (I can’t remember where right now) that allows you to toggle Advantage/Disadvantage on and off for each roll (I think the default is to always roll with Advantage).

I have Curse of Strahd and Storm King’s Thunder in addition to the aforementioned player bundle and monster bundle

Sounds like you’re set up for a good while!

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@gdave

The various races and classes and other player info are scattered through a bunch of books. I’m honestly not that familiar with how Roll20 bundles character stuff (for characters, I and the folks I play with either just use the free Basic Rules or use offline resources and manually add stuff to the character sheets). But, for all of the official options, you’d need material from: The Players Handbook; The Elemental Evil Players Companion (aarakokra, among other things); The Sword Coast Adventurers Guide (“the less gimpy versions of monk”, among other things); Xanathar’s Guide to Everything (more of “the less gimpy versions of monk”, among other things); and Volo’s Guide to Monsters.

I have the PHB, volo’s guide from the monster bundle and Xanathars from the player bundle, but I cannot figure out where to download the elemental evil player companion, swod cost adventure guide.

I’m not very conversant with this, but at the least, you can write something up, share it with a player, and they or you can manually edit their character sheet and manually add the info.

Yeah I am just figuring out what i can and cannot do with this platform.

I’m not a aware of a way to manually mute a specific player in Roll20, but you can disable incoming broadcasts in the Setting tab (gear symbol in the upper right). That’s one of several reasons why I prefer Discord for the voice chat element.

Right now I am just yelling at the kids.

If you’re not homebrewing anything, and just running straight out of the box, I don’t think anything else is a “must-buy”.

The one I see cited most often is adding characters to the initiative order. If you launch the Turn Order interface, and everyone first clicks on their own token, then goes to their character sheet and clicks on “Initiative”, Roll20 automatically rolls their initiative and adds them to the Turn Order.

I still haven’t figured this out and i keep track of initiative on the side.

The maps have multiple layers (GM Info, Players and Tokens, Map and Background). You are supposed to be able to move assets between layers, so you can have a token on the GM layer that only you can see for a hidden or invisible creature, and then move it to the Player and Tokens layer so the players can see it when it pops out. Every time I try to move stuff between layers, though, it borks the map. I’d recommend not doing that.

I tried doing that once and all the tokens disappeared. Now i just drag them from the side.

If you go to the Compendium (the “i” in the circle in the upper right), you can drag and drop class info, spells, gear, and whatever directly into character sheets.

When you go to a new map, players can add their tokens to the map themselves by dragging and dropping their characters from the Journal tab onto the map. You can add tokens to the map by doing the same with monsters and NPCs.

You can change the position of the maps in the map menu at the top. The interface for moving the characters from one map to another is a bit clunky - you have to drag and drop the “Characters” banner, and you might have to use other maps as waystations if the icons for the two maps you’re switching between are physically far apart in the interface. Moving the map icons themselves near each other, then moving the “Characters” banner, is sometimes easier.

If you left-click and hold on a point on a map with the pointer tool and simultaneously long-press the Shift key, it re-centers everyone’s view of the map on that point.

You can use the “Advanced Dice Roller” tool to roll different numbers of dice and add modifiers. You can also just type r/d20+3 or whatever in the chat window and that rolls a die with modifiers.

For D&D sheets and games, there’s a setting buried somewhere (I can’t remember where right now) that allows you to toggle Advantage/Disadvantage on and off for each roll (I think the default is to always roll with Advantage).

Thanks for all the suggestions, I think I’m doing most of them but I am still figuring out how to do intiative.

Sounds like you’re set up for a good while!

Hopefully.

Thanks again!

[gdave]

After a quick googling, it looks like EEPC and SCAG, along with a couple of other books, simply haven’t been added to Roll20 yet. If you have the physical copies, you can manually type that info into the character sheet, or just have it on the side as a reference.

I’m surprised that SCAG isn’t available, as it was a very popular expansion of player options, but that’s where things seem to be at right now.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

FWIW, I haven’t bought any content for Roll20, but I have access to D&D Beyond via a friend. It’s pretty trivial to enter class abilities, spells, etc. onto the 5E character sheet manually. My group just went up a level, and I’ll be doing that for two players.

The video/audio is driving me bonkers in my game for kids, though. It’s sometimes a little glitchy, and whenever it glitches, every single child wants to list, simultaneously, who they can see and who they can’t see. Which means everyone talking at once, so they all start over, only louder. Meanwhile someone opens two tabs with the game, generating insane audio feedback, and one person has a bad internet connection so it all falls apart.

We haven’t gotten any gaming in the last two times we tried; I just let htem chat in Google Hangout after an hour of failed tech support.

[GreedySmurf]

I’m playing in two different campaigns at the moment, using slightly different solutions.

Campaign One - has really embraced Roll20, and it works really well for battle maps for combat and on line dice rolling. The 3D dice are very cool. For some reason, we don’t use the voice/video in Roll20, but rather have a channel on Discord for the voice comms.
A couple of the players, and the DM in fact, do not have fantastic internet connections, so the connections struggle with video, so we don’t bother, it’s all voice chat via Discord.
To get the most out of Roll20 a subscription is useful, so in this case a few of the players chipped in to gift some credits to our DM for a subscription.

Campaign Two - the DM had a bad experience with Roll20 a while ago and doesn’t like it. We use Zoom with full videoconference, (intention is for each player and the DM to take a turn paying for a months subscription so we’re not limited to 40 min call.) Rolls are made with your actual dice on the honour system. DM shares his screen to show us a map from time to time. but there is no battle map at all, which to me makes for confusing combats. (I’ve been using minis and battlemaps since 2E days, so a strong preference for me).

Across both games, most players use D&D Beyond for character creation and tracking. I’m remote from the people I’m playing with, and I never updated my books from 3.5E days anyway, so I was happy to spend a few dollars to buy content on D&D Beyond.

[Acsenray]

Last night we used Roll20 with Beyond. Someone figured out how to link them up so that you could roll in Roll20 by clicking on a stat in Beyond. Very cool.

We stick with Discord for audio because it seemed more stable and also you could access it on your phone. In Roll20 the DM has to have a paid membership for you to access a game on mobile.

[Chronos]

Because of the quarantine, Zoom has opened up what you can do with the free version. The paid version still gets you more, and I don’t know the details, but I do know that you’re not limited to 40 minutes any more.

I’m DMing now, and I have all of the maps in a Google Slides document (Powerpoint or whatever would also work), with black rectangles covering rooms of the map. When we need a map, I share my screen, and move black rectangles out of the way as they explore rooms. I also have, off to the side, shapes representing common areas of effect for spells (circles and cones of various radius), that can be moved onto the map as appropriate. There’s also an “annotate” feature that other users can use to draw on the shared screen, such as to show where their characters are (though if you’re doing that, you don’t want to scroll around, because the annotations don’t scroll with the underlying window). I’m not sure why, but the “annotate” tools for a shared screen work much better than the “whiteboard” that’s also built into Zoom; if you want a whiteboard, you’d be better off just screen-sharing a big blank white window.

[Maus_Magill]

@Acsenray

Last night we used Roll20 with Beyond. Someone figured out how to link them up so that you could roll in Roll20 by clicking on a stat in Beyond. Very cool.

We stick with Discord for audio because it seemed more stable and also you could access it on your phone. In Roll20 the DM has to have a paid membership for you to access a game on mobile.

Sounds like you’re using the Beyond20 Chrome extension.

I ran my second session last night, and my only complaint with using Beyond20 is having to roll monster initiative individually.