My friends want me to run a game online instead of locally for ease of transport and other issues that came to our local meetings.
Problem is, I've never run a game through this. What are the most important things to running a game successfully through Roll20? Any essential tutorial videos, tips, or tricks are appreciated!
Tip 1
Dont. It will kill your gaming group. Online game is shitty and never ever feels right especially if youre used to playing in person.
My suggestion is that your group make the effort to play in person. And if that is absolutely not an option than play a system that lets you do theater of the mind so you can just play verbally over skype or something.
Roll20 is shit.
They're a pretty visual based group that really requires that kind of stimuli. My players are good, but the easily distracted type. By putting effort into the maps, tokens, etc I can keep them tethered and not swiping through their phones every other minute.
As for playing locally, I obviously would were we not running into too many issues regarding actually getting people all together physically. Transportation has become an increasing issue and so online is just easier for all of us.
That's why we all agreed on Roll20 in the first place.
Don't listen to OP, that user's just an idiot who doesn't believe in different types of fun.
For running a good game on Roll20, the biggest thing is actually knowing how it works. Take your time, read through the wiki, and mark down any helpful commands. The second most important thing after that is preparedness. Have all your lighting/fog of war finished, have all your tokens in place and statted, and hop into the game early to double check that everything is prepared and on the correct layer before the game starts.
Use Maptool instead.
So by wikis you mean just the supplied ones through the site? Pretty rare when the source is the best place for knowledge.
I've actually played multiple campaigns on roll20 and your exact advice is evidence why roll20 is bad. Heres why.
Fog of war, lighting, having tokens statted beforehand and all that fiddly layer stuff. Its all getting IN THE WAY of actually running a game. You dont need all that but because its there you use it and before you know it you've created a shitty videogame instead of a tabletop game.
The players become overly obsessed with the map, and trust me setting up maps beforehand with all that fog of war and dynamic lighting is a nightmare. It all seems like cool toys but it is a silent killer of games. Roll20 games feel like railroads with the tokens and the lighting. And even if you just go barebones as fuck with no maps and tokens theres just something so dull about playing online that i cant really describe in text
Its this feeling off sluggishness, the awkward silences on skype, the temptation to just check facebook or browse while its not your turn. It all dulls the magic that makes D&D come alive at the table, the spark that makes it FUN
Coming from someone who has run 3 campaigns on roll20 and was introduced to the hobby through roll20 and then played in person.
If you really want to do it i cant stop you but i cant recommend against it enough and this faggot user is giving you horrible advice
I don't see how any of that can't happen at a physical game.
It can. But its much less likely to. And theres just stuff that cant happen. It sounds gay and sappy but its fucking true and ive experienced it with many different people. They just act differently, its more alive people are more engaged and that affects how they play, not just the mood.
When people are staring at a little screen with their token theyre more likely to be uncreative and just say "i attack" whereas when youre in person with people and you can really set the scene and people are engaging like human beings people tend to be more energized and creative. Obviously this can go both ways in either direction but its just what ive found.
My friend began me on d&d online on roll20 with tokens and pre drawn map with fog of war and all the works. It was a slog, it felt like a slog and i remember being frustrated at the pace, hearing the silence on skype with little clicks in the distance while he removed fog of war or redrew.
Its very hard to explain. Go ahead and try it, see for yourself. But roll20 is cancer and all it leads to is cancer. If your players are at all the types who get distracted or arent very proactive and energetic prepare for it to be magnified times a million in a VTT.
It didnt work for me or any of the groups ive run with. I just started playing in person half a year ago and im loving D&D more than i ever have in my whole 4 years as a DM. Im just trying to give some experience from someone who has done and was raised on exactly what you want to get into and tell you that maybe itll be ok, but it will never be great and its most likely to be bad.
If you must use a vtt heres my advice. Use maptools or something with just a map. Roll20s macros seem nice but what they do (especially for new players) is make them forget how to actually make an attack roll. it just becomes "press the macro" which also adds to the static and uncreative nature of playing online. the players just wanna wait to press their attack macro again.
So use maptools or something without macros, forget layers forget creating a town or predrawing the entire dungeon. RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO DO THAT. It will not be worth it.
Just use the VTT you would a grid map, and thats ALL. Thats it. dont try and predraw the dungeon, dont use fancy lighting, dont make a shit ton of layers youre just making more work for yourself and its sooo unnecessary. It will stress you out preparing for the next session when youre busy but you have to do all that monotonous and meticulous map layering and lighting
just use it as a battlemap. with these tips it should be ok and not terrible, although the social aspects touched on earlier will depend on your group.
good luck
The wiki has a lot of good info to know when you're using Roll20, it's actually pretty decent.
Agreed, but for the love of god expand on your statement, don't just expect people to understand you when you give a vague statement and no other information.
The problem I think you face is that you're trying to translate in-person play to online play 1:1 and it just doesn't work that way. Like it or not, you can't just use props and gestures like you can in-person to enhance the scene, you only have your voice or text to explain something, so you have to think harder about how you'll convey something, and *gasp* put a different kind of effort into making the experience better. You write off a lot of the best ways to enhance an online game as being unnecessary, but people see the effort put into these things and believe it or not, they appreciate it, a lot. Good lighting, for instance, is something that can transform a game.
As far as your macro tangent, I'm legitimately unsure what the fuck you're talking about. It's no more static and uncreative to press a macro button or type than it is to roll the attack and damage dice together in an in-person game. It's not the action of rolling, it's the interpretation of the rolls that leads to creativity. All macros do is streamline a part of the game that's time consuming and doesn't translate between in-person and online play.
Out of curiosity, how much fog of war and lighting have you had in a real life game?
I'm actually playing my first game on Roll20 and am enjoying it a lot. Only advice I might give to OP is to make sure his players are also fairly familiar with the system, it's easy to be doing some bookkeeping on the character sheet and screw up a macro, so try to make sure all of that is done before the session so there's less equipment failure during the game. (I say equipment failure, it's less that it's bad and more that it's delicate)
I can also see the idea some anons put forward about the extra features like fog of war and lighting, my DM ignores almost all of that and uses the VTT like a whiteboard. I'll defer to you on the point that they can enhance a game, but my experience has been great even without those things. I think there's also some benefit to the minimalist approach that it might give the DM more flexibility, there's no drop in quality if the players get in a fight when the DM hadn't thought it would happen in that particular tavern.
The correct way to use Roll20 is to only use it as a whiteboard. It's like a big piece of paper. You can draw crude maps on the fly, use a little circle or cross to represent a character if you really want to and stock up on pictures to throw on the table.
Character sheets can be nice too, not always.
But don't use the more advanced functions. Music is too time-consming to set up in my opinion. Dynamic Light, gof of war... since when do you need that kind of stuff?
You just have to familirize yourself with the new work environment, but the core dynamics of what you will actually do don't change.
Also, establish rules with your team and enforce them. In my group we have a hard ban on browsing, playing something else, using social medias or even just sending any kind of external links.
this is why I hate this board sometimes
"Hey guys I was wondering how much milk to put in my cereal."
"Don't eat cereal dude. Cereal is fucking stupid and it's for babies. The sugar content alone should dissuade any sane adult from coming near such a pointless fucking excuse for food. You're welcome."
OP, using Roll20 is completely fine. It's absurdly convenient and superior to the tabletop in a number of ways. It doesn't "kill" groups.
It ultimately comes down to the type of game being run and the group, really. But to suggest that the program's features are a bad thing, and that it should only be used as a whiteboard is absurd.
Your opinion =/= truth.
But neither does anyone elses.
OP, good luck. If you have easily distracted players, they will be distracted. Roll is worth a try,it's free, and there are other options available if it does not work out. Use the on-site tutorials, run a mock session to work out any kinks/see what doesn't work. But most importantly, come back and tell us how it went.
This, right here. Online games are a great way to repeat yourself over and over again in frustration as your players open other tabs, check facebook, watch videos and listen to music instead of listening and paying attention to the actual game. Take every time you've caught your players on their phones instead of playing and multiply that by an entire session.
Maybe you're just not very good at holding their attention, have you ever thought of that?
Based on my experience:
Try not to run anything too combat heavy. Combat on a online environment isn't as riveting as with actual dice. Keep sessions short and focused (3-5h). Take breaks often.
Some of these advices may seem obvios but without visual communication it can be hard to know whether players are in need of a break or not.
Don't map everything out. All you need are some pictures of landscapes, towns or othet locations to set the mood. Only put tokens and gridmaps if you get into combat.
>Combat on a online environment isn't as riveting as with actual dice.
How? You've gotta describe things just the same.
In my experience clicking on macros or typing dice rolls isn't as fun as rolling dice on a actual table. Although macros are very convenient when used properly.
If rolling the dice is how you're keeping your players engaged with combat, you need to take a long, hard look at yourself.
>In lieu of any actual arguments, all neverplayedIRLAnon is going to do is call you personally deficient if people tell him that it's utterly different and not for the better
lol