This could get long, but for those who don't want to read the whole thing, I am switching a campaign over to Roll20 and I haven't really used it before. I would like some tips from the community.

Over the summer, I GM'ed a game for my wife and a couple friends who were visiting from out of state. They had a lot of fun and decided they wanted to keep playing after they went back home. We added a couple more players and started playing every other week over Discord using SkyJedi's dice roller . Things have been going okay, but it seems that the players seem significantly distracted during the session. I know several of them (my wife included ) have been playing video games during our sessions, which, along with a general lack of familiarity with combat rules, really gums up the flow of the game, combat in particular. I had a chat with one of my players after the last session, who is very visual, and he felt like he was just having issues visualizing the battlefield. I'll admit, I'm new to being a GM, so my descriptions are probably not the best. Anyway, I had debated using Roll20 for a Pathfinder campaign, but never got around to learning it. I pulled it up for him and he liked it so now I think we'll be moving over to Roll20.

While I do feel like using Roll20 will solve some of the attention/player engagement issues, I'm really afraid that this switch is going drastically increase the amount of time I need to prepare for a session. I guess I feel like I want to be able to give my players quality maps to play on, but I'm a student and I don't have time to pour into making maps/tokens.

I was wondering if anyone had any tips for using Roll20 that could help me speed up my preparation.

There are about a billion little things you can do. The couple of BIG things that I always do:

- Never forget that Roll20 doesn't require you to use all of its fiddly bits. A couple maps or images and you're good to go.

- Use the en suite search for maps and tokens when you're stuck.

- Grab pre-made maps and tokens from places like here .

- Get stats fast from here .

I'm sure others will weigh in with longer and more specific comments. Good luck!

Things I've learned about it as a relatively new Roll20 GM:

• They have a built-in dice system. My players just created a character called "Dice Pool," and it is used for all NPCs.
• From what I've heard, their voice chat isn't great. Use Discord for that.
• The maps and tokens are super nice, much easier than back when I drew my own tokens. Find pictures on Google Images, upload them in the "art" section, and you can drag them on.
• For maps, you need to click on a cube picture at the left, then select "maps and background." That allows you to place a map that shows up underneath the tokens. I use MS Paint to draw my maps. If you can find nice looking ones online, more power to you.
• They have a thing for tracking initiative. It is nice for PCs, but a bit annoying for NPCs. My players turn it on for me, so I'm not sure where it is.
• It has a handy feature allowing players to roll a force die and automatically add it to the destiny pool.
• You need a Pro (paid) account for one person to create the game, but everyone else can use free accounts.
• Especially if you're unfamiliar with it, you don't need to use every feature. Session notes, NPC stats, and Obligation charts can all be done just fine on another app like Google Docs, Word, Notability, or pencil/paper.
• There is a great upcoming campaign looking for multiple GMs and lots of PCs here: https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/5595081/lfgm-lfp-the-settlement-of-cophrigin-v-a-star-wars-rpg#post-5620033

You'll only need the Pro(paid account) if you want to use the Dice-Roll App and the character Sheets. (I don't have the pro account!)

My Players use theire hard copy sheets (since they are all in the same room while I'm on the opposite side of the country) I have all sheets as copy to keep an eye on the spend and earned EXP (and to look at them during the creation phase so i won't overdue it with the difficultys)

For visuals contact and sound we use Skype (two monitor solution) for dice: I use discord while my players have build a dice camera that is used as third party in skype so I can switch with one click between them and the dice (high tech old school throwing hard dice while using the internet!)

Thank you for all the suggestions. I think I'm going to try and stick with a free account on Roll20 and continue using discord for audio and dice. Ideally, we would use video chat, but one of the players has atrocious internet. The only issue I'm having with discord for dice is that my players, who are all still relatively new to the system, keep forgetting about the destiny points. I feel like we go through the session and the points hardly get used. Partly my fault too. I forget to use them. I wonder if there's a way for me to visually represent that on Roll20 somewhere.

3 hours ago, arMedBeta said:

Thank you for all the suggestions. I think I'm going to try and stick with a free account on Roll20 and continue using discord for audio and dice. Ideally, we would use video chat, but one of the players has atrocious internet. The only issue I'm having with discord for dice is that my players, who are all still relatively new to the system, keep forgetting about the destiny points. I feel like we go through the session and the points hardly get used. Partly my fault too. I forget to use them. I wonder if there's a way for me to visually represent that on Roll20 somewhere.

Dice problems?

You can thank your fellow board-member Owen Mead for taking care of that: https://dice.owenmead.com/

Here in Star Wars this is not such a big problem, but when you have problems to align a gridded map to the roll20 grid, right click on the map and select advanced -> is drawing. Then you can freely transform the map and are not bound to the map snapping to the ingame grid. This drove me crazy in Pathfinder, until I found this out.