D&D 5E How Did You Get Used to Roll 20 or Fantasy Grounds?

I am thinking of running Tomb of Annihilation for some friendly acquaintances. My regular group will be pretty busy with our normal campaign, but I wanna try it.

So, with that in mind, I am considering Roll 20 or Fantasy Grounds. In my home games I NEVER use a map or minis, but part of that is because it's for an audio-only podcast. I think it might be interesting to use one for this.

I don't wanna get a bunch of people to set time aside and watch me fiddle with it though. Any pro tips? Do I just need to find a one shot to jump into?

I would take some time to familiarise yourself with the software first, since you'll effectively be the players tech support. Just work out how the basics of the game work. How do the players make rolls? How does the chat work? How do they whisper the DM? How do you show them handouts? How do you start an encounter map? How do you show initiative order? How does audio and/or video work?

Once you've got that down, get them to make their accounts/characters, then jump into a pretend encounter to get them used to it.

I use Roll20 even though I don't use maps or minis.
Lets me roll dice, keep track of initiative, look at everyone's character sheet, has SRD information, and let's you roll two d20s and damage dice simultaneously, which is a time saver. And I can always doodle symbols or quick images if I need, or send music!

The only pro-tip I can recommend beyond what the above poster said is this: the program has flaws, so just use it as an accessory. A way to keep track of stuff without having a dozen other different programs. As a podcaster, most of your stuff will be narrative anyway.

Fantasy Grounds is a superior product, but wow it has a nasty price point.

I can only speak for Roll20. There is a good intro tutorial they run you through when you create your first game. The Roll20 modules of WotC adventures have everything you need including the chapter text so you do not actually need to purchase the book.

On the downside, some users have been having trouble using the audio and video chat because it will cut out. A lot of the affected users use Discord for audio.

If all you were doing was using audio for theater of the mind, I would consider using Discord, Google Hangouts, Skype, or something else. If you purchase a module for using all the parts, Roll20 can make for a pretty impressive experience. All the material is hyperlinked to each other where appropriate, and you have everything you need.

You'll want to learn how to set up dice macros and perhaps set those up for your players. If it takes longer for someone get a die result because they are typing out roll commands in chat than rolling a die at an actual table, something has gone horribly wrong in my view. At a minimum, you'll want a macro that is visible to the players and they can add to their quickbar for each die type. You can get fancier from there if you want. The Roll20 wiki and forums will have plenty of guides to making macros.

If you're not going to use the visual interface for art and maps then dice macros is basically all you need to know since everyone can use D&D Beyond or some other character generation app to track their characters (or just hand-written sheets). And you'll have the module for running the game just like at a table.

For Roll 20 here is what I did that seemed to help:

I made a dungeon, from scratch. I pulled up walls and floors in the library and place them. Doors, tables, chairs, traps, statues, pools, etc.. and put those on the map layer, and used the "snap to grid" tool to practice sizing the floors.

Then i populated it with monsters. I then filled in the critical information on those monsters: AC, movement, HP, attacks with damage, anything special about how they fight, etc..

I move the monsters and anything else the players don't necessarily know about right away (like traps and secret doors and stuff) to the GM layer, and practiced moving them to the player layer for once they were spotted.

I then played with moving things around and marking them as drawings, adjusting size and placement, and moving them back to being not drawings (that will make sense when using Roll 20).

I added some sample PC icons, and practices clicking on their character a sheets and filling in some info and clicking on some things like saves and attacks and spells.

I then played with some of the pointer and shaping tools.

And finally I clicked on some of the music stuff and misc stuff, and rolled some dice. Included in the dice is sometimes using simple formulas to roll dice rather than a button on a character sheet.

Once you've done all that you should feel pretty comfortable with Roll 20.

I've used Roll20 for a couple years on and off now. Right now, we are playing FFG's Star Wars with it, but only use it as a place for us to roll the die so everyone can see it.
My internet connection is terrible (I recently clocked in a record low of 68 Bytes/second) so Roll20 has been a mixed experience for me. That said, even with my internet, it has been a mostly reliable place to play games with friends in different countries.

My biggest complaint for Roll20 is that it does not give you enough space for everything. If you want to look at the map on the screen, run the initiative tracker, and open a note which has enemy information on it, you're pretty much pushing the limits of screen real estate. The files, character sheets, and notes tabs can get congested over time. When I ran a long campaign in DnD on Roll20, I had to put folders into folders into folders to keep everything organized, and checking which was available to be seen by which player was a bit tiresome.

All that said, I've never lost any data and never heard of anyone losing data. Character sheets stay on there indefinitely and aren't at risk for being lost. When we switched systems, we moved gamerooms and whenever we want, we can return to the first gameroom and continue right where we left off. The grid and map are reliable and simple to interface with. Players can do almost everything the GM can do if you want them to.

The tokens and other resources for free leave a lot to be desired. My players ended up drawing their own pogs with Roll20's drawing tool. We then moved them through crudely drawn dungeons whenever it came up. I do more theatre of the mind stuff, so it never became a major problem.

iserith said:

The Roll20 wiki and forums will have plenty of guides to making macros.

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The Roll20 Wiki and the forums have pretty much every question you could come up with. They're an excellent resource for sure.

[MENTION=6777693]transtemporal[/MENTION] does a good job summarizing what you'll need to know for either application. Once you choose which one, you will probably want to go to their forums and seek detailed advice there.

As an FG user, I know the forums there are very helpful. There is a User Guide, plus all sorts of resource posts and links to dozens of different videos. FG also includes a tutorial campaign for 5E that you can load after installation and it helps walk you through using and creating a campaign.

A few things I will add;
- screen real estate is going to be at a premium with both programs. FG helps with this by being able to minimize windows to an icon so you can quickly open and close them.
- I think lots of people have the wrong impression about the cost of FG. You can get a regular license for as low as $4/month and an ultimate license for $10/month. Both of those licenses include the 5E SRD and 5E Basic Rules (and a few hundred? tokens and more).

LordEntrails said:

- screen real estate is going to be at a premium with both programs. FG helps with this by being able to minimize windows to an icon so you can quickly open and close them.

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Handouts and character sheets in Roll20 can be minimized by double clicking the header. It minimizes and goes semi-transparent. Double click to reopen. They can also pop out of the browser in their own windows which is great if you have multiple monitors.

In my home games I NEVER use a map or minis, but part of that is because it's for an audio-only podcast.

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Are you still going to be podcasting audio only? A VTT eliminates the need for much of the 'theater of the mind' exposition and description, which might actually be a hindrance to your podcast. That said, I use FG and here are the things I usually suggest to others considering it:

• if you get the $10/month ultimate license (recommended!), it's the only cost you'll incur, other than any adventure modules you might buy. Your players just need the free demo and they will be able to connect to your game.
• I highly recommend buying a cheap one-shot adventure module (AAW ones are pretty good) from the FG store or DMsGuild for learning. There's little enough content that it won't get confusing in the beginning. The official WOTC adventure modules are great, but there is a LOT of content in them, and it can be overwhelming in the FG UI.
• watch videos about sharing modules, making characters, maps and tokens, the combat tracker, and effects (in that order). Those are the most important things a DM needs to know in order to use FG. (There's loads more features of course, but that covers what you'll be doing 90% of the time).
• my best protip is to use the quick slots at the bottom of the screen for almost everything. You can drag just about ANYTHING in them, and there are I think 96 of them or something ridiculous like that. You can minimize windows, but I find it's quicker to just drag it into a quick slot and close it.
• if you are making your own campaign, you'll want to give yourself more time to get to know the app before you jump in and start DMing. I love it, but it's very quirky, and I learn new things about it every time I play.
• VTTs are a great tool, but they aren't 100% necessary. So only use what's useful to you and actually makes your games more enjoyable. For anything else, do it old school.

Good luck!