D&D 5E Most User-Friendly VTT? (Dice Games In The Time of Covid)

[Ovinomancer]

It has freehand drawing tools, too. You can absolutely treat it like a battlemat and dry-erase marker.

What part hasn't worked for you?

I've been using Roll20 for three years now, and I positively hate the drawing tools. Having to hold down <shift> to snap to grid is totally backwards from how you have to hold down <alt> when placing an art asset to get it to NOT snap to grid. There's no fill tool, you have to plan your fill ahead, and you can't use textures. Line sizes are odd. Text sizes are odd. The way that things layer is odd (the last thing drawn is on top, so if you don't plan your placements you can occlude things easily and then have to do a merry 'pull to front/push to back' dance. God help you if you have multiple things stacked, like a floor, some walls, and a door if you accidentally get them out of order in placement!

Gah! I like Roll20 (obviously, I'm still using it after sampling other VTTs), but the drawing part of it is not good. I make my maps in GiMP and then bring them over to R20.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I've been using Roll20 for three years now, and I positively hate the drawing tools. Having to hold down <shift> to snap to grid is totally backwards from how you have to hold down <alt> when placing an art asset to get it to NOT snap to grid. There's no fill tool, you have to plan your fill ahead, and you can't use textures. Line sizes are odd. Text sizes are odd. The way that things layer is odd (the last thing drawn is on top, so if you don't plan your placements you can occlude things easily and then have to do a merry 'pull to front/push to back' dance. God help you if you have multiple things stacked, like a floor, some walls, and a door if you accidentally get them out of order in placement!

Gah! I like Roll20 (obviously, I'm still using it after sampling other VTTs), but the drawing part of it is not good. I make my maps in GiMP and then bring them over to R20.

Yeah, fair enough. Plus I use a laptop and freehand drawing on a trackpad sucks.

I find cool maps on the internet and then tailor my adventures to fit them.

 

[Oofta]

It has freehand drawing tools, too. You can absolutely treat it like a battlemat and dry-erase marker.

What part hasn't worked for you?

I think others have pointed out some of the issues. It's not really a drawing tool though. Years ago I got pretty good at Campaign Cartographer because I wanted world and regional maps. Still use it now and then.

But there are so many tool lacking in Roll20; multiple layers for maps, bringing thing to the front/sending them to the back, the fill is iffy at best, the limited size of maps that you can upload. Even drawing something as simple as a body of water is not as simple as it should be.

Or maybe I'm just not doing something right but I haven't found a tutorial that doesn't just started with "I already have maps" or "I got all these maps from ..." and so on. Well, that and I'm hoping that in a couple of months I won't need to ever use this app again.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I think others have pointed out some of the issues. It's not really a drawing tool though. Years ago I got pretty good at Campaign Cartographer because I wanted world and regional maps. Still use it now and then.

But there are so many tool lacking in Roll20; multiple layers for maps, bringing thing to the front/sending them to the back, the fill is iffy at best, the limited size of maps that you can upload. Even drawing something as simple as a body of water is not as simple as it should be.

Or maybe I'm just not doing something right but I haven't found a tutorial that doesn't just started with "I already have maps" or "I got all these maps from ..." and so on. Well, that and I'm hoping that in a couple of months I won't need to ever use this app again.

More layers is definitely needed. Bring to back/front does exist -- there's a keyboard shortcut I can't remember, but if you right click it's in the context menu. Fill doesn't exist, except an option for drawing filled polygons. You didn't miss a tutorial.

Fundamentally, Roll20 deals with objects, not drawings. Anything you "draw" in Roll20 is turned into an object. It's discrete. And, Roll20 does some nice things with objects, to be honest. The drawback to this approach is that it can't act as a rastor or vector drawing app and still do the objects. So, if you're looking for a whiteboard, you will be disappointed.

 

[MNblockhead]

I think others have pointed out some of the issues. It's not really a drawing tool though. Years ago I got pretty good at Campaign Cartographer because I wanted world and regional maps. Still use it now and then.

But there are so many tool lacking in Roll20; multiple layers for maps, bringing thing to the front/sending them to the back, the fill is iffy at best, the limited size of maps that you can upload. Even drawing something as simple as a body of water is not as simple as it should be.

Or maybe I'm just not doing something right but I haven't found a tutorial that doesn't just started with "I already have maps" or "I got all these maps from ..." and so on. Well, that and I'm hoping that in a couple of months I won't need to ever use this app again.

I do all that with Map Tool. Layers work well, sending elments back or bringing forward works intuitively.

The drawing tools are basic. I would not use it to build maps. There are MANY tools to make maps (Campaign Cartographer, Worldographer, Dungeonographer, Map Forge, Hex Kit, and others). But if you want to quickly draw some basic maps like you would with wet erase on a Chessex mat, then Map Tools is fine.

Map Tool is an amazingly useful tool for a free, open source application.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I do all that with Map Tool. Layers work well, sending elments back or bringing forward works intuitively.

The drawing tools are basic. I would not use it to build maps. There are MANY tools to make maps (Campaign Cartographer, Worldographer, Dungeonographer, Map Forge, Hex Kit, and others). But if you want to quickly draw some basic maps like you would with wet erase on a Chessex mat, then Map Tools is fine.

Map Tool is an amazingly useful tool for a free, open source application.

It really is. I used it to make maps for Roll20 before I dove in and learned to use GiMP. Well, kinda-sorta learned to hack my way around GiMP.

 

[MNblockhead]

It really is. I used it to make maps for Roll20 before I dove in and learned to use GiMP. Well, kinda-sorta learned to hack my way around GiMP.

Do you use GIMP to actually display the map to your players? Or just to create the map and then load it into Roll20. I've heard of people using GIMP or PhotoShop to create and display maps, using a black or gray layer and just erasing it to reveal the map below, but it always seemed to me like it would be a hassle to know what exactly to reveal. VTT tools show FOW as translucent in the DM view, but with zero transparency in the players view. AFAIK, there is no way to replicate that with PS or GIMP.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Do you use GIMP to actually display the map to your players? Or just to create the map and then load it into Roll20. I've heard of people using GIMP or PhotoShop to create and display maps, using a black or gray layer and just erasing it to reveal the map below, but it always seemed to me like it would be a hassle to know what exactly to reveal. VTT tools show FOW as translucent in the DM view, but with zero transparency in the players view. AFAIK, there is no way to replicate that with PS or GIMP.

The latter. Roll20 offers lots of goodies for lighting and token/character integration and has the right level of automation for me (I actually dislike how automated Fantasy Grounds is).

 

[Don Durito]

I've been using Roll20. It's okish now that I've gotten used to it. But my use of it has adapted also.

I tried dynamic lighting. I found it buggy, and it's quite demanding on everyone's internet connection. Eventually I got it to work fairly well, but stopped using it anyway, deciding it was time consuming, and not only added nothing to the game but actually detracted from it.

Giving players a map they can freely move around means the map takes over too much of the GM role. Players stop asking questions because they assume that what is on the map is all there is to see and the social verbal interplay that is so important gets disrupted.

Plus relying overly much on maps makes it hard to improvise and I prefer to roll with what the characters want to do. So now I only make maps for expected combat encounters. I find images help that can be blown up to help the characters get the gist of what they see, but I don;t worry if I can't find one.

This is the map I used on Roll20 for a combat tonight that I hadn't predicted because the PCs did something unexpected.

I drew a couple of lines on it with the draw feature to indicate a corridor and basic room and it was absolutely fine. Nothing was lost for the lack of fancy maps or lighting.

The trap I find with the VTT is being sucked into excessive preparation and then being trapped by the way that constrains you.

Rpgs are a verbal, not a visual, medium.

I also found that if I just made Macros and attached them to tokens then I could minimise the use of character sheets. This speeds things up a lot for most players who then don't have to shuffle back and forth.

Ultimately that's probably a good way to get rid of virtual character sheets entirely. You could just use paper character sheets (or sheets in another file) and macros and regain the abiity to use house rules again.