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

[BMaC]

Not Roll20

 

[Nebulous]

Not Roll20

Do you have reasons why not Roll20?

 

[cmad1977]

We use Roll20 and discord for D&D and Call I’d Cthulhu. For a different game we use discord and a whiteboard app/website. Both work great.

 

[Oofta]

Not Roll20

And the award for most useless reply goes to ...

Seriously. It's fine if you don't like Roll20. A lot of people don't. Can you give any alternatives or reasons? Because even if it isn't great it seems to be one of the better options.

 

[DEFCON 1]

First, skype is going away (supposedly) in about 3 months in favor of MS teams.

Last night my tech support friend from AZ and I had our first meeting on Zoom (he told me about skype then) and it was great. Not that hard to figure out, has a white board, and with the share screen feature I had a map on my second screen for him to see, etc. It is $15/month, but only for the host. So, we agreed each month one person would pay the fee by reimbursing me through paypal. With four of us eventually using it, that is $45/year or less than $1/session if we play weekly. Even on my budget, I can handle that!

I have also started using Zoom for my players. We started a new campaign with 7 players plus myself and the video conferencing of Zoom allows all eight of us to be onscreen together at the same time. Zoom goes fast enough that we do not find ourselves talking over one another due to lag, which is a godsend.

Since one of my players already has it for work we have the $15 per month subscription available to us, which means more than 40 minutes of playtime, as also has the shareable whiteboard to use. As DM I also can open up maps I have from my desktop and then 'share screen' to let others see them. Finally just for easiest use... I have an actual white board standing next to me on-screen that I use to write out initiative orders, as well as scribble out quicker maps that everyone can see alongside my head at all times. We don't need tokens, I just dry-erase their character initial as they move around the basic map.

I'm running them through Lost Mines of Phandelver, so I pull up and share screen on Schley's pretty maps for all the details, then just sketch the rooms on the physical whiteboard when we start combat.

 

[DEFCON 1]

BTW - for those that haven't jerry-rigged their own version of "fog of war" before... I use an exceedingly cheap method for it, when sharing my screen as above. This method only requires only Microsoft Excel to use (for those without a paint program that can do layers.)

I open a new Excel page and import a Schley map. Then I go to the Insert tab, and select Shapes > Freeform Shapes. I then draw various filled-in shapes over individual sections of the map to cover them over. When it comes time to play, I can just delete each shape section that covers over the part of the map the party is going to. Easy as pie.

 

[Retreater]

Really? Does no one else use MapTool?

I tried it in the early 2000s and it didn't leave a good impression. Never looked back.

 

[BMaC]

Do you have reasons why not Roll20?

As others have said, it's fine for just showing maps. However, once you go to the GM side and try to do anything advanced Roll20 descends into a counter-intuitive UI that would make Kafka proud.

 

[Oofta]

As others have said, it's fine for just showing maps. However, once you go to the GM side and try to do anything advanced Roll20 descends into a counter-intuitive UI that would make Kafka proud.

Is there a better option you'd like to suggest?

 

[Nebulous]

As others have said, it's fine for just showing maps. However, once you go to the GM side and try to do anything advanced Roll20 descends into a counter-intuitive UI that would make Kafka proud.

It can be confusing, yes. The macros are crazy. But I find so many people (myself included) who also find FG convoluted. I do wonder what makes different people react to the software differently?