Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6575445" data-attributes="member: 2067">IMXP, the short answer is no, it'll be different. Not worse or better, necessarily, but different. For one, the "presence" thing isn't as possible. You can't "control a room." Your players could be in their own places, have distracting tabs open, eating or drinking or not wearing pants or...there's nothing in Roll20 that makes you look at someone face-to-face. You can use videochat, but webcams aren't any substitute for your own personal presence. Also, Roll20, like any digital tabletop, benefits from ample prep time. If you're trying to do it on the fly, you might be spending a lot of time drawing and picking images, which isn't a great way to spend game time, IMO. The edge that digital tabletops offer you in your D&D playing is that they make scheduling (which is the biggest bugaboo of most groups) a snap. I play my online game on Monday nights, and I wouldn't even try to play an in-person game then - I can just shut my computer down and go into the next room and sleep when the game is over, no commute required. They aren't generally in and of themselves time-savers. Personally, I find a lot more time is needed in running one because I worry about things that, in an in-person game, I wouldn't sweat (things like maps and visual hand-outs become all the more important without the zeitgeist of other people around you). Some aspects of them can be pretty quick and automated, but Roll20, even though it's more user-friendly than Maptool, can still require a substantial learning curve to get the most out of it when DMing. If saving time is your issue (vs. something like scheduling or getting a group in different locations together), Roll20 won't be a solution, it's still running a game, and it still needs prep, and it IMXP needs more prep than most in-person games to truly get the most out of it. What it DOES offer you is the most user-friendly digital tabletop, so if you're in the market for a digital tabletop to begin with, Roll20 is probably a solid choice.</blockquote>

Verification