D&D General Should We Start Using a VTT?

[Matrix Sorcica]

You want simple, you go with Owlbear Rodeo. Map. Tokens. Done.

Owlbear Rodeo

A more bear-able virtual tabletop

www.owlbear.rodeo

Came here to say just this.
We have been using zoom with the battlemats in a power point, and me as a DM sharing my screen and moving tokens around. It's working really well, actually. Dice rolling, character sheets etc are done outside zoom (og Google sheets for example). But next game will be Owlbear Rodeo. It's just so perfect. You can set a map up in minutes, the players can control their own tokens, and there's even fog of war (which I have been missing).

 

[turnip_farmer]

I think we would definitely be willing to pay if it would improve our games. Like a lot of folks, most of the grownups in my group (we’re an intergenerational gaming group) have unexpectedly accumulated savings because so many of the recreational things we used to spend our money on (sports, movies, eating out, travel, etc) have been closed or unavailable for the last twelve months.

There is absolutely no need to pay for content in Roll20. There is nothing you get by buying the rules that you can't do without. All it means is that you have the rules built in to the software, so it can do things like fill in your character sheet for you, and have macros ready to do all the dice rolls.

But if you already have the books, and already have character sheets filled in and know what to roll, do you need that? Especially if some of your players are in the room with you.

I play with a group exclusively online, that I only met through Roll20, so for me it's useful to have everything set up in the system, but I'm not paying for a digital version of a book I already own. It takes two minutes to manually copy some stats from the Monster Manual into Roll20.

You could even ignore the VTT and just share your screen with an image-editing program to show maps, though the VTT has the advantage that players can move their own tokens around.

 

[TheSword]

@Yenrak I think this is part of the problem. A Half dozen posts from strangers and a half dozen different answers. How on earth do you make a decision in those circumstances, when there are costs upfront.

• Make a shortlist of platforms.
• Watch a couple of you tube videos to pick up mechanics.
• If there is a free version of the software give it a try yourself and see if it isn’t too fiddly.
• Work out what is and what isn’t supported. It all very well saying it’s a perfect system but if the rule set isn’t built into the game youve got to write every monster and NPC from scratch. Compendium support for me is massively helpful and I can share the compendium with my players.
• Work out the cost and decide if it’s within your budget.
• Start looking for maps. I would recommend Patreon as a source. A couple of dollars gets you in some cases thousands of VTT quality maps. I recommend Neutral Party, Seaforge Games, Czepuku, Sea, Afternoon Maps, Heroic Maps (though in there case you don’t get access to the back catalogue). Deviant art is a good place to find originals that artists share, along with their tumbler pages etc. I usually use Pinterest to search for artists I like and then search for their patreons or web pages.
• Make a few tokens... I use Token Stamp

I shilled for Roll20, because it was the biggest brand name, I knew it was supported, it has an excellent character generator, it’s drag and drop, the campaign pack packs are released when (or before) the book releases happen, and while it does do a lot you don’t have to use it all. I love the fact that every 5e monster in a product I’ve paid for, can be dragged onto the screen and be ready to use in 5 seconds with a character sheet. I ignored a lot of functions in the first six months and slowly brought stuff on line as I became more comfortable with it. It’s not cheap, but to be honest my time is a more limited resource than money... certainly at the moment without having been to a restaurant in 4 months.

By contrast a lot of people were raving about this developmental software called Foundry and how much more it can do... and yes there were some nifty features... but not worth finding out that I had to either open my computer as a server, through another piece of software (which I was uneasy about and didn’t work for all my players either) or sign up for a separate hosting system and keep uploading information across, which again some of my players found difficult to access. Had I known this stuff I probably wouldn’t have invested in Foundry.

I know that Roll20 when a player clicks launch, they’re going to be able to get into the system and see what I want them to see.

 

[Dragonsbane]

Roll20 took our games from good to amazing. No more buying minis, battlemaps, or pieces of terrain. Now the Google search brings it all to you in unlimited fashion. You have cool FX and music, auto calc for rolls (no more math! mostly), and can play at anytime and always can find new players with ease. I am gaming so much more with VTTs (since 2013), I cannot imagine going back to live play.

 

[TheSword]

Goodness no. Roll20 is a pretty full-featured solution, supporting game mechanics, map layers and fog of war, audio/video and text chat, and lots of other stuff. It is NOT simple.

You want simple, you go with Owlbear Rodeo. Map. Tokens. Done.

Owlbear Rodeo

A more bear-able virtual tabletop

www.owlbear.rodeo

It’s buried in my other post but while I don’t disagree that while Roll20 has a huge number of features and benefits over a simple zoom... you don’t have to use them. You could just use the free version, drag from the online token library and use the dice roller if you wanted to. In the regards it is simple and only makes you learn as much as you want to.

When I say simple it is comparing adding a map in Roll20 to adding a map in Foundry. The first is drag and drop, the other requires a lot more effort.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Another post advocating for the ease of Owlbear Rodeo.

If all you need is a service that allows you to present a map and let others move their own tokens around, OR is a great way to do it.

 

[TheSword]

Another post advocating for the ease of Owlbear Rodeo.

If all you need is a service that allows you to present a map and let others move their own tokens around, OR is a great way to do it.

I hope I’m not putting words in Yenrak’s mouth, but I don’t think they are looking for the simplest system, they’re looking for something that could dramatically improve their online experience, and is that improvement worth it.

 

[turnip_farmer]

• Work out what is and what isn’t supported. It all very well saying it’s a perfect system but if the rule set isn’t built into the game youve got to write every monster and NPC from scratch. Compendium support for me is massively helpful and I can share the compendium with my players.

You don't have to write anything in Roll20. If you're used to already working from stat blocks in your book, or from index cards, or whatever, you don't need anything in the system. Is glancing at a stat block and typing /r d20+3 really much more difficult that navigating to the correct character sheet and clicking the Wisdom save button?

I'm sure some find these tools very useful; just want to reassure OP that in case of concern about cost; paid addons and support are not at all essential. I've happily used Roll20 to play systems with no specific support (though I'm a nice guy so I did spend a weekend setting up macros and stuff for my players).

 

[MarkB]

It's worth adding that if your group already use D&D Beyond for character generation, there's a Chrome extension called Beyond20 that lets you make rolls directly from your D&D Beyond character sheet (or monster stat-block if you're the DM) and have them appear in Roll20. So if you've already bought content in D&D Beyond, you don't need to re-buy it in Roll20.

 

[TheSword]

You don't have to write anything in Roll20. If you're used to already working from stat blocks in your book, or from index cards, or whatever, you don't need anything in the system. Is glancing at a stat block and typing /r d20+3 really much more difficult that navigating to the correct character sheet and clicking the Wisdom save button?

I'm sure some find these tools very useful; just want to reassure OP that in case of concern about cost; paid addons and support are not at all essential. I've happily used Roll20 to play systems with no specific support (though I'm a nice guy so I did spend a weekend setting up macros and stuff for my players).

I’m aware you don’t have too, but then you’re missing a some of the functionality of the system but it agree you can do it yourself.

They’re not essential. They just save time.