So I was checking out roll20 and since I trust the advice from my fellows on RPOL I figured I'd ask what you all thought about it. I'm thinking of running a pathfinder game on there and just wanted to know.

Do you like it? Anything about it you hate? How hard is it to run a campaign there?

I ran a campaign on it, and I think it's pretty slick. The ads might be annoying for some, but they never bothered me too much. If you get a paid account you can get rid of them, but that's your call.

The dice roller/character pages/and maps are what makes it great. You can put all sorts of images and tokens into your own personal library to pull out when you need it. The map also has Fog of War, which can be a godsend depending on how you play. You can also set up separate pages (Floor 1, Floor 2, Basement, etc.) for the players to adventure on. You can also whisper and send secret messages easily, if that is something you do in your campaigns.

The one thing I didn't toy with too much was macros. You could set up pregenerated die rolls (Attack, Search, etc.) and you just hit a button and it rolls them for you. If you get fancy, you can even set up 'Roll STR+Climb for Climbing skill check'.

It has its own in-house video/audio, but when I first used roll20 it was spotty. Granted, that was when it first came out, I just kept using Skype since then. You can also launch it in Google Hangouts, which is a much more solid platform for video and sharing docs.

On the campaign page you can set up threads and have blurbs about the game. You can also set when the next game will be played, and it will track the time until then.

Overall, I thought it was a great leap in the virtual tabletop, and since I've been forced to turn online to play my games, it was a great tool.

M-Type touches on a lot of its perks. Id suggest running Roll20 in Google hangouts. It is an easily installed app that allows you to skip Roll20's voice/web cam/chat. Google hangouts is far superior then Roll20.

With that said, Roll20 is fruiting fantastic.
This message was last edited by a moderator, as it was against the forum rules, at 05:51, Sat 22 June 2013.

Thanks for the info. I think I'm gonna look for a one shot game to try it out first then I might mess around with the campaign editor and see about making me a game.

Dipping your toes with a one-shot is a good idea. They also have the 'Looking for Group' function on the forum, so once you decide what you're going to do, cast your net there. I'm sure someone will show up.

One of the things I did before hopping into games was I set up my own campaign with just me in it and experimented with...well, basically everything. Got the feel for the chat window and its functions, the die roller system, the GUI features, fog of war, tokens and map layers, page switching, character and general handouts, attributes, macros, abilities... I spent quite some time playing with all the neat little gadgets and gizmos. And then I clicked the "re-enter as player" button and looked at it all from the player's perspective. It'll be easier to get oriented in someone else's game after you know how the program itself handles, and I highly recommend trying that.

Also, if you plan on opening two roll20 windows at once, or being in the room with someone else who has a roll20 window open, turn off your microphone. It'll go crazy, like Homer Simpson in a Shining parody. Learned that the fun way. :D

Haha, yeah. Two of the players in a roll20 campaign I'm in are family members, so they play in the same room. That was a fun first game!

I've been running a campaign in Roll20 for about a year.

It's been pretty cool. I'm just using a free account.

Recently they dropped support for importing Soundcloud tunes in; but added a few other sources. Bit of a shame; because the only sources that are distributed with Creative Commons licence, which can be streamed or youtubed, aren't of decent enough quality IMHO.

The recently added 'Whisper' feature is buggy, but pretty awesome. As GM I can click a whisper icon on the player's cam feed, and "solo" my mic for those players. This is awesome for building tension in the group.

The bug I found last night was trying to whisper to more than 1 player at a time. It ended up bugging out & everyone had to reconnect to the roll20 session.

I'm not using any native icons, maps or adventure modules.

FWIW, it's really awesome.

Now if only fibre interwebs could be rolled out in my area, so I can stream our games :\

Four year necromancy! Neeeew record! :D

For clarity: they absolutely did not drop SoundCloud support. SoundCloud dropped them, and they spent a good few weeks trying to fight to get it back to no avail. SoundCloud's complaint was that Roll20 violated their terms of use by allowing too many users access to SoundCloud's files at once, which was very expensive for SC to run. Basically the feature was too popular for SC to handle without charging cash, so they dropped Roll20, not the other way around.

Thanks for this clarification! :) And for the necromantic shoutout ;)

Did you know it actually has support for playing asynchronously? As in, play-by-post instead of real-time?

It's true! Rely on the chat window for everything, make sure to use the /ooc tag. When you're moving a token around the map, you can mark your movement. Hold onto the token with your mouse, and tap the spacebar to mark a waypoint; it'll keep track of each spot, and the total distance involved. After you do, anyone else looking at the map can hover over your token and hold the spacebar, and it'll show the path you took.