Roll 20

[Archigeek]

Has anyone used the Roll 20 website for their tabletop D&D games, now that they need to be virtual? I could use a review/suggestions. Have some friends who want to start a game, and have a longer running game that has stalled due to social distancing. The latter is more experienced players mostly.

All suggestions welcome.

[Elgrim]

Tons. I've been using Roll20 for several years, both as an application for private games as well as during my duties when I was a regional coordinator for organized play for Paizo.

The learning curve for Roll20 is probably the shortest compared to the other popular systems used for online play, namely D20 Pro and Fantasy Grounds. Once you get the hang of importing maps and setting up tokens it is all pretty simple from there. Roll 20 does support a pretty interesting collection of scripts and plugins that are available from the public groups, but a lot of that is optional really and not required just to get started and run a game. A lot of the help and support out there depends on the system you are using and how much customization it will require. If you want to play D&D or Pathfinder the work has pretty much all been done for you and you can get everything you need from the community. If you are looking for something more obscure, like one of the popular versions of AD&D played today or Rolemaster (hah!), then you will probably be in for a lot more work if you want to automate things within the game.

Short answer, yes, I'd suggest it. It can be a ton of fun. Setup is pretty simple and it doesn't take a degree in rocket science for players to use it.

If you wind up trying it out and need some help with it, let me know. I can probably assist with getting things started.

[Archigeek]

Cool, thanks.