Looking at VTTs in 2024

 I just realized I already blew my commitment to blog twice a week this year in the first month! In my defense work has been a real bear with my time, but still.....oh well!

I've been looking at various VTTs lately with an eye toward one which is not so onerous and unpleasant to use. I've come to the conclusion that a big chunk of the problem with the VTT environment, at least when using it for gaming, is that the dialogue and conversations are forced into a mono-channel and it is inevitable that people will accidentally walk over one another. The person with the softest voice or the worst microphone will get steam rolled. The person who is quickest to dominate a conversation always has an advantage, one even greater than at a live table. The need to corral and wrangle becomes paramout for the GM.....something I find very tiring these days. It's tough, too, because if several players are all excited and trying to talk, it means they are quite engaged with the scenario and having a good time; but to me as a GM it has now turned into noise that is all incoming at the same volume and nigh impossible to parse out properly, leading to irritation and confusion.

I know how to handle this sort of thing at a live game table....but VTTs are a different bag of cats. To that end, I've been looking at a few different VTTs to see if any out there are more friendly to the dynamics of everyone sitting in one channel trying to talk, and (spoilers) the truth is not really, its a fundamental component of the state of video conferencing these days. Your only hope is that the players you have are well versed in web etiquette, a skill I think best learned from using web events for work and other more cordial environments.

That said, I have noticed some interesting things in studying certain VTTs in this quest. Here's my observations so far:

Roll20 has made huge strides

For better or worse, Roll20 is making a concerted effort to improve its platform, and the overall effect is making it (imo) the easiest and quickest way to get a game going with the least overall effort. Some of my favoritism toward Roll20 comes from having used it consistently for 4 years now, but the truth is, when I try another platform and it doesn't offer some fundamental feature that Roll20 has built in, that other platform stands out as inadequate as a result.

PlayRole.com has some problems

I found PlayRole last year and thought it was pretty neat, especially the way it focused on indie RPGs and unlocked tons of stuff I had already purchased from Exalted Funeral for me. Experiments with it proved successful, but when I finally decided to run a full campaign in January some unexpected setbacks hit. They lost the license for their provider service that let participants use audio, video and file sharing. That was possible to work around, though, as players could still log in to use Discord on the side for voice. I didn't have any file sharing issues so not sure what that was about, but I did run into an unexpected problem, which is how PlayRole handles dice rolls. It will show you a dice roll, but provides no context. I thought it might be due to the custom character sheet I was using, but I tried some other official sheets to other games to see how they works, and it was the same every time. As a result, when I called for rolls from multiple players it could get a tad tedious tracking things and parsing it out. The PC format also proved a bit cumbersome with heavy scrolling. We had a good time, but that was despite the UI and not because of it. This is a shame....I was really excited with my use of it last year but the reality shines home once you try the VTT with a more complex system (and admittedly, Mothership is not that complex).

Alchemy is out there

I don't know much about this yet, but I do know if I try anything with it I will experiment with Mork Borg first. It looks really neat, and it does interesting things making the UI add to immersion with fonts and style. However, in messing around with the free Mork Borg it was a bit unclear to me exactly how a game would shake out of the approach Alchemy is using, which is a bit concerning. 

Shard Tabletop dominates 5E based gaming

I haven't run a game there yet, but I've spent close to a year as a player in a 5E game using Kobold Press books in Shard Tabletop, and I am seriously impressed with how it handles the experience. It has a couple minor issues (such as no easy way to see your PC sheet in one viewing) but that is made up for by convenient tabs to go where you need to quickly. The player experience is great, but I haven't yet committed to running anything so can't speak on that side of things....yet. I predict that Kobold Press will make this the gaming VTT for Tales of the Valiant, and if so then I will give it a fair shot once that game is out. Meanwhile, the only downside to Shard is that while it can import stuff for use from standard D&D 5E, its a bit opaque to me as to how its done, at least partially because I don't do D&D Beyond, I guess? 

Foundry is still out there

I really want to figure Foundry out, but I also really wish Foundry didn't require me to have to "figure it out," and I don't know what to do about that. I've managed to create a campaign on it and populate some zones, but it has weird scaling issues and I then can't really figure out where to go from there....it feels to me like Foundry is a good choice for gamers who are also more technically minded and maybe come from pursuits and careers that lend to the kind of approach this platform demands, such as programming or engineering or something; but I just want something that "works" and I can't quite figure out how to do that with Foundry (or can't find the time investment I need to go through loads of arcane tutorials that may already be out of date, take your pick).

So yeah....for now, for me at least, Roll20 is still top dog. But I am keen on trying Shard Tabletop down the road when it hopefully gets full Tales of the Valiant support. We'll see! And I am very interested in trying to figure out how Alchemy is supposed to work. I keep popping back in to Foundry, too. Maybe one day it will surprise me with an overall improvement on the user experience. 

Cool Things About VTT - and Roll20 Specifically

 Last night we resumed D&D 5th edition, albeit in Roll20. I've posted plenty of blogs in recent months decrying the slow death of live gaming in my circle, and lamenting some of what was lost in moving to virtual table tops, but today I am going to take a different track. I have some nice things to say about Roll20, which I can summarize as follows:

It's an Organizational Godsend

You can do a lot with Roll20 and other VTTs from handouts and quick illustrations to having loads of battle maps and terrain stacked and ready to go. This is handy, and easier to deploy than in real life. It is only a chore if you are also seriously in to customizing everything in great depth....but you may enjoy doing that, so win-win?

It Makes Maps and Minis Quicker and Easier

Being able to quickly deploy a map and minis (quick in contrast with the game table) is an incredibly convenient feature of VTT systems, or at least Roll20 for sure. I can do an encounter on the fly with a pregenerated map and tokens with less fuss than at the game table. 

It Still Lets You Do Abstract Combat Just Fine

I have a splash page with graphics illustrating where the PCs are which is the "action page" and that works just fine for holding theatre of the mind combat (TotM), I just establish that when we're doing combat that way I default to what I like to call "13th Age Rules" or sometimes Cypher System rules, two system which have excellent abstract combat mechanics that boil down to "far away, near by, engaged" as the three areas/bands you can fall in to during battle. 

If you Like Using Graphics and Illustrations Roll20 is Key

I do actually like finding cool illustrations of NPCs, monsters and locations, and thanks to the state of the internet in 2022 it is possible to find hundreds of amazing and useful illustrations on the internet without ever using up precious printer ink or killing trees. This is a big plus of the medium for me, as while I'm not that good at messing with making my own illustrations or battle maps, I appreciate the works of those who do. 

Distracted Players Will be Distracted (But At Least You Have Tools)

One thing I have figured out is a distracted player on VTT is also a distracted player at the game table. The difference is you as GM can see them reading a book and not paying attention IRL and if they are on Roll20 or some other VTT you can skip over them and assume they died or something. A player who is known for making horrendous levels of noise can be muted on VTT, but IRL you have to hope they get up and go to another room (well, they usually do). Bottom line is: if a distracted player is sitting at a live table, as GM you feel more inclined to involve them, despite their lack of will. On Roll20 it is easier to skip over them and focus on the players who are actually engaged and paying attention.

It Bridges Gaps in Distance

I have at least one game where I get to game with old friends who moved to the east coast and west coast, respectively. That alone makes VTT worthwhile! 

Roll20 and other VTTs are not perfect, but these are some important perks to consider. As I get older (just turned 51) I begin to realize and accept that more and more of my tabletop gaming will be in the VTT environment, it just makes more sense. 

The Secret to Success with Roll20's RNG

 It's become something of a joke that Roll20's random number generator for dice doesn't seem to like the players much. The reality is that it's...well....probably averaging out where it realistically should, and the GM occasionally does see a bad streak of rolls too, but of course GMs get to roll a lot more dice over time so those bad luck streaks often die out soon enough.

In games that are player facing like Cypher System, you might think this would lead to better averages over time (or as many hills as valleys at least), but this doesn't always seem to work out. Some of my players are about fed up with Roll20, which can seem to give them alarmingly consistent failure streaks. 

I have a theory about this, born of my own player experience in a related VTT, Astral. It goes like this:

Some players are cautious, and tend to build "average characters" who can do a lot of stuff reasonably well, but not much stuff very, very well. I'm often one of those....if you've ever built a Call of Cthulhu character, for example, who rarely had more than 50% in a skill, but also ended up with a lot of below 50% skills as a result, you might be one of these.

Other players suffer from a different problem: they don't really learn the game they are playing, or they miss the key elements of the system that help them out. These players might often try to do things and fail but miss opportunities to improve their odds of success or overlook strategies that could help them out. Some simply try to do things they probably shouldn't, or misunderstand their characters' abilities.

In VTT environments there's an entire other possible category: setting up your die scripts and forgetting modifiers of relevance. It's less common, as other players with better familiarity may catch your error, but it could happen.

A final category are: players who don't get the quirks of their GM. This one's pretty basic, but if you as a player know your GM frequently calls for history, society or perception tests then maybe you shoudl focus on those skills. This is a bit metagamist, but it's a valid strategy if your personal goal is "succeed at die roll tests more often."

Anyway, the result of these examples is players who fail more often than not at die rolls and are often quite flustered about it. I have at least one player who I feel is a combination of two or more of these situations, as he tends to learn the rules through play but overlooks the strategic elements of, as an example, how the die pool risk/reward mechanic of Cypher System plays out. If you play Cypher System like any other old RPG you are essentially doomed to failure. Conversely, when we play Pathfinder 2nd Edition I feel that most players (even the ones who are a bit shaky on the mechanics) tend to succeed about as often as you expect due to the fact that Pathfinder's probabilities and math are shockingly on target. If everyone is failing miserably in a Pathfinder 2E game on Roll20 it may say more about the GM than it does about the system or Roll20's RNG!

So what's a strategy for success? Well, here's some advice, and it may apply beyond VTT with virtual dice, too:

If you want to succeed, and your system allows it, try to find those 3-4 things you really want to be able to succeed in and max them out as best you can. If you're playing Call of Cthulhu and you want to spot hidden as often as possible then jam points in to it. You will sacrifice broad versatility but gain greater average success in those things you are good at. And it should go without saying: when you play the game, try to do things that are relevant to those skills!

Understand the game you are playing. Make sure you appreciate the probabilities so that when you are in combat or a tense encounter with die rolls that you think about your odds of success before you take on a task. Understand that if you make a Level 4 Speed Defense roll in Cypher without buying it down that the odds of failure are 55% but if you just spent some Speed you could reduce that failure rate to 40% or less. And when the dice still go against you....it's okay. You tried. The game is, ultimately, a game and not a wish fulfillment engine; we have video games for that.

As GM, make sure you are mindful of realistic encounters for your players' level of expertise and understanding. If your players seem to be struggling with understanding the mechanics (and the odds) then try to tailor the experience a bit as a teaching lesson. Coaching players with some learning encounters can be a wise move. Remember! You don't have a GM screen and you can't fudge dice in a VTT environment (well, not easily, as far as I know). As such, you need to respect the mechanics more, and the arbitrariness of the dice more.

  

"But does it have VTT Support?"

 This is becoming an important factor in deciding to pick up or invest time in a new RPG. Once it was only a matter of generating player interest (and the GM being enthusiastic) but these days, there's a compelling need to make sure that the system shows evidence of support in Roll20 or your preferred VTT environment. I've been playing a game in Astral as well, which runs rather nicely from a player perspective so far.

For a game to catch the attention of the VTT market it needs to show at least some of the following (for Roll20 for sure, and to some degree also Astral):

1. Can I play this game in the VTT environment with minimum fuss? 

2. Does the VTT have character sheet and rolling mechanics support for my system to make it easier to mess with?

3. Does the VTT store/environment provide support that will benefit or directly aid my game? And secondarily, is this support vital to the play experience or optional (but desired)?

4. Will the cost to accomplish this be too excessive?

Important questions!

Take three recent examples of games I have looked at or considered running: Scum & Villainy, Mutant Crawl Classics, and Mongoose's Traveller. In Roll20 I have figured out that there are character sheets available for only one of the three (MCC is not on ROll20 yet in any form), and of the three only Scum & Villainy has any material support in the Roll20 store with an introductory module package (Evil Hat has thrown all in on supporting VTT through Roll20, FYI). 

This means if I rely on Roll20 for any of these, then with Mutant Crawl Classics and Traveller I have to figure out how to work the Charactermancer to create a character sheet; for my limited time this is a no-go. For Traveller there is a Classic original edition character sheet, very basic. Although Goodman Games has a basic introduction to Dungeon Crawl Classics in the Roll20 store, it hasn't done anything on the platform for MCC yet, which is a shame. As for Traveller....I suspect there are worlds of complexity in the licensing behind getting official support to any VTT due to Traveller's ownership. I am honestly not sure where Traveller players go if they want good VTT support....Fantasy Grounds?

This pretty much means Scum & Villainy is the only viable option for a time strapped virtual GM. They offer a nice introductory campaign module with support materials for the Procyon Sector and tons of useable content. The fact that the other two games don't even have this basic support is kind of shocking...if I were a publisher of some means and wanted to insure sales of my game stay robust in the market of 2020, getting some VTT representation seems like a no-brainer.

Item 4 in my list isn't a factor with Scum & Villainy....the cost of the campaign pack is $14.99 which is worth it to me to get a game running. But for the big stars (Pathfinder, D&D) it can be a major factor. I will admit, I haven't seriously considered running D&D on VTT because I know if I do I will want to buy those enormously expensive rulebook packages on Roll20, and I already spent that cash on Pathfinder 2E....so damn straight, PF2E it will be!

Astral is interesting in how different it is from Roll20, while still being similar in execution. Their shop is mostly tailored to markers and maps, and doesn't near as I can tell focus on providing you with elaborate module packing or rulebook encyclopedias you can access on the site. I imagine there may be entirely different approaches with other VTTs.....I know for sure I ruled out Fantasy Grounds alone, for example, on sheer cost. 

Another factor to consider, one which I imagine is quite important, is how much cost is required for players vs. GM buy in. With Roll20 for example I can subscribe as GM but players do not need to. I am enjoying Astral as a player without a subscription as well, but if either required player expenditures they would stop being viable. 

Gamma World in Roll20

While poking around Roll20 to see what it can do, I noticed that among the many games with some form of character sheet support that there was one in particular of note: classic 1st edition Gamma World has a Roll20 character sheet someone devised. Even better, it's a nice character sheet, with hot buttons for figuring out artifacts, rolling for mutations, fun stuff like that. I think it could use some hot buttons for die rolls, but all told....it got me thinking.

Over the last two months, one of the first things I did with Roll20 was create a test environment "home game" to experiment with features. Early on I had my wife and son log on to help me figure out audio, character sheets, stuff like that. I used D&D 5E for this and was fairly impressed with the charactermancer (Roll20's official name for the D&D PC sheet) and the free OGL-tied content on offer. Although we have not as yet advanced with that for a real game, it laid the groundwork for the ongoing weekly Pathfinder and Cypher System games I am running.

Lately my son has expressed an interest in playing so I decided to revisit the idea. Here's how the train of thought on my end went:

1. I can run D&D 5E. But, I don't have the D&D books unlocked and they are kind of expensive purchases for what could be a one-off or possibly very short run on Roll20 if we can all game in person. Also, why doesn't Roll20 have the Dungeon Master's Guide as a compendium option? What madness is that???

2. Also....I am really enmeshed in Pathfinder 2nd edition, maybe I could try that? Even better, I could try running Pathfinder 2E with the Gamemastery Guide's optional Proficiencies without Levels rules, which would dramatically flatten the math for my son on most rolls.

3. Okay, so Pathfinder 2E character sheets are INSANE and I am impressed my players have figured them out. I get it....it's very thorough and works well....but it takes a lot of effort for the initial setup and I don't have that kind of time. If I don't have that kind of time then my son will not benefit from this at all. Plus, it looks like the proficiency+level is baked in to the sheet in such a manner I'd have to edit the code to remove it and I haven't got time to figure out how to do that.

4. So if D&D 5E will work but maybe not optimally, and Pathfinder 2E is too painful to set up for a young new gamer (note: doing this in paper and person would be much easier as I see it, but my son is enamored with the "video game" element of Roll20 so I'm leaning in to that) then what other options are there? Cypher System is an obvious choice, but I feel like exploring other options.

....and that's how I discovered that Gamma World and many other OSR titles have various levels of representation on the Roll20 Charactermancer. Gamma World in particular stuck out because it's the game that got me into RPGs in the first place. Although my father purchased the D&D Basic set for me a few weeks prior, I picked up Gamma World myself at around age 10 and proceeded to run it for my sister and some friends (we were all kids traveling around with our artist parents). For various reasons it resonated well; I think it helped a lot that I had just finished reading Starship and Hothouse by Brian Aldiss, as well as Piers Anthony's Battle Circle series, so I had a firm literary foundation for what Gamma World was about. Within hours of getting the boxed set I had found a map of the Hilton Hotel we were staying at on one of my parents' many art show events in Albuquerque and I was running a post-apocalyptic exploration of the region. That first group ended in a TPK when they wandered afar and found a nuclear missile silo which they promptly detonated. It was the time of the Cold War and I was regularly obsessed with the persistent risk of the end of the world; Gamma World fit well with these worries I had as a kid.

So here I am now, with Gamma World's reprint in my hands from Drivethrurpg, contemplating a game for the family. My son is the same age my sister was back then, and his interest in the thematics seems to be obsessively strong; he's not nearly as interested in fantasy as a genre so much as post-apocalyptic sci-fi and superheroes (not just any superheroes, either; he's primarily about the Flash, Venom and Spider-Man). So a game set in the apocalyptic wasteland featuring mutants might be right up his alley. Bonus since we're in the thick of an ongoing pandemic that is just deadly enough to disrupt the planet while not being deadly enough for us to feel like it's a genuine existential threat (yet; TBD).

Anyway....another perk is that there are a fair number of map packs out there for modern and apocalyptic settings, and scouring the internet brought be a veritable trove of wasteland and Gamma World specific images to be used as props in a Roll20 game. This aspect of Roll20 is great, really....when I do go back to tabletop gaming, I will miss the ability to quickly share images and maps with the players; I may be temped to continue using it even if we are all in person just for that purpose, to be honest. Heck, if the pandemic continues long enough I could, gee, maybe even get used to Roll20 as the norm or something. Maybe. But....man, I miss sitting at a table with live humans and rolling dice!

Anyway....the environment for the first game is fully prepped and ready. I'm setting it in New Mexico (easy fit, and a tradition) and will integrate the Albuquerque Starport module from the GM Screen. I may approach my regulars and see if any want to play, too. At least one of my friends may have to be reassured that I will houserule some less onerous poison damage tables into play....he was famous back in the day for immediately dying due to intense lethal poison/toxin exposure....!

Roll20 and the Compendium Resources (aka are those expensive VTT books worth the buy?)

Roll20 has a number of resources available in its online shop, though surprisingly not as many as a competitor like Fantasy Grounds can offer. What Roll20 lacks in content of this nature is made up for by inherent flexibility; you can run just about any game with it so long as someone takes the time to craft a character sheet for you.

As it happens, since it looks like my regular group will be gaming in Roll20 for at least the rest of May and (with any bad luck) June, I decided to investigate the rulebook compendiums on offer for Pathfinder 2nd edition. Worth noting right off, there is a way to link up your Paizo account. When you do this, it immediately gives you some decent discounts on the Roll20 rulebooks. The $49.99 rulebooks, for example, are $38 when you do this. I have only ever bought these books in PDF format from Paizo before, so I don't know if proof you bought a physical copy generates an even better discount.

I started with the book that had the most obvious potential at the virtual game table: The Bestiary for 2E. It was available immediately on unlock, and proved to be a wealth of immediately accessible resources. As a GM, here's what the purchase netted me of immediate and great use: all of the Bestiary monsters in the Compendium, each with the ability to pull standard stat blocks/text of their descriptions, as well as an NPC sheet format that lets me "one click" any action or ability to generate relevant rolls and ability block details. You can also drag and drop to create the icon for the monster, and basically gain roughly all the perks a player has on their end, but for your monsters.

The Bestiary for 2E on Roll20 is the full content of the print book, too. If you do not own it in any form, but planned on gaming only through Roll20, then you will find this book does everything you could want (except detach itself from Roll20). For some gamers, this may be more than enough. I know that just having this content loaded and ready makes it much likelier (and easier) for me to stick with Pathfinder 2E as my virtual system of choice.

I next loaded the Core Rulebook and the Gamemastery Guide. The intrinsic value of these tomes is slightly more ephemeral. You get the ability to directly reference and share content with your players, and you gain entries with full "use at the table" properties for the many magic items, relics, artifacts, NPCs and other details....but with the caveat that prior to loading them the base Roll20 game still gave me the 2E OGL content to reference anyway.

Additional content includes official NPC and player tokens and lots of compendium details on the many special optional rules in the Gamemastery Guide. Both books in total feel very complete, but I think as a GM on a budget you could ignore them and stick to the print or PDFs and not feel like you're missing out. Since I happened to have the cash it was worth it, but if you could only buy one tome, the Bestiary will provide the most traction.

One downside to Roll20 is that while it does offer the rules tomes, it seems to be way behind setting up the Adventure Paths. I am guessing that no one in the VTT business anticipated that in March of this year they would suddenly be the #1 resource for gaming across the country. My understanding from digging around online is that Roll20 does the VTT adaptations and they are way behind; this is a shame, as whether you ran the modules straight up or not, those would be great additional purchases for the compendium, since there's lots of useful content in the modules you can use as-is or pilfer for your own purposes. 

Anyway....the price of entry for VTT compendiums is a bit on the pricey side, and you can use Roll20  just fine with print or PDF books. But, if you want the full luxury experience and every official iota of Pathfinder 2E at your fingertips, then the compendium books are a nice addition to your virtual collection. I may cave and get the Starfinder books next.

Roll20 - Four Sessions In

Just an update, but we're four sessions in to Roll20 and it continues to get easier and easier to use. Saturday night's game was a piece of cake....I figured out how to get the fog of war working as intended, stumbled only on trying to use one of their prepackaged token assets (I placed it on the map and it then wouldn't let me use it like a marker for a PC), and am pretty sure the issues I experienced that were so confusing before had to do with layering. If I can sit down a bit and mess with it just a bit more I'll probably figure that out, too.

Some comments so far:

Images online make good tokens for figures: practically no reason to buy token packs, just find appropriate images off the internet and use them instead. Turns out almost any Pathfinder monster has had its image placed online, so this becomes a trivial process. Also, given that it appears there is no VTT resource for importing such images (as from pawns or figure flats officially from Paizo, for example) then there really is no better resource available.

You can snapshot and import PDF maps: Whether you have the official PDFs of Paizo maps or any other resource, a snapshot moved to Paint and saved as a JPEG scales just fine for Roll20. Roll20 seems to think it has a way of exporting from a PDF but it doesn't seem to work when I try it, not sure why.

Dice Rolling Still Cumbersome: for me it is, anyway. Especially in a game like Pathfinder where it's possible to have damage rolls look like "3D6+2D10+14, X2 for crit" which can get a little wackadoodles. Any solutions are welcome, but for now I'm just practicing with "getting good" at pixel-bitching the advanced die roller.

Beyond that, the real downside to Roll20 right now is that with time it could become so convenient and smooth to use that it might be cumbersome and awkward for us all to return to the regular gaming table...if we ever do.....



Anyway! For the Wednesday game (which could remain at someone's house but we're also doing Roll20 anyway)I'm suggesting we try Starfinder or Cypher System with Roll20 next. Stay tuned!

The Roll20 Experience - Exploring Virtual Tabletops (VTTs)

Tonight (well, last night Saturday) we tried out Roll20. This was a bit of an abrupt shift for a table mostly of long time gamers --only some of whom have tried online virtual tabletop gaming before, and fewer still who did it enough to feel good or comfortable about it.

Still, I'll say this much: I was able to figure out Roll20 and run a game with it with minimal hassle, which is not a bad endorsement. For those of you who are like me and my group (in need of gaming but also keen on engaging in self-isolation to avoid playing the coronavirus lottery), here are my experiences and observations:

First, we carried on with Pathfinder 2nd edition, our sole game of choice on Saturday nights since August. The group has just hit level 13 and the story had a sufficiently new break that it was a good spot to transition to the new medium. Of course starting a game with an entirely new format of play at level 13 led to some interesting complications; for one, the Roll20 rules let you load a Pathfinder 2.0 character sheet but it requires a lot of input by the players; unlike the default SRD content tied to the D&D 5E options, there's no walk through on PC creation (and for an example of how cool and easy that can be go look at the Pathbuilder 2E app). Still, everyone gave it a valiant effort, though some were still inputting spells by midnight (we started playing at 6, and the actual game at 7 after it became clear spells would talk a while.) Though much time was spent putting the PC sheets in place, it was pretty much unnecessary; you could easily play with paper character sheets and just input modifiers for rolls as you go.

Since I had about one day's lead time in the decision to use Roll20 I had enough time to figure out that I didn't really know what to do to fully take advantage of it. I went ahead and subscribed, which gave me access to some maps and free tokens. I downloaded free maps I could find, then grabbed this pack of 120 map tiles on drivethrurpg which seemed like a good deal; I got one map constructed for detailed play, and used some generic overland maps for wilderness encounters. Then, after getting a test session in Friday to figure out the functions and features I was able to grab some images which could be used for illustration.

My big conundrum with moving to Roll20 is that it's a format for gaming which naturally seems to lend to maps/minis, which left me wondering how to reconcile my "theater of the mind" approach against the VTT's key focus. The game's main features center on providing graphics and dropping virtual tokens on to them. Surprisingly this VTT does not provide some mechanism for literal virtual 3D minis (in which you could actually buy graphic suites to lay out 3D maps and use 3D images and icons); that would be rather cool, though probably a bit of work to set up.

Rather than try the Theater of the Mind approach I went ahead and just made sure to try the map/tokens approach, and after a lengthy portion of role play we got to a fight with some shuln (challenge rating 12 giant angry molerat monsters with adamantine claws in Pathfinder). Finding a mini to work turned out to be trivial, as it let me search for online sources and import the actual shuln image which I could then place on the virtual tabletop. Kinda cool. Indeed, the core elements of the VTT were clearly intended to help out - easy bubbles to plug some numbers such as hit points in to, an initiative tracker, and each of the players seemed to figure out the optimal way to roll and declare ability uses.

The actual process of combat was clean enough, but I found the advanced die roller slightly clumsy in actual use, and everything felt just a bit slower and more painful; I probably would have done better to keep my trusty old note pad for combat tracking and simply called it over audio and the experience would have gone smoothly enough.

Only one player had issues; he had tried to use the Roll20 app, which it turns out is more of a support app and did not have audio or mike use on his phone. He did not have a PC and ended up having to sit out on the game. I'm going to look at some ways to fix this, but for the night's session at least it was a wash for him.

Other oddities I noticed: the free suite of tokens and tools was enough for anyone who doesn't mind sorting through, but a bit of a pain to search on the fly. I am not 100% sure (yet) if there's a way to refine the tokens and other bits to make it easier to find the provided tools. However, while trying to use the search feature I found it much more impressive simply because I could quickly grab a graphic and apply it, which was much more useful in the long run.

It took me a while on Friday to figure out the whole map drop-down and player banner deal, but once I did it made the rest of the VTT make more sense. If you use Roll20, just remember that: you need to put the player banner on the thing you want them to see.

I created some image sets intended entirely for illustration; for most all of the role-play elements I simply provided occasional graphics I liked for their suitability to show locations and characters. But in each case, the images snapped to the grid and shrank to one square, whether it was a single image or a whole map. I haven't figured out how to stop this (yet).

In the end, I had the following take-aways:

It will fill a needed Role: Roll20 will work for what my group needs to survive a couple months* of social isolation; we are not going to be suffering too badly thanks to this tool (and for my friend without a good laptop I have an idea to refurbish an old one he can use).

I need to use it the way I do at a Real Table for combat: The compulsion to take full advantage of the VTT elements with maps and virtual minis is hard to resist, and I am not sure that really helps with my style of game that much; I have been running Pathfinder 2E religiously by what I call the "Page 494 rule," which is essentially just two paragraphs but it is all you will ever need in terms of Theater of the Mind gameplay guidelines for PF 2E.

I Think I'd Enjoy it More with Cypher System: my group has been obsessed with Pathfinder 2E since it came out, but prior to that I'd been running Cypher System for about two years with great obsession. I still want to make Cypher System a main game, but can't fault them for enjoying PF 2E, which is a great iteration of the D20 system. That said...I think the vastly simpler mechanical elements of Cypher System would make it easier to run a game on Roll20 with a focus on using illustrations and maps purely as visual aids, and taking advantage of card decks (of which quite a few are available, though not the Cypher System creature deck for some weird reason).

Good for other, simpler systems, too: I think 13th Age, Traveller, Tiny D6 (which has support in Roll20!) and others could translate well to this medium. I actually am certain I would really enjoy using this for some Swords & Wizardry or Forbidden Lands, for example. White Star, too. Really, this would work for any game system that doesn't require a bunch of math or nitty-gritty mechanical pieces. Not having to roll too many dice with the clunky die roller would also help.

Are there specific reasons not to go with Roll20? Well....first, you need a decent laptop or desktop PC with audio and a mike. If you don't have that, you can use it for chat-based play with the VTT elements, but that can be less interesting than actually seeing and talking to your cohorts.

Second, while I haven't checked out all the other systems yet, Roll20 is subscription-based so you won't own it, precisely. You can play a free version but that is pretty darn basic. If you like owning a product D20pro and Fantasy Grounds can do that.

Third, and this depends heavily on your need for resources, all the licensed content is capital-E Expensive. You're basically paying full retail for resources that let you access rules info in the game, but so far as I can tell these purchases only work with Roll20. That means if you decide to commit to this VTT, you're in it for the long haul. If you're like me and your gaming investment has been 95% for the real table, it can be a pain to even imagine spending a bunch of cash a second time to get virtual versions of the "real deal."

Luckily you really don't need it; with the books at hand and what that basic Roll20 suite (I did subscribe for a month to the deluxe set) you've got all you need and probably more than you will want to run decent games remotely. I think we'll stick with this VTT for now, though I really want to check out Astral next.



*If this goes longer than two months then we will have much bigger problems to worry about.

Virtual Table Top Gaming - the Cure for Social Distancing and RPGs

As of this week, in my corner of the US in New Mexico the Governor has shut down all recreational businesses, which means the gaming center where we meet has had to close up, and that is where we've been meeting for regular gaming since roughly 2008.

There are some possibilities, but members of my group are closer to the high-risk side of the population when it comes to COVID-19 exposure, and so we've been discussing the idea of using one of the online meetup tools or virtual tabletops. So far we've been floating ideas on things such as Roll20, Discord, Fantasy Grounds (I used a version of this once about 15 years ago), and Astralworks. Zoom, Line and other more generic services are also under consideration.

So far, it seems like Fantasy Grounds and Astralworks could require a bit of time and effort to properly set up or prep, and both might have hefty potential buy-in depending on what you are doing with it (the level of elaboration you aim for). Roll20 seems on the surface to be more intuitive, to a degree, and the map-making seems to be "not too bad" but I am sure it has a measure of buy-in as well. Ultimately cost may not be much of an issue, so long as one doesn't have to add a lot of supplemental content and get nickel-and-dimed to death, but for me it's a question of "will this support my game style?" That means something which supports lots of open-ended, hexcrawly, unscripted play....and the ability to do maps on the fly. So for the moment Roll20 seems to be in the lead, but I admit, I've got a soft spot for Zoom's ease of use and need to poke it a bit to see if there are things I can do easily like share graphics quickly (I know its very easy to share my desktop at least).

I also know we need voice chat; I don't think anyone in the group would be excited at typing a lot of text. It seems like Roll20 might need a support service for that, such as Discord.

So...what are other people doing to fill this roll? Any reccomendations or tips in this arena are welcome! I've gamed online as a GM only once 15 years ago, and as a player maybe twice in the last twelve years that I can recall, and each time as a player was underwhelming. Still, my group of long time regulars will be Jonesing for games soon if we don't find a good solution!


By the way! Check out Campaign Mastery for a great post on dispelling COVID-19 Myths.