Got gifted Subscription by my wonerful players - what should I do with it?

So first let me say that my players are awesome - after running a long campaign for them they chipped together to gift me a subscription for Roll 20, which was really sweet. I got so excited when I found out about it that I immediately activated it and dived in to see all the new and amazing things I could do now that I had a PRO subscription... and didn't really come up with much. I mean, I found that I could use the dynamic lighting system which....was janky and meant that I had to design my map, upload it, adn then *re-draw it* to get the dynamic lights to work. It took about four hours to get one map done and I realised that it wasn't really going to be worth it. I thought I might have access to some more assets or something too, but I can't even buy assets with the Subscription Money in my account. I figured that having more spce in my account would be good too, but honestly I have managed to map out the whole City of Sigil, include over 30 different shops and locations, and then also add over 20 locations from the Other Planes and so on, including hundreds of tokens for monsters, NPCs, and the players themselves. So, uh, what else can I do with this subscription? Don't get me wrong, I'm not ungrateful for the gift at all, and I would like to return the kindness by giving my players the best gaming experience ever...but honestly, for $50, it doesn't seem to have changed very much....

You've got a PLUS subscription. You can see the features unlocked by that here:&nbsp; <a href="https://app.roll20.net/why-subscribe-to-roll20" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/why-subscribe-to-roll20</a> &nbsp; The big things for PLUS are Dynamic Lighting and 3 GB storage. You might find the All Access Character Vault useful too. I suggest you start work on introducing Dynamic Lighting to your games to show your players that their gift is appreciated.&nbsp; I got a PRO subscription in 2015 as a gift to myself and the API and Transmogrifier are the features I use the most. I use Library Games all the time to build my campaigns and keep my Active Games lean and trouble free.&nbsp;

In addition to the above, sound, response... don't give up on Dynamic Lighting, it is a great tool in immersive gaming on Roll20. Initially it will take a bit more time to set up a map but that will get easier and quicker with practice. Of course the more complex the map the more complex the DL requirements but the most important thing I ever learned was that you don't need to follow every contour of every wall, best fit with simplified straight lines can often be just as effective visually.

Dynamic Lighting can be very cool, but can take a bit to set up and get used to using. I’d suggest reading through&nbsp; this thread &nbsp;for ideas on how to use dynamic lighting more effectively.&nbsp; Though I’ll be honest, I’ve mostly gone back to using Permanent Darkness (the UDL version of regular Fog of War) as the payoff for most maps isn’t worth the setup for me and my players. For a dungeon crawl I would likely go back to Explorable Darkness, but on a lot of maps it seems like overkill. It’s easier for me to just reveal areas as needed instead.&nbsp; But with that being said, I have a Pro subscription and having access to the API and Transmogrifier is a game changer for me. So you might consider upgrading all the way for tools that can really help you streamline your setup and gameplay.&nbsp;

Updated dynamic lighting is really bad.&nbsp; It will work well for people on here and a few will even defend it fanatically but if you run randos at a table especially power gamers, they all know how to turn on one security extension and disable the fog/dynamic lighting so they can see the whole map.&nbsp; But more importantly you are going to be burned very often by the dynamic lighting failing for specific players draining session time trying to fix.&nbsp; I will NEVER touch UDL ever again its burned me so many times over the course of its development and it just flat out still does not work for a table of random internet people, you have to win the lottery for it to work.&nbsp; Legacy Dynamic lighting has never had this issue and the features you gain from UDL are not THAT important, infact they are partially why it fails half the time(explorer mode and really awful colored light blinding the DM).&nbsp;&nbsp; As for dynamic lighting in general, I've actually stopped using it on a ton of maps cause the players just don't like having it on.&nbsp; It does not add to showmanship, its a pastey cartoonish map anyway half the time, its not that important that every tree and rock block their sight, the players know how to roleplay so let them roleplay the maps environment.&nbsp; Half the time the lines are making them unable to tell if they are standing behind a bush, a tree, or a really fat ogre.&nbsp; I just use it for dungeons and even then I have fog of war overlayed on top to prevent players dragging out to the wrong place or moving while I am afk.&nbsp; It will all look cool when you first use it, just like all the other advanced features but in the end its all about reducing your prep and making the live play experience fun, nobody wants to sit while the DM fiddles with 30 settings and troubleshoots stuff.&nbsp; Simple is better.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Shit, I thought I had purchased the PRO version. Well, that's that money down the drain. Yay. So...plus is kinda useless then? What does the API and Transmogrifier do, before I fork out another £50 or however much it is?

When you click the transmogrifier in a game, it shows you a list of everything in your current section then beside it is a drop down that you can pick ANY other session you own, and drag and drop anything around between them.&nbsp; This has meta implications where you can setup entire chapters of modules in a session and just drag and drop stuff as you need them.&nbsp; I personally made a gigantic bestiary full of all the monsters in dnd and gave each monster 7-15 token images all set as a rollable token and whenever I need to yoink creatures I yoink them over with transmog.&nbsp; its trully the flagship feature of pro roll20.&nbsp; API's are hit or miss imo.&nbsp; There are a bunch that do the true primary reason to use them, and that is to save on prep time and streamline active live session tasks.&nbsp; But you can really get bogged down fiddling with a ton of them out there that are just showmanship like scripts that add massive prep/build time for either longer live session tasking or similar task times to just doing things manually in your head/theater of the mind.&nbsp; I wasted a ton of my time learning the hard way that you can get more fun dnd done if you theatre of the mind most of it and stop burning prep time on programming and map making.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Hi Dungeon Master! API adds automation to your game. There is a whole library of prebuilt scripts that can be added with one-click installation, or if you are familiar with JavaScript, you can write your own custom scripts. Transmogrifier lets you freely move pages, characters, handouts, nearly anything from game to game. Many people use this to create a&nbsp; Library Campaign . Both of these features are amazing and add all sorts of functionality to your game. If you feel the need to ask for a refund, contact Roll20 through a&nbsp; Help Center Request . Just upgrading should pro-rate you appropriately, but contact the Help Center if anything looks odd. For another view on Dynamic Lighting, if you keep it simple, there are few problems. You can dynamically light a map in a few minutes with some practice. Also, most modules on the marketplace offer maps that are pre-lit. Reports on the behavior of both versions of DL will vary. You should make up your own mind. You can test a setup through the use of a&nbsp; Dummy Account .&nbsp;Both the old and new versions can be circumvented by players with nefarious intent and the proper knowhow. Since your group gifted you, I assume they are not in this camp. Tips to good performance on DL: Keep it simple. You don't need to hug every wall, just block corners and sight lines. Shorter lines are better than long ones in that they allow you to remove sections or correct for mistakes. Refrain from using colored light or vision unless absolutely necessary Don't bother giving NPCs sight. You are the GM and can see everything anyway. Make sure you and all your players have turned on Hardware Acceleration in your browser. (important!) Here are some great Help Center resources to learn more about Dynamic Lighting. I have marked the most useful ones with "&lt;&lt;&lt;".&nbsp; HOW TO USE DYNAMIC LIGHTING How To Set Up Dynamic Lighting Dynamic Lighting Checklist &lt;&lt;&lt; TECH &amp; SETTINGS FOR DYNAMIC LIGHTING System Requirements &amp; Best Practices &nbsp;&lt;&lt;&lt; Default Settings For Dynamic Lighting

A button that universally swapped between UDL and LDL and the same API keys for both would have been all they needed to do to make it a more accessible and user friendly feature for playtesting by the masses, but instead, when UDL fails, its a gigantic timesink in the middle of a planned live session and all the api's related to DL start to fail to function right.&nbsp; &nbsp;Plus the whole moving LDL behind a dialogue box and collapsed section that constantly has to be re-expanded is especially annoying and feels like pro users are being griefed everytime I have to click and expand in a game that already has LDL enabled but...maybe its innocent.

I think this thread has gotten a little hijacked by those most frustrated by Updated Dynamic Lighting.&nbsp; Since you haven't been using it at all, you may just ignore it. If you do want to try it out, definitely set up a test page and check for players who can suddenly see the whole map after 15 or 20 minutes. I have three players, one in each of three different games, who have that happen sometimes, so I use large rectangle drawings to make sure some things remain unseen until I reveal them. That said, there are advantages to Plus. The difference between 100 MB of storage and 3000 MB of storage is 30-fold, and worth the money all by itself. I hate ads enough that the Plus would be worth the money just for ad-free gaming for me and my players. The ability to transfer characters between games has more uses than you might think.&nbsp; Transmogrifier is better, more versatile and easier to use, but don't discount the advantages of the character vault. I have the Pro subscription, and I find the API to be useful and fun. I have several test games where I check out new scripts to see if they are worth the trouble of learning how they work. Over time my games get better and better for me and for my players.&nbsp; The API community is so helpful and responsive I can't say enough about them. I find the Pro subscription to be totally worth it for me, even with the annoying behavior of dynamic lighting forcing me to be prepared for lighting failures. Welcome to Plus, and your players are indeed awesome.

API is "bells &amp; whistles". You get a lot of choices that can actually be noticeable in your game. It's fun. It's a small learning curve to get started (how to install a Community-created API Script from the One-Click).&nbsp; That said, like I said, it's bells &amp; whistles. It's totally optional and not needed for gaming on this site.&nbsp; Transmogrifier lets you copy Pages (Maps), Characters, Handouts, Decks, from 1 of your game tables, into another one of your game tables. Transfer the dragon's lair from an old module you ran in the past, into your new current game table.

Thanks for getting us back on track, Valerie!