Different Playing Modes VTT vs. Theatre of Mind

Hello, I find it very difficult to do roleplaying (theatre of mind) in the current Roll20 game. It is designed for tabletop gaming – therefore it is a VTT. But only some part of a gaming session uses a tabletop mode. It is helpful in combat situations for example. But big parts of the game are player and dm interactions. In these mode I want to see the other participants in big video areas, do not need to see myself, and need to have an area to show some images, fotos, texts/handouts and the chat of course. I do not need tokens nor maps in this context, but ambient music, background colorisation depending on the scene, showing content. Accessing the character sheet shall also be possible. It might look like a bit like let's plays you can watch on Twitch or YouTube. This leads me to my request: We need two gaming modes: VTT & Theatre of Mind (ToM) mode. The VTT mode for moving tokens around and the ToM-Mode for roleplaying parts in the game. The ToM-Mode shall be designed totally different from the VTT-Mode and the UI/UX is different, too. Cheers, Marc

Hi, for this, I use the Director-MOD from Keith Curtis. As a Pro-user, you have access to it. You'll find a great guide in this video as well as referenced ones:  Director Search feature For me this resolved a lot of issues I had around Theatre-of-the-mind style of play!

How would this be different from using camera views in the player avatars (set to large) and using the page (VTT) to provide a background image on which the GM can place images, photos and text? The jukebox (such as it is) can be used for ambient music The Director  MOD mentioned above can help automate switching between these types of scenes. Markochaney said: Hello, ... In these mode I want to see the other participants in big video areas, do not need to see myself, and need to have an area to show some images, fotos, texts/handouts and the chat of course. I do not need tokens nor maps in this context, but ambient music, background colorisation depending on the scene, showing content. Accessing the character sheet shall also be possible. It might look like a bit like let's plays you can watch on Twitch or YouTube.

I run WoD games just fine on roll20.  Sometimes I use combat maps with tokens for more complex fights, but most of the time I just use a picture to set the scene as the "map."  Lately I have found myself using tokens on the scenes since I've been running some big parties and salons with lots of NPCs present in different groups/factions, so that helps to keep them grouped and organized within the scene.  I just use the show to players button on handouts and characters to make them pop up on the players screens.  It sounds like most of what you're really asking for is bigger video avatars and a way to not see your own video/avatar.

It sounds like you've thought about this. What would a ToM-Mode need that the VTT doesn't satisfy?

Hi,  yes I thought through different possibilities available in Roll20 and that were mentioned here. In principle bigger Avatars are one thing for the ToM-Mode. But it should be easy to switch between Tactic-View and the ToM-View – with just one click e.g. It would also be helpful to have the video avatars move to other places and that the scene image is scaled properly on the screen. As I said: it would be nice to have a template where all elements fit in automatically. Fiddling around with settings between switching views would be distracting. I see, that it would be possible to get somewhat ToM-View with the current elements, but it seems to be a dazzle and distracting the game play. Cheers, Marc P.S: Thanks for all your input so far!

I also use Director a one-click Mod from Keith Curtis