Got any tips for running a mapless game?

I grew up playing Rolemaster, and although it's 15-some years since I last played I still have all the sourcebooks and companions so I figured I'd try and get a game set up... For my friends and I to recapture our youth. The thing is, we never played our games with maps. Nearly everything we did was descriptive, and occasionally we'd use a sketchpad to pencil in some crude terrains and positions if there was some kind of confusion between the players... I liked this approach a lot. So much in fact that I can't even picture roleplaying with maps the way Roll20 seems to be intended without feeling like I'd be in some kind of RPG Maker game instead. Has anyone got tips for how I can lay out a game like this for the best nostalgia value? I've still got the old oak table we used to play on, so I thought I'd spread out a bunch of pencils, character sheets and coffee cups then photograph it from above to use as a background. What can I do after that though? Are there visual 2xD10 dice that we can roll "on the table"? Is there something like a sketchpad that I can let any of the players draw on?... I want it to feel like we're all just a bunch of adolescents sitting around a table into the wee-small-hours again.

You can do all of that. For the dice rolls, there is an option to enable 3D dice in the settings of your campaign. When the players type out the roll you'll see the dice roll onto the virtual table. For the sketchpad, if you use the shape drawing tool in the campaign, you can make a rectangle of any dimension you want, and then the players can free hand draw whatever they'd like on it. The drawing tools work a lot like MS Paint so it's easy to get the hang of. Hope this helped.

As the Dice Lord points out, the drawing tools can be used on the map surface so the players can end up doodling on your picture or you can leave them a blank area. The 3D dice can get a little wacky if you roll large amounts of dice at one time plus on older machines, they cause lag sometimes severe so if you start experiencing problems, try turning them off. There is not 3D % dice either. IF you want a % (1d100) you will have to roll 1d10 twice (easiest way to do that is [[1d10]][[1d10]] for inline rolls) or you make a rollable table with d10 dice graphics (each die a different color). Take a look on our roll20 wiki page (up above in the black banner at the top of the page or <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Main_Page" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Main_Page</a>) and give it a read. Also watch the <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Roll20_Crash_Course" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Roll20_Crash_Course</a> video as it is very educational in the basics of roll20 usage.

I use a lot of "Splash pages." Something pictured to set the scene. Last game I ran the folks were stuck in a blizzard so the "map" was a photo of a blizzard and people stuck on side of an interstate while a snow plow was trying to keep the road clear. Splash screen can help set the scene. And like Dice Lord pointed out, we use a blank sheet and do a lot of markup; just like the old days.

Thanks chaps... I'm starting to get somewhere with it. Photographing our old table wasn't working out so I had to photoshop up a background instead. If anyone else wants to use it in their Rolemaster game, you're more than welcome . It's all sourced from google images, but I believe the (significantly) changed context makes it fair use. There are a couple of things I'm struggling with: - The Character sheet for RM only has basic races and professions, so how can I use the ones added in the Companion books? - Is there any way to use the player's Character Sheet on the table instead of a token/icon? - Is there no way to shade or hue one of the 3D dice in a 2d10 roll to differentiate them? I know the result is printed in the chat window but it breaks the nostalgia a bit (in general though I love, love, love the 3D dice!)... Also, all my D10's have a 0 printed on them instead of a 10. I don't doubt the 10's exist, but I'd suggest they're the less common type.,, Also also, I don't need natural 1's and 10's marked in Rolemaster. Is there a way to turn that off too? - Is there a way to mask an area of the screen (the sketchpad) so only that area can be drawn on by players?

Well Mark, for the character sheet you would probably need to ask the author to edit the sheet to include the extra races or build a simple one yourself with the sheet/ handouts. I did that a lot prior to the community created sheets. You can cut and paste all the info in the first tab (bio) to make it like an actual paper sheet (somewhat) and the second tab section (abilities/attributes) you can create your macros and such there. It was what we had to work with until recently. If you want to build yourself one similar to what there is, you would need to be a mentor and customize the existing sheet. <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Character_Sheets" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Character_Sheets</a> Could you explain a little bit more about what you mean by using the sheet on the table? To make two different hued dice, you will need to build a rollable table for them <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Card_Decks_and_Rollable_Ta" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Card_Decks_and_Rollable_Ta</a>... This would let you create your dice graphics the way you want them. You want 0 thru 9, no problem. You want red d10 and a blue d10 then no problem. The supplied wiki page will walk you through the how to setup for it. The highlights are built in and can not be turned off. The players can draw anywhere on the map area. The best you can do is lay down a square polyline box and tell the players they are allowed on to doodle in that box. There is the fog of war that you can use to blacken the rest of the screen but if you want to put up pictures on the map are, the fog of war would block that out.

While you can't put the charsheets on the table as such, you can have multiple sheets open at once, and move/size them as you like, so you can simulate the effect to a certain degree. If it's important to you that it be on the table (e.g. so people can draw on it), you can take a screenshot and make that into a token (admittedly pretty labor-intensive if your charsheets change often). It would be possible, in principle, to write an API script which would delete all drawings outside of a certain area (or even crop them to that area, if you were up for some more involved coding). However, there isn't a way to determine who made a drawing, so it would apply to the GM as well as the players (you could add a toggle and a mechanism for white-listing drawings made while the script was off). Do note that this is a technical answer; for a practical answer, you're probably better off just asking your players to stop drawing genitalia on your tabletop (much like you sometimes need to do in real life).

You can use any image as a token. So, if your really want the first page of a character sheet as a token, look at it on your computer, hit "Ctrl" and "Alt" and "Print Screen/SysRq" all at the same time (takes a snapshot of the screen and puts it on your clipboard); then open an image-manipulaltion program, and press "Ctrl" and "v" at the same time. The image of what you were looking at should show up in the program, and you can edit it (chopping off edge-parts, etc), select it and expand it to fit the whole screen, and save it and close that program. Then open up your game, minimize, get into the directory where your image manipulation program saves to, make that window 1/4-screen sized, maximize the roll20 window, put the smaller window up on top of it, click on the icon for the image-file you just saved and drag it off the small window to drop it on your map. The system will upload that image as a token, and list it in 'your artwork'.

Manveti said: "....However, there isn't a way to determine who made a drawing, ..." Well, if the drawing is made in Roll20, using the drawing tool, usually the system assigns one color each to the GM and each player, so you actually CAN tell who made a drawing....

Merle M. said: Manveti said: "....However, there isn't a way to determine who made a drawing, ..." Well, if the drawing is made in Roll20, using the drawing tool, usually the system assigns one color each to the GM and each player, so you actually CAN tell who made a drawing.... But the drawer can be color changed with ease so there will be times that someone will mimic another persons color.

Sometimes a technical solution isn't the way to go. If color coding matters, perhaps the social path of asking your players not to do it is the way to go.

Not having played Rolemaster before, I am curious as the need to roll 2d10 instead of 1d100. If your sheet has all information contained on one side, you can snapshot/pdf drag and drop it to the table, zoom out then use the ctrl+z to zoom in when you want to look at it. editing will be an entirely different matter though. Is there a way to mask an area of the screen (the sketchpad) so only that area can be drawn on by players? I would say use the scratch pad area on your tabletop image, like it is a pad of paper, and tell they they have to draw on that - again, zoom in to see and draw on it.

Re: Tokens , I've relented and abandoned my idea to make the character sheets themselves tokens. The players didn't like it and wanted to use some kind of character image... So I'm now getting them to source/send me the images they want to use and I'm turning those into proper tokens. (And on that topic, does anyone know of any painted miniatures images that are taken from the top-down? I think something like that would work perfectly with my aesthetic.) Re: Drawing/Sketchpad , I added the sketchpad into the centre of my tabletop specifically to give the players a place to draw. I was hoping to mask it off, but I can get by without that... My players still have a tendency to draw flies in each other's coffee, etc, but I'm hoping the novelty of that will wear off as the game progresses. I don't really need to know who drew what, since the players are pretty transparent and all acquainted with one another, I don't expect any kind of harmful misuse of the feature. Re: 1d100 rolls , it's the 3D dice. Everyone in my game loves the feature of rolling those dice onto the actual tabletop. Even through the long process of character creation (and in Rolemaster it's -very- long) we're all using the 3D dice for rolls, and it's just like old times... If a 1d100 roll cast two differently coloured dice onto the table we'd be using that instead, but it doesn't. The nostalgia value those dice add is immense. (I hope we'll see this at some point. 3D dice for a 1d100 should be pretty easy. Just use values 0-9 instead of 1-10, the player's colour for the primary value [10's] and make a black one with white lettering for secondary value [1's]... Double 0 is 100) Re: Inbuilt Character Sheet , I'm still struggling with the way this character sheet works. I don't have the money to pay $10 per month on an ongoing basis, but would it be frowned upon if I paid for Mentor status once, used that month to rework the existing character sheet more to my liking, and then go back to being just a Base member?

Mark O. said: Re: 1d100 rolls , it's the 3D dice. Everyone in my game loves the feature of rolling those dice onto the actual tabletop. Even through the long process of character creation (and in Rolemaster it's -very- long) we're all using the 3D dice for rolls, and it's just like old times... If a 1d100 roll cast two differently coloured dice onto the table we'd be using that instead, but it doesn't. The nostalgia value those dice add is immense. (I hope we'll see this at some point. 3D dice for a 1d100 should be pretty easy. Just use values 0-9 instead of 1-10, the player's colour for the primary value [10's] and make a black one with white lettering for secondary value [1's]... Double 0 is 100) The best way right now to do the mixed colored d10's is the rollable table. Make one table for the black die and another table for the player's die. Yes that means you would have to create a table specifically for each player's color but only one die table for the color black. You should be able to find the images you like through google. Mark O. said: Re: Inbuilt Character Sheet , I'm still struggling with the way this character sheet works. I don't have the money to pay $10 per month on an ongoing basis, but would it be frowned upon if I paid for Mentor status once, used that month to rework the existing character sheet more to my liking, and then go back to being just a Base member? You could do that but then you would lose access to the custom sheet at the end of your subscription (it would still be there just not accessible) that I know of. Now if your players are enjoying your game then you could always ask them to gift you a dollar or two per month (if you have 5 players then they gift you $2 each) and you could have your subscription and the custom sheet. The only other way to get the sheet changed to your liking is to convince the original creator (you might be able to convince another mentor also) to change the sheet and reload it to the github.

If I lose access to the character sheet when I return to being a Base member, how is it that I can use the one we have now? Wasn't that created by another Mentor level member?... If they stop being a Mentor will that break our game because character sheets become unavailable?

Mark , anyone can use one of the community made character sheets. You do not need to be a Mentor for that. However, when you create a custom sheet you need to be a Mentor to use it. If your game system does not have a community sheet already you may want to consider making a community sheet. You will need to be a Mentor to create it (so you can properly test it) but once it is published as a community sheet it will be available to all account levels. Here is a link that shows what you get at each account level: <a href="https://app.roll20.net/account/supporter" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/account/supporter</a>

Mark, you didn't say which version of Rolemaster you were running, but I've put up a version of the RMSS character sheet that my group uses if you're interested. It's based very heavily on the paper/spreadsheet one that my group used to use. There's a pull request out on it right now to fix a couple errors I found; it will also open up the Race and Culture inputs so you can put anything into those fields. It's a lot more involved than the RM 1e sheet up but still doesn't do any calculations other than adding up the bonuses on the line for you. Putting in the full set of calculations bogged down the sheet too much; it's a little laggy as is due to sheer size. It also has a section for monsters if you desire to use it.

@Diana , I'm using RMC (1st Edition) with Companions 1-3 and Alchemy Companion... My biggest issue with the current character sheet is the lack of professions, and my inability to add new ones. I don't know why it's even a drop-down list, since the choices don't seem to have any function (nothing as simple as filling in skill costs for instance). And I can't add extra lines for additional skills, so I need to go around renaming all the unused ones, which really messes up the attributes. I had a look at your RMSS sheet and it's fantastic. I'm starting to migrate my characters across... One thing though, you seem to be working with 50 base Development Points (instead of the 25 I'm used to) and a slightly different calculation. So for example a character who was 25+37 (62) is now 50+30 (80) which I find a bit excessive... Is there any way I can adjust those variables? [edit] A column to put skill costs in would be handy too, just so that we don't need to keep referring back to the books when levelling up existing skills.

@Mark , Hmm, yeah the development point values would be different. I've never played 1E, but 2E also had different values than RMSS does. The calculation is actually just the average of Ag+Co+Me+Re+SD. I could strip out the calculation and just make it a box to enter a value into. (I run my own specialized version as is since I've adjusted some stuff off stock for house-rules. :) That's an easy fix. Skill costs... that would take longer since that's oh.. 300 lines of code or more to modify. Where would be the best place to shoe-horn that column into? and how wide would you want it to be? Would 2/2/2* be a wide enough column? I'll make the change for the development point box tonight. No promises when the skill cost column will go in, not before next week at the earliest most likely due to time. Not certain that my skill stats are the same as what RMC 1E used either. :/ Changing that would be an even bigger undertaking.

Yeah, 1st Edition doesn't average the development stat bonuses, it has a stat/point table. It'd be nice if there were just 5 little boxes I could fill the points into, and some way to choose between 25 or 50 base Dev Points (even just a 6th little box for manual entry). As for the skill costs, I really don't need any kind of calculation at all, just a column I can write them into. It's more as a reference; look up a skill once in the books, note it down for future levels, profit... I think the longest cost I've seen was 9/20/*, so if that fits, it's big enough. :) Lastly, and now I'm really just nitpicking so don't put too much stock in this: I see you've done the Skills entirely alphabetically, which is neat but a little unwieldy, even with most of the categories minimised. I think it'd be worth placing the key categories at the top: Armor, Weapons, Body Development... Then all the detailed categories alphabetically below that. [edit] My "Runes" skill is now apparently "Read Runes". Is there another skill I'm missing to create magical runes?

I don't think I'm gonna add a bunch of boxes for development points; it'll just confuse things for RMSS which is what the sheet is actually for. What I will do is give you a larger box so you can put in 25+#+#+#+#+# = ## or something similar. That ok? I was more curious where you'd like the cost box to be put. Right after the skill name? After the number of ranks? Adding that box in will take some of the area from the macro box, but since the macro box can be temporarily resized, that shouldn't be an issue. Sorry, for this sheet I'm going to be keeping them in alphabetical order by category, as it is. There are weapon, armor, power point, and body dev (hit point) spaces on the Combat tab for quick look ups. In RMSS, creating Runes requires the Open Essence list Spell Mastery (or other lists depending on which companions are being used). Read Runes is typically used to cast the spell from the Rune paper. For magical Runes imbedded on other substances, one would use the Runemage class/base lists or possibly Ritual Magic. At the very bottom of the Skill list is a repeating section you can put other skills in. The only caveat is that those skills will not be able to be pulled down to the macro bar since they are a repeating section. To access them as a macro during play, you would have to make your own ability on the Attributes & Abilities tab.

I have a suggestion. To get more eyes on the sheet work please move this discussion to the sheet forum under it's own thread.