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Character Generation and the First Session of Roll20

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I'm starting to think about my first session of my first ever Roll20 game, and thought I might seek some guidance on things to consider or avoid. Technical Check Thinking logically I guess the very first order of business would have to be:  Is everyone here? and Can everyone hear/see everything? I'm not sure how technically intuitive and reliable Roll20 is this could be a major step or just a quick check box.  Background Briefing Assuming everyone can hear and see whats going on. The next logical step seems to be to talk the players through the background and brief them on the 'Why am I here?' aspects of the adventure about to begin in general terms rather than character specific. I also need to explain some of the differences between WFRP and other common RPG games, and highlight some specific house rules I use in my games that might trip them up if they aren't aware of them. Character Creation Having briefed the players the next logical step is to let them create their characters.   I deliberately left this until after the briefing just in case it had an impact on their character choices.  For example unlike D&D, WFRP is not an politically correct world, racism and class prejudice are rampant.  So, choosing to play an elf or dwarf is a serious decision in WFRP not just a matter of playing style, and choosing to play an Orc (there are no half-orc's) would pretty much guarantee a swift death in the first gaming session especially if there is a dwarf in the parrty. However, this is where I began to scratch my head and decided to seek guidance. WFRP1e is an old game, I think I bought my rulebook in the 1990's.  So there aren't any online character generators that I know of, and I've been searching for one.  I do have a few that I downloaded decades ago that are sitting on my hard drive, but I'm not sure how I would make them available to my players. The best is one called the WFRP Foundry which produces a fully fleshed out character with everything including place of birth, parents, siblings and birthday all filled out at the push of a button.  The problem being that as it's on my PC, i would have to push the button, which is a bit like me generating the characters for them. I could ask them to make choices and feed those into the generator, but I don't think there is any way of showing them the process or the results, apart from uploading a finished character sheet.  So, I'm scratching my head a bit on that, whilst still trying to find an online alternative.  I've even emailed the WFRP Foundrys author to see if he ever created an online version, but haven't had a reply. So how does this work? I thought the next step would be to deal with any questions from the players, and perhaps demonstrate some of the functionality of Roll20 and the macros and things I've built into the game (hopefully by then anyway). I even thought it might be useful for everyone to go through a couple of test encounters and check the mechanic's, because at this point I'll still be learning how the system works.  So a couple of low risk, no consequence scenario's might help everyone get used to the system. Hitting the Road I have no idea how long the above will take, it will probably depend on the character creation process. But assuming that everyone is still interested the next logical step would to talk through the events and decisions made by the party prior to the start of the actual adventure.  At this point they would have been on the road for up to a week, so decisions would have been made about modes of travel, random purchases of food and equipment, and some of the test encounters might be worked into this session. Basically, as GM this is me setting the scene for the start of the adventure and at the same time emptying the characters pockets of some of the bounty they were paid up front for taking the job. They have to travel nearly 300 miles just to get to the location where the adventure starts and so funds will be depleted by travel costs, tolls and subsistence before they even arrive. Thank you for coming  At that point, with their destination in sight I figured I'd close the first session and give them time to catch their breath and ponder on what lies ahead.  The next session being the start of the adventure proper. The big issue for me at the moment is the character creation, I'm really not sure how to manage it on Roll20.  But any advice or comments would be welcome.    
I'm not familiar with your game of choice, but I imagine the procedure for starting a new Roll20 group is going to be similar for any game system. I typically do your 1st, 2nd and 3rd topics with new players one-on-one, rather than everyone as a group. You can really only work with one person at a time anyway, so I would schedule those things with each player as they are available. You can go over the "Background Briefing" verbally with new players, but I would also suggest creating Handouts within Roll20 that include the same information. That way, your players can go back and reference it anytime they like. Regarding your character generator issue, it sounds like it might be best if you just create a set of pre-generated characters, and let the players choose which one they want to play. That would speed up the process as well, when you've got live players logged into your game. Going sequentially down your list, I probably wouldn't bring everyone together into your game for the first time until you're ready for the "Hitting the Road" phase. By then, you're ready for everyone to be engaged and actually start playing the game as a group. This is all just my opinion of course, but I've found it works well for me. Good luck!
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Thanks for the guidance. In fact, I've already been recording all the background briefings as handouts.  More by accident than design as I was planning on using them as crib sheets during my spiel, and then realised that I might as well make them available to players for reference later in the game. The one to one idea makes good sense although it would mean I'd have to go over the same information several times.  But that's not a major problem. As far as character generation is concerned I could ask them to give me a list of their preferences for the input options. e.g. Name; Place of Birth, Age,  (young, old or specific age) Weight/body type, Distinguishing characteristic's, Career Class Basic Career They could either leave these completely to chance or specify their preferences. Thats pretty much as much influence as they would have in a tabletop game, the rest is based on dice rolls anyway. The results could just be copied into their Roll20 character sheets. In fact, for a joyous moment I thought I was going to be able to just copy the entire WFRP Foundry Character Sheet into Roll20, and then I noticed a glitch in the Roll20 system that caused the character profile to be lost on import. It's a shame because the rest of the character information has imported beautifully, but the Roll20 editor seems to have a problem with nested tables so the numeric content of the character profile table has just disappeared.  To make matters worse I can't even add it manually because the actual  cells are missing and the editor won't add them in. Otherwise it would have been brilliant. P.S. I think I read something somewhere about importing characters into Roll20, so I might look that up as it would save a lot of time.  The output is in HTML format so it should be workable.
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Gold
Forum Champion
I agree with Brett in pre-meeting the Players, one-on-one or small sub-groups, before your first introductory game session with the full group.  I don't remember if I did that for my first game on Roll20 or not, but nowadays, having some experience running online games here, I now normally meet individually with every Player for any new games that I start.  By the way, I recommend scheduling those individual player meetings 2 weeks ahead of your first game session, giving you time to recruit new Players if some of the original attendees don't work out for one reason or another.
Thanks Gold.  The more I think about it the more that makes sense. The only advantage of having them all together is that they can get to know each other as well as me, but it's probably not worth the hassle.  At least not until after their characters are generated.
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Like Gold, in my early Roll20 days I tried to do character generation etc with everyone at the same time and it was chaotic at best. I now meet with everyone individually at first and it works out much better. 
Yea! Doing a little victory dance in my head right now. Because I worked out how to import the WFRP Foundry Character Sheet correctly into Roll20.  Look!!!! I just followed a hunch and copied the HTML into a Word document and then imported the word document into the character sheet. Not only is it all there including the character profile, but it's editable.  So, basically instant character generation at the push of a button is possible and useable in the game. Now all I need to do is copy the Current Profile values to the Attribute list and work out how to do all the macro's. I'm so pleased.
Didz said: Technical Check Thinking logically I guess the very first order of business would have to be:  Is everyone here? and Can everyone hear/see everything? I'm not sure how technically intuitive and reliable Roll20 is this could be a major step or just a quick check box. Based on past experience, I'd have at least a 2nd (or 3rd) alternative for video and voice available.  I generally run all my audio and video through a Google Hangout.  Some people use Skype, some use the built-in Roll 20 video and voice.  Either way, have a backup ready to go, just in case something fails.  You can get everyone's Skype id in the pre-game character generation meeting you have with each one individually, and/or you can paste a link to a hangout directly into the Roll 20 chat window.  Best to be prepared.
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I've never used Google Hangouts before but I've had a look and set up a Hangout.  Not really sure what happens next. Personally I tend to prefer Skype, as it seems to be less finnicky, but I've been involved in MMO guilds that used TeamSpeak, and I think my son uses Mumble to talk to his gaming friends.  He tells me the Roll20 voice chat isn't that great so they don't use it.
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vÍnce
Pro
Sheet Author
We started having some issues with voice thru roll20 and had to use Hangouts one night.  We now use Hangouts every session. From the campaign page you can click the drop down menu from Join Game>Launch in Google+.  A Hangouts window will open.  It will try to load the game inside of Hangouts, but I stop it by toggling the roll20 app on the left sidebar.  I copy the Hangouts URL and paste it into chat on roll20 for the players to click on.  Seems to work well and player's can mute themselves when not speaking which helps tremendously for anyone with a noisy environment.
Does Roll20 and Google not have a 'click to talk' function, or whatever its called.  My son insists on that.
Things like Roll20 do not have Push to Talk (PTT), they are continual broadcast. This is why I use Ventrilo to run my games, players have to press a key when they want to say something. Normally, they are not broadcasting. 
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Brett E. said: Things like Roll20 do not have Push to Talk (PTT), they are continual broadcast. This is why I use Ventrilo to run my games, players have to press a key when they want to say something. Normally, they are not broadcasting.  Yeah! That does have advantages.  Especially if one lives in a noisy environment.  Though occassionally it can be amusing.  My son tells me skype has PTT which is good news. What about the Google hangout?
Someone else will have to chime in about Skype, but it's been my understanding that it does not have PTT. I personally could not run a game with everyone on continual broadcast, the background noise would be too distracting. I have one player alone who I swear is sitting in a subway station when we play. And there's another who usually eats dinner at his computer on game night and no one would want to listen to all the chewing noises. And it's on my end too, the laundry room is not far from where I am sitting. My wife usually does laundry on game night and the dryer buzzer sounds like a nuclear missile is about to be launched. 
Brett E. said: Someone else will have to chime in about Skype, but it's been my understanding that it does not have PTT. Then I may be able to you, because Skype does have PTT, at least since version 5.8. <a href="http://blogs.skype.com/2012/02/02/skype-for-window" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.skype.com/2012/02/02/skype-for-window</a>... and a video tutorial&nbsp; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFyYEbILRsQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFyYEbILRsQ</a>
1439139718
Gold
Forum Champion
I've found that a mute button is effectively the same as Push To Talk. In PTT, you push the button to turn ON your voice, and let go of the button to turn OFF your voice. In Mute, you push the button to turn ON your voice, and push the button again to turn OFF your voice. Either method, your channel is silent when you are not speaking, which cuts out background noise. &nbsp;In PTT you hold the button (press-holllllllld-release), in Mute you toggle the button (press-press). The audio effect is identical & neither is more work than the other.
Didz said: Then I may be able to you, because Skype does have PTT, at least since version 5.8. Cool then, if Skype integrated it. I was a player in a Roll20 game a couple of years ago that used Skype, and it was continual broadcast at that time. I do think you could mute yourself. I do prefer PTT over just using a Mute button, since it requires the user to perform an ongoing task (holding down the transmit button) to broadcast, and as soon as they let go they stop. A person might forget to mute themselves again as soon as they're done speaking, but they don't forget to let off a transmit button. I do wish the Roll20 client had PTT, then I'd just use that instead of Ventrilo. But I realize it's not something the Devs can control.
I don't know if this helps, but I've just recently started using roll20 and I just love it. &nbsp;As far as Character creation, warhammer fantasy roleplay does have a little bit of a learning curve and can take about an hour for new players to get a character done - experienced players can generate a character faster than they can write/type it out. &nbsp;If you want characters with depth (which most people do unless they just can't wait to start playing :)) then it might be worth the time spent with each player to build their character. &nbsp;We only use voice in my group since video is not necessary. &nbsp;I also agree that the voice is not the best and is constant, yet I've had no issues with it. &nbsp;We did have one individual who had loud room mates and it was a distraction. &nbsp;I am going to request he mute his mic once in a while. &nbsp;Also, once the players get to know each other, they can engage in table talk (which is normal and encouraged most of the time - I don't always mind it) &nbsp;which can get a little loud if they get sidetracked waiting for initiative to roll around again. Pun intended. &nbsp;That being said. &nbsp;I have recommended this site to as many people as I can and I will continue to use it. &nbsp;I should probably get the subscription...hehe. &nbsp;Oh and kudos on getting the character sheet to work. &nbsp;I just started running Tephra (which I've never seen before this) and mostly just let the players make their own characters and share the PDF with me once they had it done. &nbsp;Made it easy. &nbsp;I also made my own adventure campaign and everything seems to be going well. &nbsp;We're into our 5th session come Thursday. &nbsp;BTW my favorite WFRP adventure was Shadows Over Bogenhafen.
Actually, you can hover your mouse over your player portrait and a microphone image will appear so you can click it to mute your mic. you can also mute other players' sound. We use the Roll20 in-house audio only, BTW. And there is this from the Wiki page which I have not used; Managing Volume While video/voice is enabled in Roll20, hover your mouse on the bottom right corner of a player's portrait in the Player Zone. This action will pop up a volume slider that you can use to fine tune a player's mic volume to be heard properly. It's important to note that a slider exists on your own portrait and tuning your personal mic volume affects how other players in Roll20 hear you.
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Brett E. said: Didz said: Then I may be able to you, because Skype does have PTT, at least since version 5.8. I do prefer PTT over just using a Mute button, since it requires the user to perform an ongoing task (holding down the transmit button) to broadcast, and as soon as they let go they stop. A person might forget to mute themselves again as soon as they're done speaking, but they don't forget to let off a transmit button. So, do I, but I got the impression from the video I linked that it is possible to reverse the function of the mute button. &nbsp;So, that instead of 'Push to Mute' it becomes 'Push to Un-mute', which is essentially 'Push to Talk'. &nbsp;I may be wrong because the video presenter seemed to lose the plot at that point and what he said was a bit muddled, but what he seemed to do was invert the function of the mute hot-key. Hi Perez: &nbsp;You said "I just started running Tephra (which I've never seen before this) and mostly just let the players make their own characters and share the PDF with me once they had it done." What's Tephra? I just googled it and came up with volcanic rock.&nbsp; @Doug: So it is possible to mute the Roll20 audio input, it's just not 'push to talk' as such. &nbsp;I know I've watched a few Roll20 play through video's on youtube and noticed an occassional problem with background noise from players home environments. &nbsp;One seemed to have a very irritated partner, and another had to take regular phone calls where you only heard his half of the conversation. &nbsp;So I guess it's not a well know feature.
Hahaha, yes it's rock. &nbsp;And, coincidentally a steam punk rpg published by Cracked Monocle. &nbsp;If the Luther Arkwright rpg for RuneQuest6 had been available prior to me buying Tephra I would've been playing that instead since it uses the new design mechanism system - which I highly recommend. &nbsp;Needless to say, I am committed to the current Tephra campaign.