GOOD game suggestions for Roll20 campaign

All, Can you send me some examples of really good game sessions you've had using Roll20? 1. What made them stand out? 2. What features within Roll20 Add to the game / story that make it better? 3. General suggestions for GM's that run games using the service? I know it's pretty subjective, but I love the service and want to make my games rock.

I'm an audio-visual person, so I like having some Jukebox songs to play on-break and before-session. I don't use very much background music while the gameplay is happening because it detracts from the verbal speech, so I save the sounds to play mostly when the group is about to go on a 5-minute break. Visually I really like the "Shift-Z" to pop up a picture full size. I think this feature may be under-utilized, since a lot of GM's campaigns have a top-down Map that takes up the entire page background. I recommend setting aside a large Margin below or beside your map tile. In the margin space, put portraits and pictures (NPC faces, picture of the village, photographs from a Google search for "amazing outdoor places to adventure in the world", and so on). Just put awesome pictures, and when the group arrives at that spot on the Map, that's when the GM will click the picture and press Shift-Z to make it show the full-size picture to everyone, covering the screen. The players click once to dismiss the pop-up picture. This is a quick way to share visuals, giving ground-level perspective that is lacking in strictly-top-down tokens-on-map-tile.

nice, never even knew that existed.  Great suggestion

Some people literally run their campaigns with MS Paint.  Do think that takes away from the experience?  If you have pretty maps and sounds, given that you have to front-load all the effort - does that make a better game?  If you have all the fancy tools, but use them poorly during your campaign - does it ruin the experience?

I feel that a visual style of gameplay works great with the roll20 interface. In my f2f games I used to use printed maps and music and figures and props. I even moved up to using a projector and maptool for dynamic lighting. It's the way I like to run things, very sensory. That being said, I don't think lacking those elements makes a game any worse or less enjoyable. Everyone has there own style and way of doing things, as long as everyone is engaged and having fun I don't see that it makes a difference if the map looks like its from a hollywood movie or from a 4th grade geography project. So, my answer would have to be no, it doesn't ruin the experience if all the bells and whistles aren't being used. As long as the experience is engaging, that is all that matters.

Gold said: Visually I really like the "Shift-Z" to pop up a picture full size. I think this feature may be under-utilized, since a lot of GM's campaigns have a top-down Map that takes up the entire page background. I recommend setting aside a large Margin below or beside your map tile. In the margin space, put portraits and pictures (NPC faces, picture of the village, photographs from a Google search for "amazing outdoor places to adventure in the world", and so on). Just put awesome pictures, and when the group arrives at that spot on the Map, that's when the GM will click the picture and press Shift-Z to make it show the full-size picture to everyone, covering the screen. The players click once to dismiss the pop-up picture. This is a quick way to share visuals, giving ground-level perspective that is lacking in strictly-top-down tokens-on-map-tile. Huh, I never thought of that, I'm using Handouts or layering the pics on the GM layer and then moving them to map as needed. As for me, the character sheets (both for my players and for me to use with monsters and NPCs) hands down are the best feature. Especially since you can pop them out and minimize them to the System Tray. I also love the turn counter and the fact you can add custom things like a round count, effect countdown timer, etc. Besides using maps with (or without) grids where those epic battles can occur, a lot of the memorable time of the campaign happens during RP and you can set the atmosphere with a picture in the background and all those visual and auditory ideas that have been mentioned can come into play

great suggestion on popping out the character sheets and then just minimizing them.  I never would have thought of that, and I'm always fumbling trying to find the right character to get stats.

Two wildly different play sessions come to mind; One of Ajax' one-shots which are setup with pre-gen character sheets, API for rolls that update the target enemy if hit, etc, lighting, detailed maps with graphically visual queues to traps and such.  Very fun, very engaging, and the tech was enjoyable.  However the API crapped out once in a while and had to be restarted. Alternately, I greatly enjoyed a Shadowrun game that had no maps, no graphics, no macros or API or sheets.  All we used were raw /roll dice rolls and the drawing tools (we did have tokens at least).  The sessions went wonderfully and fun was had by all. To my sensibilities, at least, this speaks more for the people you play with and the game you're playing than the technology leveraged to play.  Fun can be had with or whithout.