[Discussion] Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Using Roll20

Roll20 Experts! We're looking for some "pro" tips for gamers just starting out or anyone who needs a little direction - what positive advice can you give that will help users make the best of what Roll20 has to offer? What lessons did you learn from your first few experiences on the site? What tips or tricks do you wish you had known from the beginning? Share your sage advice below!

That the assets that you find in the search bar in Roll20 don't count toward your data limit. Also that you can loose those same assets if the page they are from is lost. 

I should have watched the  intro videos .  And then, later, watched them again do it would be a review instead of an "Oooooh...this was here the whole time?"   Roll20 is filled with helpful and pleasant folks, and its almost 100% jerk-free.  So you can ask really questions without the typical 50/50 chance of getting an over-egotistical, socially-inept and grammar-deficient moron whose only good passable at one tiny slice of life that just happens to involve your question.  So good ahead an ask. Associated with the above: people do things here for other people just to do things for other people .  This kinda caught me off guard, I kid you not.  I ask some one for a bit of code, and every now and then, it suddenly appears!  No money changed hands, no favors exchanged, just..."here, have this two hours/days worth of work, and don't forget to tell me if its not exactly what you wanted".   Html and css are not that hard, but it takes while.  Roll20 taught me I could do it without a college degree.  Mind you, I can't do it as well as the masters here, but I can get some work done. GM's are rare, players are not.  Some GM's style suits yours, and some do not.  Some players suit you, and some do not.  Getting into a game is just like the physical world, and can be hit or miss.   Real life happens, and people fail to show up for games.  With the internet, this happens so much faster than in the physical world.  People will appear and disappear; the best ones tell they will disappear first. I wish I had looked at the Savage Worlds sheet (maintained by G V.), and the New Official World of Darkness (by Steve K.) sheets when I first started. They are filled with goodies to make a sheet look and behave with awesome. And if you keep looking, you will see more awesome stuff in the sheets; its like mining Mount Amazing.      HoneyBadger (the creator of those outstanding Power Cards) is not chained up; you have been warned. The Aaron does, in fact, have a script for that. Vince is one of the most helpful people on Roll20 (which is saying a lot), and can type in 20 million languages .

I wish I knew that there were SO MANY active games and groups going on.  (Most other VTTs don't compare to the raw number of games and player here).  I wish I knew that even with this many active players; finding a game can still take a while.  While it's still infinately better than arranging physical meetup groups;  you still have to be patient to find a good solid group of players that will stick with it. I wish I knew that most groups (physical OR virtual) struggle to keep together long enough to finish a Paizo AP.  If your group finishes one of those beasts,  never let them escape! I wish I knew just how insanely helpful the community would be for learning the intricate dance of Macros, API's, and optimizing gameplay in general.  In several (*cough* decades *cough*) of gaming, I've NEVER encountered a more friendly and eager-to-help community of players, GM's, developers, and just overall awesome people.  The Specific Use, Character Sheets, and General Use  forums almost get as many posts and replies as my own company's Help Desk system does... and we're 850+ internationally inept computer users. I wish I knew how useful it would be to write macros and abilities so they're not specific to that particular character.  I keep a collection of each macro I use stored locally, and I can't tell you how many times I've gone to that to copy/paste something or look to see how I did it on another character.  Code re-use is a beautiful, beautiful thing...

Can I like stuff? That should be a thing. Mark G. had fantastic points. Things I wish I knew, in a much abridged version, to defeat tldr; 1. Do not assume your questions are stupid - Macros, API and Character Sheets are complicated. Roll20 is a platform and not a magic videogame. The tools are generic so you can faciliate your style of play how you want.  2. Pick-up games are spotty - Look to GM a game, not play one, if you don't have a group. GM's are epic people, but the commitment scares people away, and roll20 allows for people to advertise without any real commitment or game quality. As a tool, roll20 is only as good as the people who put in the work to make the games. If your hardcore about what roll20 has to offer, asking someone else to customize the experience to your expectation is an exercise in folly. 3. Roll20 is not Tabletop - Tabletop games are limited by human cognitive capacity to calculate math. Don't be afraid to automate more complicated stuff, or bring in more mechanical gameplay. Because the computer is available to do math for you, you can invest a little time on the front end on setting up generic math/macro's you use all the time. This means deeper tactical combat, and that combat can be extremely fast. In my games, it rarely takes a player more than 30 seconds to resolve their turn.  4. Roll20 is weirdly better for roleplaying - Playing over Skype or Google Hangouts has this weird effect of focusing peoples attention. I've played in person games for decades, and I found the roll20 tools to actually be better, not a substitute. It kind of makes RPG's like a video game, so instead of having bored players looking at their phones, they are much more engaged. Expliot that, set the mood with strong music, and reward players who tell a good story over those who powergame. 

Bryan W. - I really agree with #4 on your list, using Roll20 as an engagement tool is key to a great game, imo. Keep it up community, great stuff so far!

Coal Powered Puppet said: The GenKitty (the creator of those outstanding Power Cards) is not chained up; you have been warned. The Power Cards script is by Honey Badger.

Brian said: Coal Powered Puppet said: The GenKitty (the creator of those outstanding Power Cards) is not chained up; you have been warned. The Power Cards script is by Honey Badger. er...whoops.  Apologies, and its fixed.

The platform has changed so much since my first game that most of what I learned then no longer applies but there are a few things I wish I had known when first starting. 1. Shortcut keys for moving tokens between layers. The shortcut keys in general for zooming and shifting left and right are great. 2. Shift-ping to center everyone's attention. 3. Dynamic Lighting is totally worth the value. 4. Search for your music needs using SoundCloud and then use the Roll20 Jukebox to import it. 5. The Jukebox is a wonderful tool, music should be playing almost constantly.

I wish I knew how much they work to keep making things better! And I mean this, 'cuz it's possibly the worst thing about Roll20 to me... every time I turn around, something new is added. And I MUST have it! And that's bad. Why? Let me explain: ...no. Would take too long. Let me sum up: That's bad because I really get into the whole customization thing. Roll20 has some truly awesome potential, and I do my best to utilize as much of it as I can understand. As a result, when they change the way something that I've been heavily using, and this usually involves changing the way it works on a fundamental level, I have to go back and change the way I've been using the thing I've been using! For example, character sheets. When I joined there were no character sheets, per-se. There were journal entries with a section for Attributes, and a section for Abilities. You could, if you were patient, set up a character with Abilities that would reference Attributes, and could do some basic automation with this system. And I LOVED it! I got seriously into it, too... Not only did I set up 100+ pathfinder creatures with full stats and macros, but I developed a system for players to interact with items on the map, including monsters and each other. This took ages and was ridiculously hard to do, at least for me. But I did it, and I had a great basic system I could use for gaming anything I wanted whenever I felt like it: everything I'd need was included. Then 'they' (I'm looking at you, Riley and Honeybadger and TheAaron!) brought in two amazing tools: Character Sheets (Proper ones this time!) and the API Scripts system! Character sheets was a life-changer; now I didn't have to go through and find the attributes I wanted to modify, I had a sheet that I could organize any way I wanted, that could even reference other parts of itself to calculate numbers! WOW! AND, on top of that, the API let me automate some things even further, and even change the way the information was displayed!  HoneyBadger's Powercards script makes it easy to format the information I need and customize it any way I want to... I can even color-code my rolls! And if that wasn't enough, other players started building API scripts to do almost anything, and when they couldn't quite get it working, people like TheAaron jump in and work their magic! API scripts are amazing. So I added all these tools into my GM toolkit... which meant, unfortunately, that I had to throw away about 90% of the work I'd done previously! I more-or-less wiped the slate clean, then sat down and worked out what I could make with these new pieces added to the game. And I did, and it was good! A little fatigued, a little cautious, this time I hadn't gone as nutso with the building... only a couple dozen monsters for now, add more when I need 'em. Nicely customized character sheets, no idea what I'm doing but thanks to the folks on Roll20 I manage to find something that works for me. A few API scripts to make things look pretty and automate stuff, and I'm set! Brand new set of tools, and my Roll20 game gets a LOT better! And then... and THEN... AND THEN I find out they're gonna do it again! Seriously, I finally feel like I've got something complete enough to really buckle down with and start getting semi-professional about it, AND THEN THEY CHANGE IT ON ME AGAIN! But that's ok... now, NOW, they've finally done it, I'm sure! Fixed the repeating sections on the character sheets!! Native powercard-like formatting! Super-mega-ultra-random dieroller! Dynamic lighting layer! API scripts out TheAaron's wazoo! FOLDERS! Freakin' folders, to organize my 100+ monsters and billion other character sheets! And that's not even mentioning the amazing mod team keeping everything running well, and the ... seriously? ... MILLION subscribers to play with! So, I wish I'd known that Roll20 was gonna improve so often... I could have just waited, and all the things I wanted to do would have been done by now! Oh, and also how much freakin' FUN it is to play with random people from anywhere on the planet! -Phnord, who only sounds like he's complaining this time!

• The Aaron does, in fact, have a script for that. -- Seriously, he's always right there with "here, did you try this?" or "oh, you're getting an error? Let me look at that for you."

#1) That roll20 is free (for basic features). I didn't expect to find an easy-to-use system that anyone could just hop onto and participate with the same night. #2) That it's quite easy to find a game you might enjoy if you know good keywords, a system name, and a time that you're available - and even easier to find a session that might have an open slot on the spur of the moment. #3) That I should have been saving all of those cool tiled .png maps I used to see online, because they'd actually be useful with roll20's grid system. #4) That system games are much easier to play on roll20 if you use the corresponding character sheet. #5) That roll20 allows players to set their own volume levels for music, so you can have different levels in Skype (mics) vs roll20 (music). #6) That roll20 makes it easy to add custom scripts and value bars, to do custom functions and show current HP/etc. I'm still hoping that roll20 will eventually give players more control over volume (one level for the "Now Playing" music, and one "master volume" slider), that we'll be able to use other services than Soundcloud, and that we'll be able to upload whole playlists (Soundcloud or otherwise) at once. A built-in autotile system like game making programs (e.g. RPGMaker, Construct) have would be awesome, too - especially if we could import tiles of our own into it. But even as roll20 is now, it's a very quick setup tool for online tabletop. Yeah, I could do the same stuff with some free software, a hand-crafted website of my own, and either a screen sharing app or a second webcam pointed at hand-drawn maps or miniature-filled 3D maps/tiles, but for someone who wants to (A) get up and running quickly and test out an idea with players or (B) find a game run by someone who doesn't have much skill with technology (or deep pockets for 3D gear), roll20 is a great option.

I'll probably think of more later but the first thing that comes to mind is I wish I had known what a time-saver the GM Info layer is. I put monster tokens, trap tokens, area effect templates, and encounter notes on the GM layer then reveal as needed instead of slowing down the encounter and dragging everything to the the map.

For a couple years, I've been powerusing API and a customized pathfinder sheet to suit my needs, and I learned something VITAL only a couple months ago: Players can enter their own initiative in the turn tracker. After so many people rolling initiative without their token selected, it blew my mind to find out that I didn't have to fix it for them every time. I've had a few other moments of "oh, i only thought the GM could do that", but that was the big one.

I wish I had known about: 1.  pyromancers.com when i first joined. Using them to make a basic dungeon layout, then populating it with objects once uploaded to roll20 has made my life as a gm so much easier. 2. using [[1d20+4]] to roll a set of dice inline for macros. (ex. doing "Richard swings his sword, connecting with ac [[1d20+5]] and dealing [[1d8+3]] damage!" would show up as "Richard swings his sword, connecting with ac 16 and dealing 6 damage!" with the numbers rolled on a yellow square) 3. use of /talktomyself as a gm to be able to test things in the chat without my players seeing all the macros I'm rolling. I am sure there is loads more, but these jumped out at me.

-Finalize whatever character sheet and api stuff before you start making creatures. -Make sure as a GM you have organization from day one to keep track of your stuff. -Label, label, label every asset you upload. You will thank yourself a year from now.

Give explicite names to assets/image you upload, to avoid having to tag them later. "NPC_fantasy_orc_warrior.png" is easier to search than "98sdf351414684.png" ...

I wish I had had a clear idea of all the Roll20 tabletop features .  Even now many GMs are not all the possible features to their full potential.  They may say they are faithful to "theater of the mind" and only really need to converse to play a great RPG.  But I say they should really explore Tokens and map-switching and Dynamic Lighting and the Jukebox for mood-music and sound effects, etc.  The feature going by the name of Rollable Table Token is like a Token, which you can blow up to any size, whose image is instantly switchable?  Omigosh!  That is a powerful feature if you want to use it!  You could show characters or battle 'mechs in different states of repair, or make a slide-show, or make an expanse of map terrain that magically shifts treacherously while other Tokens (the PCs) stand on it...there are endless possibilities!  With instructional videos and the new interactive in-game Tutorial, it has never been easier to learn all the features. Learn to use the Looking For Group effectively.  Games are not always correctly detailed, so instead of just relying on the game-type, leave it blank and do some word-searches too, especially for those RPGs in the "Other" category.  Keep checking!  Game Masters are in demand; games fill up quickly and the Looking for Group then disappears.  Be persistent; check daily for new added games of the popular brands, or at least weekly for rare games. Don't launch a Looking for Group yourself as a GM unless you have a worked out set of game-episodes.  I was guilty of two premature announcements; they never got off the ground!  But don't get mad if you joined something as a player and a GM can't follow through (that pesky Real Life, again), just shrug and keep looking for a game.  A tentative message in the Looking for Group Forum is the proper way to gauge interest in your game. If you want to set up a Board Game instead of a Roleplaying Game, you may have much, much more work to do to store Cards or Tokens, but it will be worth it to have a perfectly realized game as a virtual tabletop. In Looking for Group, the most important feature is the time-slot .  The GM almost certainly chose a time-slot most convenient to them, and you should toe the line and not try to "renegotiate it".  It doesn't matter how much you like the game-system or the game-setting or the GMs presentation.  If you can't make the time, if you are not at your most relaxed and receptive for that timeslot, you will not have fun, and your late entry or early departure will be disruptive.  So agree on the time-slot posted and stick to it.   If a weekly pace is too much for the GM and players, do it every two weeks or more occasionally. Keep an extensive and orderly  Journal section .  In the past, I had to manipulate the name of Handouts with numbers in front, because they were only stored in alphabetical order, but now we have Folders implemented in the Journal.  I create separate folders for PCs, NPCs (revealed to the players or not), Game Rules, Campaign Background, each with sub-folders as needed, especially to segregate NPCs and info for different adventures so people don't have to wade through any past stuff.  Make sure you set them properly to be viewable by the players or not.  As you introduce a new campaign Handout or photo, don't forget to switch it to "All Players". Don't forget that you can create clickable links in one Handout to pop-up another!  Just type the exact title of the other Handout and encase in square brackets [ ] (these cannot be used as normal characters in a Handout for that reason.)  In my game of Traveller 5th-edition (that didn't get started!), I made a handout for each stellar Subsector, but made a list of Star Systems in the Handout text and linked them to a planetary Orbit table for selected Systems!  Rules handouts (a few choice scans of rulebook pages with major tables) can also have text added to link to other rules for convenience.  This makes for a quick lookup of any information. For the GM, your operations will go much more smoothly if you have more than one computer monitor .  You don't necessarily have to be like the Operator from the Matrix movies, but having even just a second screen will enhance your play.  You may have the main tabletop on one screen, and an additional screen or screens for an optional alternative teleconference program like Google Hangouts or Skype, for rulebook .pdfs, for video controls if you're recording your game, or for split-screen play if you split the players' characters on separate maps.  Use the latter with caution and reluctantly, as you may inevitably have one or the other group wait around and get bored while you narrate the other map's action, if it is ever necessary to do that.  I think the only way to do it is for the GM to create two browser instances of a Roll20 web-site and to join the game twice, but it makes them like an "extra player" and may slow down the capacity and refresh of your screens.  Still, the fact that it's even halfway possible is amazing.  The cheap alternative, if the maps are not too large, is to place two maps of different areas on one tabletop.  Sometimes you may have to, such as for starship deckplans with multiple decks.  You can set the tabletop for a huge length and width in squares anyway!

Phnord Prephect said: ... Oh, and also how much freakin' FUN it is to play with random people from anywhere on the planet! Absolutely.  My GM is in New Zealand, and players are from Australia, the U.S. and Canada.  His leisurely Saturday afternoon is my frantic Friday night, and it has worked for over 2 years.  Location is no longer important (but an agreed time-slot is still crucial.  I say again, commit to the full time-slot!) We once talked about playing lighter board games, but poker was right out since the problems of instant currency conversion of four kinds of dollars were insurmountable! Looking at their rows of cams or icons (or it is even better in Google Hangouts where the current speaker gets a close-up full-screen), it is like we are a high-tech teleconference of regional leaders for the Evil League of Evil or some such nefarious international organization!  We will really throw a spanner in the works...er, I mean, throw a monkey-wrench in the works...