Playing in Turns W/Out Everyone Being Online?

I have asked, with affirmatives in return, a couple of times now if Roll 20 could be played in turns, without the entire group being online.  Both fortunately, and unfortunately, I have friends all over the planet, we all have some time-consuming lives, and we cannot all get online at the same time.  I have been told it is possible for one person at a time to log in, perform the move and/or actions for their turn, and then to go back to their lives; if true, I like this functionality, but I have some questions about it... 1) How can I make turns happen and be able to see what my players have done, then react/respond appropriately? 2) As the GM, am I allowed to log on out of turn sequence and check to see how things are going? 3) Hmmm... I think that's it, for the time being, and I may have more questions based on your response. Thank you, I really do appreciate Roll 20, and I'm looking forward to finally making something happen.  I was supposed to run a game for Aethercon IV last November, but I was only able to round up one player for the time slot I had, so I purchased a prime account and have, since, been trying to learn things about Roll 20, and I'm certain I've not seen everything I should, but I intend to figure it out.

1) How turns happen depends on the game, really. Roll20 has no built in turn mechanics. It has the Tracker, and you could put things in there to show how turns are progressing. You can see everything that is in the chat, all the dice rolls, etc., at any time. You don't have to join the game to do that.  2) The GM can join the game at any time, just like the Players can. I do this all the time to prepare maps and encounters, update my Art Library, and create monster MOOKS. 

Hmmm... thank you.  I'll have to study the Tracker, then, to see how that works.

For Question (1): The GM could create some custom buttons in the game (called a Macro), for example "Start Turn" and "End Turn". Wiki docs, <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Macros" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Macros</a> Example I made for you, Macro 1: Start Turn /me Starting my Turn! My character does the following actions and rolls: Player press that button, then type their actions for the Turn (taking as many subsequent lines of chat as they might need), and roll any dice that are needed according to your game rules & their actions. Macro 2: End Turn /me Ending my Turn! The next Player can go now, after you see this message. Or the GM can please respond-resolve. This simple chat macro would make a nice bold orange highlighted marker for each Player or their Character's name, creating a visual division between Turns in the text chat. For more specific methods, it would depend on just how you want the game to run & appear, whether you're using Tokens (miniatures on a map), or if it is mostly a text game in the chat room, or other game system differences. Feel free to ask specific questions for your purposes. My general advice, Start a Game (which is free and unlimited) with no one else in it except yourself and choose 1 other person to test it with, send your testing friend the Invite. Log in, Join Game and type some actions of your own in chat room, perhaps also draw some shapes with the Drawing Tool on the main layer of the map page (the token layer of the tabletop). &nbsp;Then log out. Email your testing friend and ask them to log-in, join game while you are not looking, they can respond in chat, draw some colorful shapes with the drawing tool, and then log out. Finally you log back in, check their postings, and see how that process would be playable for your game style. Later you can add additional techniques (such as Turn Tracker, Macros, Tokens, Jukebox sounds that auto-play, or advanced methods like API scripts). With the Roll20 Jukebox you could even leave Voice messages to your Players that auto-play when they log-in. For example you could record your voice describing a room or scenario, upload to your Soundcloud account, add that soundcloud to your Roll20 jukebox, and set that Jukebox playlist to auto-play when the game loads. <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Jukebox" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Jukebox</a>

You could also use the campaign forums. If you need dice rolls, screenshots of the chat (with timestamp) in each post could work.

Gold and Brian, thank you.&nbsp; I've never been great with macro's, but this is something I think I'd better look into.&nbsp; I would love to be able to play with maps and tokens, and perhaps even sound files of descriptions.&nbsp; I've picked up where I left off with reading and trying to learn this game, but it may take a while, as these days with all I do, otherwise, I can get overloaded quickly. Thank you, again.

Fieranor, I run asynchronous text games and various other forms of text games. Depending on what you want and what the game system requires it can vary in how much work it takes. Fieranor of Imladris said: 1) How can I make turns happen and be able to see what my players have done, then react/respond appropriately? There are few ways of doing it, and some of them have been suggested above which work well, depending on how much metagaming you want in your text. In my games we don't worry about turns but just take a scene appropriate stance of if it makes sense for a player to post his actions then post. For combat, I usually lead off with a description showing what is about to happen and who gets to lead off with their action description first. Side note: I use a simple system of one side gets to describe their attempts first then the other side gets to react (I try to have all mechanics whispered to me as the gm so there is some mystery about how well things are going in combat) to the attempts. Fieranor of Imladris said: 2) As the GM, am I allowed to log on out of turn sequence and check to see how things are going? If you go to your detail page aka the game page where your forum is located at, you will spot 4 buttons under the games avatar. Click on the content button then select the chat archive. It will show all your chat without you needing to go into the game itself. This let's you peek in the chat but you can not affect anything just look at the chat. Now my question to you is: Are you planning to use miniatures for movement and battles? There are some techniques and tips you need to know about when running a game in this style. If you want to talk more, pm me.

I did discover the chat archive last night, and I'm appreciative that it is there.&nbsp; As for how I would use tokens/mini's in a mixed play environment, I am still performing research on that. The things all of you have said, in the way of being helpful, are all greatly appreciated, and all of them are common sense means of play that I was not sure were supported, here.&nbsp; I'm very glad to see they are; kudo's Roll 20. Because of these things, which are encouraging, by the way, it would appear I have quadrupled the number of players for my game, at least for giving it a try.&nbsp; That's very cool, indeed.

If you find out you need players, drop me a pm. I belong to a large group of text gamers and you might find some players there.

Wow, absolutely.&nbsp; Thank you.&nbsp; I now have four players, thus far, who are at least willing to try it out.&nbsp; I am doing some work on my version of The One Ring sheet, which will be a text sheet I prefer to work with, and getting their character's ready, but I am grateful for the offer and, indeed, will keep it in mind.