Lost Mines of Phandelver - Roll20 Module - Initial Thoughts

I wasn't exactly sure where to post this, since there isn't a Marketplace forum. I just picked up the new LMoP Roll20 Module, not because I plan on running it (though you never know), but because I'm really interested in the Storm King's Thunder module, but I want to know what I would be getting out of it. Here are my initial thoughts after flipping through it. My biggest worry is that none of the monsters have token sight setup for them.  You have token sight setup for all the PC pregens (including torch sight for the humans and halflings), and quite nice dynamic lighting layers for all the maps.  But none of the monster tokens have light variables on their tokens.  This seems like a pretty big oversight to me.  Hopefully that's something you can push an update to the marketplace with. For those who might be interested, yes you can Transmogrify content out of a LMoP campaign to other campaigns.  Though I use the Shaped sheets in my campaigns, so the initial usefulness is limited.  Hopefully we'll have some conversion scripts soon.

What do the tokens look like?  Are the PC pregens the same face portrait tokens as in The Master's Vault?

Did you get a pdf of the campaign too.  Or do you already have to have it?  

I actually like the NPC tokens not having the lighting view set up - as a DM it makes the light all weird so that I cannot actually tell what the PCs can see. The room looks well lit to me, but the players can only see a little bit. It leads to misunderstandings when I start talking about the ghoul approaching. "What, where, what ghoul?". "Whoops, sorry, nothing. Forget I said anything there".

Tad off topic but how many copies need to be bought for 4 players + dm?  is it just one? 

Only the game creator needs to have the module, they will then be able to invite players as per a normal game.

Masaioh said: What do the tokens look like?  Are the PC pregens the same face portrait tokens as in The Master's Vault? I haven't looked at the Master's Vault, however here is an example of two tokens for the pregens.

Savare said: Did you get a pdf of the campaign too.  Or do you already have to have it?   You do not get a pdf of the campaign, but as stated by Kristin  here , the contents of the module are broken out into well organized handouts that include flavor text, notes, and even some Roll20 specific notes.  It is easy to read and follow and has the added benefit of being able to quickly and easily copy and paste text into chat.

Smiler said: I actually like the NPC tokens not having the lighting view set up - as a DM it makes the light all weird so that I cannot actually tell what the PCs can see. The room looks well lit to me, but the players can only see a little bit. It leads to misunderstandings when I start talking about the ghoul approaching. "What, where, what ghoul?". "Whoops, sorry, nothing. Forget I said anything there". I used to think this way until I started setting up lighting, now if I see my players approaching monsters I will simply CTRL+L on the monster as they approach.  It takes a bit of a change in behavior, but actually works really well once you get used to the change in workflow.

Kevin said: I used to think this way until I started setting up lighting, now if I see my players approaching monsters I will simply CTRL+L on the monster as they approach.  It takes a bit of a change in behavior, but actually works really well once you get used to the change in workflow. I tend to use gm only aura for npcs instead of the dynamic lighting. Gives me the perspective but allows me to judge if a pc is sneaking up on a monster without having to unselect a token. On topic, very nice module that I will be converting to my preferred system.

Here are how the 4 acts of the adventure are organized.  It's also good to mention that all of the journal entries are cross-linked with clickable hyperlinks.  So when it mentions an NPC or a side-quest, you can click on the link, and it will open the related journal entry or character sheet. There are also handouts setup for showing pictures of all the major mobs. Ctrl+L is something to get used to, but once you're there, it really adds a lot to the game.  If only to quickly adjudicate sight-line issues between PCs and mobs. Here's an example of some of the dynamic lighting errors as mentioned in the announcement thread: The southernmost dead-end is properly closed off, but the 3 dead ends above it are not.  This map is also (unfortunately and annoyingly) a 10' gridded map.  Which unfortunately makes the entire map the wrong size. This is more of a nitpicky thing for me, here's what the map looks like for a player (using ctrl+L): I gave the elf 120' darkvision for this example.  So you can see the holes in the dead ends to the west and north.  The dynamic lighting lines in rough-hewn portions of the dungeon are good, they are slightly off-set from the actual wall.  But the hallways that match the grid have the lighting lines snapped to the grid, which means the players can't see the walls at all.  I generally try to off-set the lines even a little, so the players can see the artwork.  This has the downside of being slightly incorrect for sight-lines, but it improves the experience.

You can change the unit size on that map to 0.5 and shrink the tokens to fit. That would be the easiest way to use it to scale.

I just noticed up in your image that Cultist is spelled incorrectly.

SkyCaptainXIII said: You can change the unit size on that map to 0.5 and shrink the tokens to fit. That would be the easiest way to use it to scale. That might be the easiest way to rescale, but fiddling with the grid scale creates several more problems than it fixes. Token labels don't scale with token size, so now everyone has huge names that obscure the game. Token sight is agnostic to grid size, so you'll have to scale down the sight of every token on the map by 50%. Tokens will also be smaller, which makes most players have to zoom in to see what is going on.  For the above screenshot, I'm zoomed in almost all the way.  Map zoom is also consistent across maps, so you'll have to zoom back out again when you switch maps. Ed S. said: I just noticed up in your image that Cultist is spelt incorrectly. Indeed, I haven't changed anything from when I created the campaign.  I would imagine that updates would probably require creating a new version of the campaign from the module, after an update is pushed to the marketplace.  But I could be wrong.

Here's a quick-and-dirty rescale of the same map. (I'm writing this on my Surface Pro 4, which has 200% Windows UI scaling turned on, which tends to make Roll20 a little blurry to begin with.) I was able to drag the PC tokens and the Ochre Jelly right out and be immediately ready for play.  No need to rescale every token, no need to rescale every token's sight. Also some good news and bad news for those of us who will want to rescale the maps.  Kristen did all the hard work getting the maps lined up perfectly to the grid, so all I had to do was double the pixel dimensions of the map, and it worked perfectly.  The bad news is, it looks like the art assets aren't in my premium library, so I had to do a copy/paste to get the map into a new page.  Luckily that worked. That is a little disconcerting, because everything else I buy in the Marketplace is available for my other campaigns (though this is the first module I've bought on Roll20).

i just bought it but cant see where to access it.  I started a default campaign with it but it isnt showing up

David D. said: i just bought it but cant see where to access it.  I started a default campaign with it but it isnt showing up When you create a new campaign, there is the "Optional: Choose a Module" section on the right.  Choose the module you want to use.  Note that all of the modules on Roll20 are shown, regardless of which you've bought, but the ones you own (or are free) show a check mark when you hover over it.  Also make sure you set the Character Sheet to the "5th Edition (OGL by Roll20)" sheet.

Hello folks, I am pretty interested in this module and really appreciate hearing the thoughts of people who have experienced it first hand.I am in no hurry to start a run through of this module just yet as all my players are struggling through marching band camp at the moment. So far, no one has mentioned sound.I’m guessing that means that there is none included, but that I would be able to add it in the normal way? My players also prefer their tokens to be the “top down” kind as opposed to the circle portrait.Can I just link different tokens to the character/npc sheets? It looks like this module may have a couple of issues that are being fixed, but man, it’s perfect for someone like me who it would take forever to generate myself.Thanks for letting us know more about it. - Jeff

Jeff B. said: So far, no one has mentioned sound.I’m guessing that means that there is none included, but that I would be able to add it in the normal way? My players also prefer their tokens to be the “top down” kind as opposed to the circle portrait.Can I just link different tokens to the character/npc sheets? Hi Jeff . You guessed correctly on both questions. This module does not have any sounds in the Jukebox, but you can add sounds as normal in Roll20. For PC tokens, the GM can put new tokens on the tabletop (and relink them to the character sheets) to replace the included tokens. @ Andrew nice job on those example graphics and comparison of shrinking-the-tokens compared to stretching-the-map on the 10' maps!

Andrew said: The bad news is, it looks like the art assets aren't in my premium library, so I had to do a copy/paste to get the map into a new page.  Luckily that worked. That is a little disconcerting, because everything else I buy in the Marketplace is available for my other campaigns (though this is the first module I've bought on Roll20). That's a real shame, I hope that changes so we can use them in other campaigns without fuss. 

I've seen the posts stating the Mine map is the wrong scale (10' per square). If someone else hasn't posted about it yet, this same 'issue' also affects the map of Thundertree. Will a patched version of the campaign be made available?

The maps aren't the wrong scale... they were made by the artist at 10' per square.

I'm a new DM in training. I'm currently reading the Players Handbook and will be reading my copy of Lost Mines after that. What I'm wondering is if this module is a good buy for a new DM who wants to get up and running sooner than later?

It's an excellent Starter adventure for both DMs and players. I would recommend reading it first then move on to the hardcover books. 

Thanks to all who've posted info on this module. I bought the box set, Mike Schley's maps, imported a bunch of images, tokens, scans, etc into Roll20 in order to run this adventure previously (in person, with Roll20 as a visual aid).  I'm looking to run it again, online, in the near future and I'm thinking I'll buy this module just to get all of the ancillary stuff that (hopefully) comes along with it. On that note - can anyone give me some details on what's included with maps and macros?  Those are the two things that'd make buying this worth it for me, but I haven't seen any actual data on it.   For the macros - are things like weapons and wizard spells mapped to macros (for pre-gens and monsters) so it's just essentially button pushing?  How in depth are the macros? Do they cover most of what you're likely to need to roll, or do you find yourself manually inputting rolls for things?  If my players make their own characters, is there enough coverage in their for them to use pre-existing macros for spells and weapons or is it all going to be custom work again? As for maps - it looks like all of the major maps from the adventure are covered, but there are a few areas where there is no map in the published adventure, such as the first scene, 'Goblin Ambush', or a generic setting in Phandalin for a fight with the Redbrands (prior to raiding their lair).  Are there any maps for these situations or will it be a 'roll your own' for that?  I'm excited to try this first "official" adventure out, but I've already put a lot of work into making my own LMoP in Roll20, so just want to make sure I'm getting my money's worth with it (my Wave Echo Cave has no lighting bugs! ;)) Thanks!

You can likely find reviews of the adventure online but I can thoroughly recommend it as a good example of a classic D&D starting party adventure trope (it's not perfect as there are some logical holes here and there but they are easily worked around - particularly if you search online to find forums giving tips on how to run it). The module on roll20 is generally well set-up, I think it's a good buy. I bought it out of curiosity as I had already set-up my own Phandelver module and am unlikely to actually play it. That said I am likely going to buy Storm King as the time saving of having a playable module 90% ready to play is valuable to me (even though I prefer shaped sheet). It has all the maps set-up (both blank versions for players and complete ones for GMs as handouts), tokens ready to go (character sheets set-up for the enemies using the Roll20 5th Edition OGL sheet) and images for the monsters. It also includes handout play notes for each section, notable NPCs (with the 5 demo PCs also set-up) . Essentially everything in the printed module and more is setup in electronic form. It has weapons and spells set-up using the compendium as far as I can see (I haven't checked them all). You can check the functionality yourself using the compendium/5th Edition SRD in a custom module... they are not as functional as lovingly crafted Shaped Character Sheet macros created by someone technical but they are generally functional (certainly enough to play without modification IMO, traits etc. are done as text notes rather than macros). This applies both to the PCs and Monsters. The only real criticism I have is that the maps that are drawn with 10' squares have the tokens sized as if they were actually 5' squares, which is a little annoying considering the price of the module (I hope this will be fixed, as while you could fix it yourself, it seems wrong for every buyer to have to do it separately as it is a paid module). It only contains the maps in the printed book so you likely will need to add your own where they don't have them in the book (Goblins, Phandalin combat encounter and some of the Act 3 ones). I would also aim to add some static images/maps to have as background for RP scenes (i.e. in the inn, temple etc.) - but that's a matter of taste.

Well... there's quite a lot wrong with Phandelver. Particularly encounter design and npc motivations in Wave Echo Cave. I don't want to spoil it for players... but it's bad. If you decide to run Phandelver, do a little googling around for ways others have improved it.

Any chance things like the incorrect scaling on Wave Echo Cave (it's 10'/square, so every token is twice as big as it ought to be!) and dynamic lighting issues being fixed in a "patch"? I had tinkered previously with adapting this module in particular to Roll20, and a big reason I set aside my previous work was because I expected the maps to be properly scaled and aligned with the grid and set up for dynamic lighting.

Morgan G. said: Any chance things like the incorrect scaling on Wave Echo Cave (it's 10'/square, so every token is twice as big as it ought to be!) and dynamic lighting issues being fixed in a "patch"? I had tinkered previously with adapting this module in particular to Roll20, and a big reason I set aside my previous work was because I expected the maps to be properly scaled and aligned with the grid and set up for dynamic lighting. The map was drawn by the artist at 10 ft per square. Doubling its size causes quite a big degradation of image quality.