A bunch of questions ....

Howdy, We have a game that goes back to the 70's. (not joking) It is d20 3.5 We have large number of custom classes and prestige classes. Some special spells, and of course treasures. We have adapted alot from Eberron and Arduin, a number of custom races including zabrak and jawas, even the chak. (Big spider people) Currently, we have our players spread out across 5 states, and in our current state, some out of reasonable driving range. Can we do all this here? And game online together? Bob

That's what my friends and I do.  We started gaming online when we all moved to different states and it's been great. Roll20 is the best VTT we've found for our group, so...yes, it's doable.

Thank you.  I did see how it connected the players, so I guess I didn't ask well, but I'm trying to see if we can make custom classes and races.  Dragon marks from eberron, Ruby Spiders from Spelljammer, and Phraints from Arduin.  Custom spells and items.  Silly example but the kids love harry potter, so our mages don't use books, but rather wands with different spell stones on them, and mana that says what they can do at a time and how many a day, so we would need 2 custom stats on a character sheet, and so on.  I've been reviewing gaming systems all night, and so far, I like this best for phone & tablet support alone.  And I don't mind long hours making the stuff, if I can actually do it.  Can we make that work here?

Based on what you describe above, character sheets seems like it would be the most tricky.  There's a 3.5 character sheet, but it won't have your custom stats.  Having said that, when this VTT was originally conceived, there were not character sheets, and everything was just done with generic attributes.  I ran a Cyberpunk campaign that way, before there was a community created character sheet, and it worked fine. Phone and tablet support is, in my opinion, limited, but your experience may vary. After you've tried it for a while, if you feel the need for more customization, you can upgrade to plus to be able to use dynamic lighting or pro, and if you can do html programming, you can create your own custom character sheet. As to the specifics of all the things you want to do, it can all be done, and there are multiple ways of managing things.  The best way I found to learn is to do exactly what you're doing.  Ask questions.  Also, check out the wiki , you may find some helpful information there. Happy Gaming!

And Woot!  Right, getting the sub wasn't a problem, if we could do what we were trying to.  And it sounds like we got that covered.  Custom Character Sheets.  :)  Got it.  But I have to learn HTML.  ....  Not the only thing I've had to learn over the years to play this game of ours.  Thanks for the input.  I'll start sending out stuff to players, and you should hear more from us over the coming months.  :)

Congrats on having a game that survived the decades. Just a slight clarification about what Gozer mentioned. Gozer the Gozerian said: After you've tried it for a while, if you feel the need for more customization, you can upgrade to plus to be able to use dynamic lighting or pro, and if you can do html programming, you can create your own custom character sheet . Custom character sheets are a pro level subscription feature not a plus level. Other than that Gozer got it pretty well covered.

To add to the custom character sheet point; you can take one of the existing community sheets, like the 3.5 sheet, and modify (customize) to your heart's content for use in your own game as a Pro. That's what I've done several times in my games. Just keep version copies of what you are working on and if you mess up; go back to a version that still worked for you. My players and I graduated from players emailing the character sheets, to Google Docs, to using  Myth-Weavers for character sheets. (I have players to this day refuse to use the built in character sheets for whatever reason, to each their own!) Pro also gives you lots of other features that come in handy. The api scripting perk opens up a huge amount of potential on manipulating the game, tokens, sheets, etc. Using scripts like Recursive Table and Import Table allow you to easily import any random table generation you want into your game.  

Congrats. I also came to Roll20 to "reunite the old gang". We too go back to the 70's. I started with the three little brown books. :) So absolutely is it possible. Please note that even if you do use an existing character sheet, you can still add attributes outside of that on the Attributes and Abilities tab. It's a little clunky, but you could add a "Mana" attribute for instance and refer to it in macros and such. It just wouldn't display on the main character sheet, and you could do it at the Free level. If you get your toes wet and find you like it, there is soooo much more you can do with a subscription.

You don't have  to digitize every aspect of your game. Players can keep using their paper character sheets. Why not? You don't have  to put all your stats into a Character in the Journal. Just put whichever ones are related to Abilities and Macros you care about. You were content to work out for yourselves whether an attack was successful when you were playing around a physical table; you don't need  Roll20 to do those calculations for you.

Roll20 becomes very simple to use then, since you only need to deal with maps and tokens. You would need to have bare-bones character sheets just to determine who has control of which token, and could keep a reference copy of a "hand-written" character sheet in the bio section if you wanted. This level would not require any sort of subscription.

Until I authored the Basic Fantasy rpg sheet I used the Bios tab in the journals as a simulated character sheet. I put in all the needed info then just created my attributes and the macros in the Attributes and macro tab. I did this for many years before and after the community sheets came into being. I still do it for some games as I prefer letting everyone see my character sheet which can't be done unless everyone in the game can control and edit the sheet.

You can start out using the table top for maps, tokens and rolling dice and still use your own paper character sheet and build from there. After all the most import thing is to getting together and play and this let you do that. Below is a quick macro to roll dice it will ask you how many, then ask type, then ask any modifies. example type 1 enter 20 enter 5 enter will roll a 1d20+5 and you can add any number you want. 1d22 1d100 1d54 anything. [[?{How Many Dice Rolled?}d?{Dice Type}+?{Any Modifiers?}]]

Craven . said:  Below is a quick macro to roll dice it will ask you how many, then ask type, then ask any modifies. example type 1 enter 20 enter 5 enter will roll a 1d20+5 and you can add any number you want. 1d22 1d100 1d54 anything. [[?{How Many Dice Rolled?}d?{Dice Type}+?{Any Modifiers?}]] Nice. That's much cleaner that what I've been using for those random dice rolls that just don't fit anywhere else. Thanks, @Craven.

Rat's Workshop said: Craven . said:  Below is a quick macro to roll dice it will ask you how many, then ask type, then ask any modifies. example type 1 enter 20 enter 5 enter will roll a 1d20+5 and you can add any number you want. 1d22 1d100 1d54 anything. [[?{How Many Dice Rolled?}d?{Dice Type}+?{Any Modifiers?}]] Nice. That's much cleaner that what I've been using for those random dice rolls that just don't fit anywhere else. Thanks, @Craven. your welcome. you can add it to a template and /w GM  /w GM &{template:npcaction} {{name=}} {{rname=Request Dice Roll}} {{description=[[?{How Many Dice Rolled?}d?{Dice Type}+?{Any Modifiers?}]]}} Also like this macro Whisper GM for the players /w GM &{template:npcaction} {{name=@{Selected|character_name}}} {{rname=Private Message from Player}} {{description=?{Message:}}} Whisper Player ( you select there token ) /w @{selected|token_name} &{template:npcaction} {{name=@{Selected|character_name}}} {{rname=Important Message from GM}} {{description=?{Message:}}}