Visuals for Non-Combat or Non-Encounter Situations

Hey, 20-Rollers. A question here that seems like it could be on the border between On-Topic and Off-Topic. Move as necessary, oh, ye powerful mods. So, I have literally never played any RPG in person. I got my friends and myself started with RPGs so that we could play on Roll20 as a way to hang out together after we all moved apart. But I gather that, usually, you only break out the maps and miniatures when your characters enter combat. Otherwise, you just talk. That sounds great to me, but then I don't know what to do with the main Roll20 window. Leave up the last combat map? Seems distracting. I have experimented with putting up a sort of "slide" to indicate the setting. What I mean is: if my players are in a dark alley, I find a picture of an alley on Google Image, and drag it all the way across the Map Layer of a page on Roll20. This mostly just frustrates me, because the image only ever approximates the scene I'm trying to set, and therefore it distracts my players from the scene I'm creating verbally. Plus, since we're all new to pen-and-papering, my players are super spoiled. I can tell that they sort of expect to always have a token to move around on a map, because that feels more like a video game. Obviously, that's way to much freaking work. I'm considering always having a page in all my campaigns that's basically a slide that says: "You are currently not in combat. Please Play some Roles." Then, I'll switch to it when a real-life game would put the miniatures aside and just talk. Basically, the power of Roll20 is actually making my life harder. Since I have the ability to put a visual in front of my players, I sort of feel obliged to do so all the time. How do you handle that, fellow GMs?

I think the answer depends on the player you have and what they enjoy doing. You've said they sort of expect to have their character icons to push around on the map. But you don't have the time or inclination to create a full-blown, tactical-detailed "scene" for every situation in your game. As a compromise, you could use the drawing tools to roughly sketch out those scenes that don't necessarily involve combat. That lets the players push the icons around on the map board but you don't have to spend a lot of time working on it.

get different players that are not steeped in 3.5 and pathfinder. I often have the blank grid up. the RP is in the story, not the gridded squares of move action, swift action, and standard action. All of that is the wargame mechanic. When I ran traveller here, i'd use the board for info such as a map to the planet system. Or a pic of the planet. When we'd do encounters, I'd have a sort of rough sketch map of the place done in photoshop, and no tokens, nothing like that, just basically outdoor black and white buildings and rubble. a letter J for a player char named John, and arrows drawn by player as to where he wants to move. A letter Z for a guy named Zeke, his arrows. Bad guys i made dots on the screen. Nobody bitched. It's roleplaying, just like the old days. Someone wants a better map, tell him, "You draw it." When we do a fight, i mostly just describe it, all of that break out the minis stuff, breaks the game down into wargame, not story. Thus a 5 minute fight takes 2 hours. Recall those days of minis without a PC, oh tonight we'll have a battle no RP just battle. I like to summarize scenes, and make it one die roll when possible. I'm moving more toward stuff like savage worlds. Definitely would not try to run something like 4e here, too much work.

Like James says, the players have access to the drawing tools too. Nothing says they can't help you create the picture, if they really want to have something to move their icons around on.

Jake E. said: That sounds great to me, but then I don't know what to do with the main Roll20 window. Leave up the last combat map? Some GMs make a landing page or "splash" page with background information, character pictures, information or the like. I'll throw one from an old Fate Core game up at the end of the post. I tend to keep the world map up when things are out of a dungeon or other combat likely location. I am going to be stealing the "You are currently not in combat..." for my next session though. If I can find a relevant image of a location, I will show it to the players if it increases immersion. I've been experimenting with layering character images over the location images in more of an animated or comic book style encounter rather than a top down combat encounter, but sometimes it's too much work for not enough reward.

James: I don't think I'm ready to go that old school! I like having some visuals for my players, and I like to make them nice when I can. The problem is that I'm competing with the totally visualized adaptations of D&D they are familiar with: video games like Knights of the Old Republic. Dave: I think I'm leaning toward having a splash page too, using scene-setting images only when they're really exactly what I want. Your Fate splash page looks really great. Tell me what's going on there: Are those each of the game's PCs with a couple of their stats being tracked? That might be perfect: something that's important to the game but allows players to focus on the roleplaying.

If they're expecting Knights of the Old Republic, then grab screenshots from it left and right. I use the Sims 3 to pull screenshots from all the time. Stealing from video games works pretty well since it's already on your computer. For the page, that's each player with their Fate Points displayed as tokens that I can add to or take off as needed. Below that, it tracks the amount of mental and physical stress each character has available. When a player takes a consequence (as Enzo has, above), I changed the token's name to reflect the severity and name of the consequence.

Splash pages are the way to go. There was a thread on this recently . Jake E. said: I'm considering always having a page in all my campaigns that's basically a slide that says: "You are currently not in combat. Please Play some Roles." Then, I'll switch to it when a real-life game would put the miniatures aside and just talk. Since you're new to TTRPGs, you might like to read this guide . Good luck and welcome to the hobby!

Try Headhunter's suggestion. You can make a splash page. Some things that can go on the splash page could be the World Map, and a Roster or Portraits of characters and non-player characters. James J, do you ever read the 1st post on this forum before typing your response? You seem to be on quite a roll lately with the contradictory advice in the forums. Jake said he started on Roll20 as a way to play games and communicate with his friends in other places. It's quite weird to suggest he ditch his friends. That is no solution to what he asked for.

Bah. Yes, I read it. I'll just start a new thread for my response, because I fear to the core of my soul of being off-topic. In a forum labeled, (oh my, the irony!) Off-Topic. Merry Christmas.