Roll20 in face to face gaming

So my face to face group has agreed we are going to use roll20 for our face to face game. If it goes well ans does not feel in the way then we will use it often. Our plan is to lay a 27" monitor down on its back and load up roll20 instead of useing google earth for our maps. I have used google earth and a projector with our other group, but projectors can be noisy and google earth does not let you move player icons that track end, stun and body use. So have any of you tried it, does it work well face to face were everyone has to share a mouse?

I see it more appropriate for a tablet, but I've not yet tried it on a tablet...anyway as long as it doesn't detract from the game it should be fine...in theory.

There has been a few people that use roll20 for their face to face game and they usually had a laptop for the gm and have a flatscreen tv on the wall for the group with another computer hooked up to it. The group would deal with their minis while the gm worked with his laptop. There are old posts about it.

I do it. Laptop and flat screen. Good for maps but it does distract otherwise. I limit the use because of this.

Metroknight said: There has been a few people that use roll20 for their face to face game and they usually had a laptop for the gm and have a flatscreen tv on the wall for the group with another computer hooked up to it. The group would deal with their minis while the gm worked with his laptop. There are old posts about it. My group does something similar, where the GM has a world-map or general purpose display up on flatscreen, and everyone has their own laptop so they can manage their own macros and GM messages. This makes combat faster and everything run rather smoothly, but I would only recomend this setup to veteran parties where you know your players aren't going to do their social networking and video streaming during lulls.

Oh man, Roll20 and Chromecast sounds like an awesome idea! I have to try this!

Kristin C. said: I got a Chomecast specifically for the purpose of using someone's widescreen TV for real life games. So how does Chrome cast perform?

Kristin, I am new to Roll20, but have used MapTools in exactly the same fashion as you are talking about. What I did was plug in Five wired mice to a USB hub and my laptop. Windows will allow any USB mouse to control the same cursor, we didn't have to pass the mouse around that way. I have also used a projector on the wall as well as a TV. the problem with the wall mount is people end up focusing on the screen instead of you. If you have time and ingenuity, you can make a setup using the tv on its back, a Wii remote and an IR pen. Then, your players can use your TV as a touch screen. Or yu can build an FTIR table (Frustrated Total Internal Reflection), think of it as a table top with the projector underneath a semitransparent screen and the same wii remote/webcam setup as I already mentioned. The Wii mote setup costs less than $30 dollars and the software is free. I digress. I found the face to face application of a VTT to be very useful. It eliminates the cost of miniatures and speeds up game play, We ended up using real dice though because it just "felt right,"

Here is one persons take on the Wii-mote table top. VTT Face to Face

I have found when I connect took many mice to the same computer does wierd stuff. Did you have to do something to avoid cursor flicker?

That is a cool set up.

Hmm... I don't remember any flicker in the cursor. Back then we were running vista (yuck). We did have a few episodes of "who's moving the token" but that was from the surface the table was made out of. Fixed that with rolled out brown paper. I have always wanted to build the wiki mote table, but my wife won't let me geek that hard.

this could work wonders with a smartboard.

I have ~6 players and myself (DM), all in face to face (my mates shed), and we use roll 20 for our game. Basically everyone just has their own laptop or tablet. We all log into the server via my mates wifi at his house - and that's that. Works a treat. Also - this way - if someone cannot make it - they can remote in from home. Roll20 has changed our PnP game forever. Thankyou Devs !