Last night I had a couple of friends into Roll20 to play a small test game I set up using 4E. While we will not use 4E in my next campaign, at least not to start, its a rule system we are all familiar with. Apparently an innkeeper had a rat problem in his basement. It was a complete success. In the short term we are only going to add one more person from our pool of friends because role playing over Ventrillo introduces its own challenges, but I hope to add a 4th from my pool of RPG pals eventually. I have some work to do and some things I need to improve but the concept won over my players. I learned a lot of things. I need to spend more time working with light sources. I thought I knew how that worked but in practice it didn't pan the way I wanted in play. I learned I need to have character tokens available on every map. They don't move with the bookmark. One thing I improvised on the fly the players loved was throwing down blood decals after each kill. I also learned to put those on the map layer to avoid selecting problems during play. I am going to set up a sheet with multiple blood splatters that will randomly select. The players loved the ambient loops. I had a tavern sound upstairs.. then when they went to the basement I brought the tavern sound low so it sounded "upstairs" and added a creaky creepy dungeon track. I wish I could have found chittering sounds. I will work on that more. I wish they did not pause when they end their loop. The players were less concerned with the snapping issues then I was. I still wish I could turn off snapping but retain the grid but they are ok with using alt. Of course, they only have one token to move.. Using a yellow marker for "wounded" and a red marker for "bloodied" worked well in lieu of a health bar on mobs. The players loved their health bars. They felt it built more excitement then dry numbers. I need to brew a session Ale for this game. My Rye IPA was a little to big to keep me steady through a three hour session. Unfortunately with the Pats progressing through the playoffs the nice sessionable pale ale I had brewed up is almost gone. Its truly enjoyable on a Friday night to sit at my desk, RPG with my friends, be able to enjoy the fruits of my brewing hobby, and not have to drive anywhere . All in all.. a great time with more to come. I have a lot of things I need to improve but not to shabby for a first run. Regards, Chris one other thing.. the 3D dice really add drama. Everyone held their breath as the die almost tipped over to the 20.. its very cool that we all see the same simulation..
