I ran an adventure on Tuesday night North American time at which we had several of the active beta testers playing characters, and therefore seeing Roll20 from the other side of the virtual table. I ran the game to produce those experiences, and am starting this discussion to get them reported, so essentially this discussion is for Deightine, Kage, and John Stapleton to report on the game in.
From my point of view the game didn't run very well, but I think that that was down to the players being unfamiliar with the system (ForeSight), the setting (my rationalised-planetary-romance setting Flat Black), and my GMing style (which requires more pro-active initiative from the character-players than anyone was accustomed to). That all showed promise to improve quickly, I thought. Another problem was that one of the players, playing the boss character, was a no-show, so the various investigators didn't have the Gibb-figure to report their discoveried to and thus reveal them. That isn't Roll20's fault.
We also had the usual trouble with a slight lag upsetting the verbal cues as to when someone has stopped speaking and it is someone else's opportunity to speak. That gets better with practice so long a lag is manageable. In any case tht isn't something tht the Roll20 developers can do much about, either.
I drew sketch maps with a paint package, saved them as .png files, and uploaded them with surprising ease and speed. Diagramming with the built-in drawing tool was awkward but not too bad.
The scenario I ran was heavily prepared with text handouts—more than I normally would for a single session, but to an extent I might easily get to in a continuing campaign. Including character sheets, equipment lists, background briefings, reports of autopsy findings, reconstructed timelines, summaries of research findings, and so forth I had thirty-seven to handle and the character-players typically had ten. We, really, really needed better organisation and handling of handouts.
And at the end of this over-long introduction I hand you over to Deightine, Kage, and John Stapleton.
From my point of view the game didn't run very well, but I think that that was down to the players being unfamiliar with the system (ForeSight), the setting (my rationalised-planetary-romance setting Flat Black), and my GMing style (which requires more pro-active initiative from the character-players than anyone was accustomed to). That all showed promise to improve quickly, I thought. Another problem was that one of the players, playing the boss character, was a no-show, so the various investigators didn't have the Gibb-figure to report their discoveried to and thus reveal them. That isn't Roll20's fault.
We also had the usual trouble with a slight lag upsetting the verbal cues as to when someone has stopped speaking and it is someone else's opportunity to speak. That gets better with practice so long a lag is manageable. In any case tht isn't something tht the Roll20 developers can do much about, either.
I drew sketch maps with a paint package, saved them as .png files, and uploaded them with surprising ease and speed. Diagramming with the built-in drawing tool was awkward but not too bad.
The scenario I ran was heavily prepared with text handouts—more than I normally would for a single session, but to an extent I might easily get to in a continuing campaign. Including character sheets, equipment lists, background briefings, reports of autopsy findings, reconstructed timelines, summaries of research findings, and so forth I had thirty-seven to handle and the character-players typically had ten. We, really, really needed better organisation and handling of handouts.
And at the end of this over-long introduction I hand you over to Deightine, Kage, and John Stapleton.