Please excuse my ignorance, but is this playable/viable for in-house games?

Here's a little backstory to explain my question. I have 4 other friends interested in playing a D&D Homebrew, and maps have always been an issue. My immediate use for this program would be for on screen gaming with all the players in the same room. The players would be controlled from one laptop, and I would GM from my own personal laptop. We would connect through the local wifi and use Roll20 for the majority of the combat/exploration. My refined question is: Can all players be controlled from one pc? Thank you for your help and making this an awesome community to assist me :)

Mark A. said: My refined question is: Can all players be controlled from one pc? Yes, as long as the GM account assigns control of all PCs in Roll20 to the one player account that will be logged in from their laptop.

Awesome! The next question that arises is, Would that allow for turn taking/rounds? Or would it be considered one big round?

Unfortunately, I will have to defer to someone else around here smarter than me on that topic, since I don't use the turn tracker in my own games.

each token on the screen would receive its own initiative round, no matter who's controlling it. There's really only two issues you'll run into with a All Player controlled setup: - Line of Sight if you're using dynamic lighting will show everyone's LoS at the same time instead of per-token (I THINK) - Chat Window; you'll have a very awkward time with the chat window drop-down menu to make the rolls appear from the correct person. This can be avoided by using Token Actions to do your rolling (even if just a plain [[ 1d20 + ?{Modifier?|0} ]] or using physical dice to roll.

Mark A. said: Awesome! The next question that arises is, Would that allow for turn taking/rounds? Or would it be considered one big round? Each character gets its own entry in the turn tracker - which can be added by anyone with control (i.e. the player running the laptop) - so, yes you'd be able to get use out of the turn tracker. In my own games, I have players who control one main character and associated henchmen and they are able to add everyone to the turn tracker assuming the permissions are set up correctly. Depending on the size of your party, that may wind up being a lot of work for one person though.

Excellent. Thank you all so much

I use Roll20 for an in-person campaign at my place. If you can swing it, I think you'll want to try to get everyone on their own device. I have three players on laptops and two on tablets, all sitting around my place. If you're already going to be on R20, there's some significant advantages to everyone having their own screen - which is, of course, how R20 was designed to be used. Line-of-Sight is the probably the biggest factor; it's one of R20's best features & that's going to be completely nullified by using one computer for all players. Having customized macros for each PC is nice, too - you could have that using just one device, but the trouble is 3-8 players crunched around one computer keyboard+mouse. I think each player's ability to use the R20 functionality is going to be pretty limited with the bodies/keyboard-mouse ratio. You're not really going to be able to use PC character sheets on R20, again because one player can't check his sheet on the screen if 2-7 other players are sharing that screen. Using R20 character sheets is nice because that's where the macros pull information from. I can understand being hesitant to tell your players, "Bring a laptop or tablet that'll run Chrome, Firefox or Safari"...but I would suggest that's what you're going to want to do or at least work towards...and, of course, you can help try to borrow one or something for the session. I borrow one laptop for one player to use that doesn't have anything to bring. My two cents

Sean P. said: My two cents I really appreciate the suggestion, and i think im going to try this. I have a laptop and so does the host player. Then, they all have smartphones (are they practical or too small?) and then between them, one more laptop and 2 tablets (one is a kindle fire, and the other is a google tablet). Here's to hoping they work on all of them :D Side question: I may be willing to buy a basic machine that can run the webapp, but would anyone be able to point me in the direction of such a device?

Get any cheap PC. A chromebook can work. A chromebook with chromecast to broadcast to a tv. <a href="https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/32895" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/32895</a>... <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/chromebook" rel="nofollow">https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/chromebook</a>... Use a main laptop as DM to run things and let the PCs use the chromebook for their tokens. That way you see on your laptop only what a DM should see and they get the player view on a flat-screen TV. Works for me.

Look around for NetBooks. Really small laptops with not a lot of power but generally run a regular operating system like Windows 7. I wouldn't rely on a Chrome Book or anything running android, given compatibility requirements. Acer makes a cheapo netbook for $300'ish or so. You can also hit up friends/ebay/amazon/craigslist for used laptops, but that of course has its own dangers.

My concern with netbooks and simpler laptops is, would the webapp be too heavy for the simple technology? I say this from an experience. I was trying out the preloaded free module and it took forever to load the map and tokens and such. Could it have been the internet connection instead?

It's a webpage. The system resources needed to load a page are generally quite mild. It was more likely an internet connection issue as they're FAR more noticable when there's an issue.

Mark G. said: It's a webpage. The system resources needed to load a page are generally quite mild. It was more likely an internet connection issue as they're FAR more noticable when there's an issue. Thats great to hear, I was worried my mac wasnt enough o_O