Old Hippie needing some help getting started for 5E

High hello and thanks for thinking of helping me,  I have been playing 5e by book and paper for a few years now and just finally finished my PC build. And now here I am... ready to get it started here on ROLL 20!! I'm excited and just slightly over whelmed with the tutorials and self help videos that are provided over the Forums. I am hoping to meet a few people that might be able to assist me over Discord or however I can receive it.    I will ask you to have a little patience with me and I might even ask for you to assist me with my first couple sessions, but I figured that might take a month before I might be prepared. I want to take my time so I can give my players the best experience that I can sooo this doesn't have to be a RUSHED help. No hippie can absorb the knowledge of others while being rush...i just made that up.. anyways thanks again for stopping and debating helping Laugh Smoke Love and Adventure as much as you can while you can  Z

Don't forget also, there are dozens upon dozens of tutorials on youtube for everything Roll20, so you can learn independently if you so choose! Roll20 has a learning curve and has had one since day 1, and the community has fulfilled the need for instruction in its use quite well.

I appreciate the response and please believe me when I stated that I have gone over many many Tutorials, and yet it still seems to be over whelming. Others might understand this but I will continue to go over the MANY videos, but it doesn't take the place of a one on one with specific questions or directions at times. Thank you again Teller Pro

Folks here are pretty helpful. Feel free to ask any question you might have. Probably the best method is to ask a specific question in a thread with a subject that gives some indication of the problem, like "My tokens all have the same hit points" or similar. That will help catch they eye of the help-giving part of the community. Also you can try the roll20 reddit or its discord if you need more help. (Discord invite is on the front page of the Reddit, IIRC). Finally, here's the welcome blurb I used to give back when I was a moderator. There's lots of useful links in there. First off: Welcome to Roll20! If you are looking to dive on in I would recommend  against  taking the tutorial. It  is very old and out of date, and at some point it  will  break. My suggestion is to check out the  Learning Roll20  Course on Youtube, or my own video,  Starting from Scratch .  Additionally, starting your own test game to play with different features and controls is a great way of getting used to the software and layout! If you are ready to jump into some adventures, check out the  Looking For Group Tool  and  Looking for Group Forum  daily for games that may be of interest to you. Also, be sure to fill out your  User Profile ! Your "Bio" is where you have a chance to catch a GM's eye with a well-written statement about yourself The "Enjoys Playing" section is important for two reasons: Every entry you put here is a data-point for  The Orr Group Industry Report  of games being played, and it lets other people looking at your profile know a bit more about you The "Actively Seeks Group For" section is where you can add yourself to the  Player Directory  for systems you want to play We also have a  wiki  and a  Help Center  where you can find answers to a lot of your questions! However, if you can't find an answer, feel free to post in our  various sub-forums  based on their particular topics. Completely new to Role-Playing Games? Check out our  Introduction to Tabletop RPGs  wiki page. Good luck (and loot) on your adventures!

It's easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information, tools, products, etc. that can be used with Roll20. The main thing I would suggest as a new DM on Roll20 is don't think that you have to master it all before you can start. Have just enough in place to get started with your players, and work from there. I've been running a campaign on Roll20 for years and, to be honest, my DM prep is never more than a couple of game sessions ahead of my players. But it always works out in the end.

Don't try to learn everything at once , just get you game started using a single roll20 feature first. Do paper sheets do physical dice rolls share images, handouts & text on discord, or whatever is easiest do GMing otherwise like you'd do in a face-to-face game. Maybe just start Roll20 as a simple battlemap, and the in-game Text Chat occasionally. Just because roll20 have many features, doesn't mean you have to use all of them. Then, as you get more comfortable, start migrating one aspect of DMing at a time to Roll20, when you feel you can handle using more features of Roll20. You can ask/let the players learn some things for themselves , and let them use those when they can. And just bc your player uses the roll20 sheets doesn't mean you need to use them. Character Sheets :  you can just assign character sheets your players , and let them figure that out if/when they want, they can then later help you out with learning the basics Dice Rolling /The Chat: Let the players do dice rolls on roll20 if they want, and let them figure out dice rolling for themselves. If you have assigned players Char Sheets, they can figure out dice rolling from sheets, which can speed up gameplay both for them, and later for you. Remember you can fall back on using traditional GMing methods at times even if you had started using a Roll20 feature for the purpose . I.e, if it's quicker for you to roll a few physical dice and count the result yourself, than to figure out exactly how to use roll20 for it, do so.

Andreas J,  Thank you Kind Adventurer!! You have simplified this all SOO much for me, I don't know why I didn't think about this to begin with?! I really think that I was gunning towards going "full Roll20" and was getting way to much information and just wasn't knowing where to begin... But as I sit here looking at all my Hard copy books, dice, the Camera, discord working on the monitor, well I feel a little silly and excited that this is going to be a lot smoother now. Thank you for showing me the path that I have always been on, this will make it an easy transition. 

Really good advice, Andreas. That's actually how I started too, now that I think back.