AMA - Ask Me Anything - March 4th, 2025

Hi everyone, the next installment of Roll20's  series of monthly AMAs kicks off tomorrow, right here in this thread. With these events, we're looking to provide transparent answers to your questions, details about what we're building (and not) and why, and take suggestions about how we can improve your games.  We are now live and taking questions, and will be sharing answers from questions that were submitted to our team anonymously prior to the start of this session. Update: thank you for participating! We'll hopefully see you again next month - we'll share details about time and location soon. 

anonymous said: Will you be adding counters to the new sheets? I really miss them! Yes! This is a highly requested feature that we’re excited to get into the sheet. We’re currently doing work to get ammo tracking and consumable tracking onto the sheet as a first phase of this, but general trackers to keep count of anything you’d like will follow thereafter. No ETAs at the moment as we’re focused on wrapping up our bug smashing as a first priority, and then a few of our highest requested features are up next (macros & token actions, an alternate full screen view for Spells, and Custom Options in the builder). 

Anonymous: There are many niche games i'd love to run, but there aren't character sheets for them. I lack the skills to create character sheets. Can Roll20 implement an 'easy character sheet maker'? Although Roll20 provides over 1200 character sheets (many of which were created by the community) it’s possible that smaller or more niche games don’t have one available. Before Roll20 began creating our own sheets, years after the tabletop launched, players used Attributes and Abilities to keep track of stats and make rolls. While this doesn’t enable everything available to sheet authors, you can definitely play many games that aren’t supported with sheets with this workaround.

Anonymous: Would you consider a streamer mode of sorts so that DMs can navigate through spoilers without then appearing on stream? Things like being on twitch or even discord call, and designated NPC names/enemy stats not appearing in the video feed for other players. We definitely see the use case for this, but to be transparent, it’s difficult to prioritize against the stuff we’re shipping that improves quality-of-life for ALL players, and not just streamers. We are investigating potential solutions that have a smaller developmental lift, and if we can crack one of those, we’d happily provide this sooner than later. If your players are in a Discord call with you, they can now join the VTT natively without opening a separate web browser, and you can grant them selective access to NPC names/stats. If that’s not tenable, one popular workaround for this is to invite a separate “observer account” to your game that is selectively granted view/edit permissions to specific tokens, and stream from that account.

Anonymous: Will there be a point where we are able to make custom compendium for games that aren't as popular? I would love to be able to have a drag-and-drop option for some of the game systems I enjoy.  Anonymous: As GM, can i please have the ability to create my own interactable compendium for my games? The interactions between compendium data and character sheets are not only complex, but fairly unique for each game system. That makes it difficult to convert the data from books to a format ready to be used on the virtual tabletop, especially in a drag-and-drop application. I’m hopeful that we can support custom compendium entries for many of the Official Roll20 sheets. Regarding custom compendiums, I’m equally excited about exploring what the Demiplane team might be able to cook up with the integration of the Virtual Tabletop and a Nexus - although to be transparent, we’re not sure yet what we can promise there in regards to drag-and-drop functionality because of limitations with how browsers work. I don’t know how to support games that aren’t as popular, but am curious: what systems are you most hoping to see expanded functionality for?

Anonymous said: When will you guys improve the reading experience of the web compendium on the roll20? It is just horrible and outright outdated. Please make something more modern and pleasant to read, like the one on Demiplane, Alchemy or D&D Beyond.  Hey there! We announced last week that in the Alpha Phase of the Demiplane Integration , games with Cross Platform Sync can be read on Demiplane! For D&D 2024, we redesigned the Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Compendium last year to make reading and finding your content easier, implemented an uplifted navigation system and an overall cleaner experience, and currently have even more work in progress which will let you read through the Monster Manual more like you’re reading an actual book. What systems specifically are you hoping to see improvements for? Do you have specific asks in mind, regarding the types of uplift that would most positively impact your reading experience? 

Anonymous: As a Pro member GM with lots of marketplace purchases in multiple game lines, what are you doing to make it easier for GMs to create games, find and use purchased material, and streamline the GM experience? We’ve made some improvements to the My Marketplace page in the past few months, but we would love to get to do more. We, as employees, feel this deeply, because of how many marketplace items are unlocked on our admin accounts. Like most things on our wishlist: the timing here all comes down to prioritization based on impact, scope of development work needed, and balancing with other improvements and feature development.

Oginme said: Hi All! What steps are being taken to ensure that incidents like what happened yesterday with the loss of data from the 2024 character sheets does not happen again?  This was very costly to me in terms of work and time which vanished when I needed to roll back two of my campaigns. I want to apologize again on behalf of Roll20 for yesterday’s incident. We know this has been frustrating. In the last 12 hours, we’ve already added an ‘emergency brake’ that prevents sheet errors from deleting character data. Today, additional work to fortify the D&D 2024 sheet is being reviewed and tested thoroughly. And going forward, we are implementing stricter processes for code releases. Data loss issues are unacceptable, and we are committed to preventing them in the future. Our rollback feature allows users to revert to a previously saved VTT game. It's now available to all users (regardless of subscription status) until March 25th. 

Anonymous said:  When will new Character Sheets DnD 2024 support custom classes? It is rendered useless if I want to play a class that I haven't bought on Roll20. Abe  said: Is there a timeline for getting custom options added to the dnd 2024 builder? This is the next thing on our roadmap after we wrap up our focus on smashing bugs! The team is currently working on finalizing the full requirements, so I don’t have an ETA yet, but should have one very soon! You’ll see support for custom species and background first, but class will follow quickly after.  This will be a new set of features compared to how Custom Classes are supported on the previous sheet. Previously, those options were just text and it limited your ability to level that character up with the Builder. We are working towards features that will give custom classes, backgrounds, and species a similar experience to using the Builder. Keep an eye on the blogs for the most up-to-date details.

Anonymous said: Has any progress been made on being able to add purchased modules to an existing game instead of having to make up a new one? This is on our radar, but is a tough nut to crack for a handful of reasons. Some of the barriers, like the performance impacts large modules can have on games, are being addressed with the recent improvements to the tabletop via Project Jumpgate. Besides that, there are outstanding problems to solve around the way certain products are configured at creation, the way they’re specialized to start new games, and how they’re sold on the Marketplace before we can enable Modules and Addons to share functionality. In the meantime, we do have some partners who will release their content in both formats, but for some of the reasons mentioned above, it's not always viable, or a perfect solution. 

Abe said: Also any updates on print to pdf for dnd 2024? Anonymous said: When will Save as PDF functionality be provided for D&D 2024? When are we expecting 2024 character sheets to start working for the mobile app? Save to PDF and Mobile app are definitely something I’m excited to tackle, but it won’t be until later in the year. For now, you can use the sheet on mobile via Roll20 Characters on your phone’s browser, be sure to swap to the ‘standard’ view as that has better mobile responsiveness. Our top priority at the moment is working on highly requested small features such as full support for macros/token actions, an alternate full screen view for spells on the PC sheet, Custom Options in the builder, ammo & other resource tracking, as well as some overall improvements to the UX of the sheet and builder.

Anonymous: As a GM with a lot of games and assets in Roll20, i DESPERATELY need a proper file management system so that i can, 1. easily see what art and other assets i have uploaded in a neat list, 2. See the file sizes, and file names (and easily change those names), 3. See which games each asset is used in, d. easily organise (e.g. folders), and delete (including mass delete) these assets. When can this massive quality of life improvement be provided by Roll20? Believe me, we feel your pain and really want this feature too (our accounts have access to all content, so selfishly I would love to see this happen!). For now, this isn’t something that we are actively working on, but all of those details would be great to add to the Suggestions & Ideas forum with a vote.  Suggestion

Anonymous said: Hello! Is there a chance to get some kind metric unit of measure for spells? I'm a DM from the EU and i would love to see and option to convert automatically to meters. In your Page Settings, under Scale, you can change the default measurement to several existing options (m, km, mi, in, cm, etc.). You’ll need to convert the grid cell distance manually… so, if you want meters, instead of 5ft, you’d use 1.524m, and then your measure tool will update to show your chosen settings.  Fun fact: you can also use a “custom” measurement if you don’t like the providence options, and you can even use emojis to represent distance. Check out our example measuring via hot dog . :)

Richard R. said: I expect that this has been asked before but are there any plans to allow DMs to add their own items, classes, spells etc to the compendium (specifically 5E) and then share that with their players to drag and drop onto their character sheets and use in the Charactermancer? Nevermind - I see you answered me 2 mins ago :) I really, really meant it when I say we really, really want to make this happen. The logic and systems that make drag-and-drop function to automatically update a character sheet require three different teams to coordinate the data structure, how the data is stored, and how the sheet processes the data. Turning that into an interface anyone can use is no short order.

Rob - Great Again  said: The new 2024 Character Sheets, how do i navigate back to the “edit” page. Where token/avatar and “controlled by” info is changed? It only pops up the initial time I create a character/NPC. There is an ‘edit’ button in the top right corner of the sheet window that will bring you back to that main modal. 

Anonymous said: Would anything persuade you to reverse your decision to not support Tales of the Valiant? We love Kobold Press, and they’ve been an incredible partner for many years. When Tales of the Valiant was gearing up for launch, we fully intended to internally develop a sheet for them so they wouldn’t have to... but we seriously underestimated the project’s scope, and have been unable to pull the resources from other teams to execute. We’re committed to continuing to support Kobold Press in everything they do, but sadly we haven’t been able to make Tales of the Valiant happen, and aren't in a place to promise anything at the moment. 

Richard Rose said: Hi there, thank you for the various improvements made to Roll20's VTT over the past year. Are there are plans to continue adding some quality of life options for  us dungeon masters, like adding an option to an object's tool tips so that any notes a DM writes could be set to "seen by DM only" or "seen by everyone"?  I thought i saw something like this as a possibility in an earlier announcement, but maybe it was just an idea that wasn't green lit? Our shift to Jumpgate over the last year opens up a world of possibilities, and we are super excited about the Quality-of-Life Improvements we have added for our users to date, and what we have on our roadmap for the year (like support for a new Foreground Layer and Demiplane Integration into the VTT ). The most recent release I’ve been personally excited about is the Roll20 VTT’s Connection to Dungeon Scrawl , helping DM’s build maps in minutes! Your specific suggestion around DM notes is not one we’ve had on our radar so far, but we are adding to the list of future Quality-of-Life improvements!

Ajax DM said: How do I stop the auto-archiving of a game. Sometimes I pull out one-shots and restore them, but then they go back into archives and I have to keep restoring them.  After a campaign sits for a length of time, we automatically move them to an archival storage system. There’s no down side to a one shot being in archival “cold storage” (as we call it). It is just a more economical way to save the data. Restoring should only take a few moments when you’re ready to prep or play. Is there any specific reason why you don’t want your campaigns to do this?

Ramshackle said: We'd recently brought up an option for a Classic sheet view in the new 2024 character sheet as a means of accessibility for special needs groups, has that been considered for the roadmap? Deviating from the look of the paper sheet has made the new system unusable for most of our Autism society workshops! We’ve heard this feedback from a few different angles and is definitely something we’re looking into options for. We’ve been looking into the needs for mirroring the paper sheet in a software interface. Your experience and view point would be incredibly helpful. Could I connect you with one of our design team members to discuss in more depth?

DJ Eternal Darkness said: Now the Roll20 and DrivethruRPG are closer partners, are we going to get any auto import from DriveThru? Please let me know if you’re asking about something other than this, but if I’m interpreting your question correctly - we currently offer functionality that unlocks qualified titles on DriveThruRPG/DMsGuild on the Roll20 tabletop at purchase. For example, if you purchase any of these titles , you will unlock their conversions on the VTT.   You can read more about it here . 

Thanks everyone for participating, whether you sent in questions ahead of time or asked them here, live. We'll hopefully see you again next month - we'll share details about time and location soon.