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New Update Teaser 12/3/2014: Coming to Your In-Person Table: Roll20 for iPad and Android

1417628442
Stephen Koontz
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
Sheet Author
API Scripter
Compendium Curator
Hello everybody, Check out the teaser for our next major update on the Roll20 Blog , including graphics and a video! Here are the details: Roll20 began with a simple idea: create the best experience for playing tabletop games online when you couldn’t get together in person. We’ve always focused on bringing the physical table to your remote games, replicate the classic experience whenever possible. At the same time we’ve endeavored to take advantage of all the awesome enhancements that digital gameplay can offer, such as faster rolling via our easy-to-use Character Sheets, advanced communication via chat, and limitless customization via our comprehensive API . Today we’re pleased to announce that we’re expanding our core mission in a significant way: we want Roll20 to be the best companion for your games, online or in-person. Building on what we’ve learned from the past two years of community feedback and our journey to nearly 700,000 players, we’re giving you the first sneak peek at the new Roll20 for iPad and Roll20 for Andorid apps, part of the Update of Holding coming in Q1 2015. Optimized for In-Person Play While supporters have been able to enjoy the full Roll20 Virtual Tabletop on your mobile tablet for some time, that experience has always been geared toward playing with a fully-remote group. The new Roll20 tablet apps are designed from the ground up to enhance (but not overwhelm) an in-person setting. Each player’s tablet serves as a “digital Character Sheet”, with some additional capability such as chat. The GM can use a laptop with the full version of Roll20 as the ultimate GM screen for running the game. Roll20 for iPad and for Android Apps offers features that will help your group play faster and stay more organized, while at the same time keeping your players from having their heads buried in their tablet screens. It’s also designed so you can use as many or as few of the features as you’d like to match your group’s play style. Character Sheets The core feature of the new Roll20 tablet experience is our amazing Character Sheets. Thanks to the contributions of our community members, we now support over 70 popular RPG and tabletop games, including Pathfinder, every edition of Dungeons and Dragons, Numenera and The Strange, Dungeon World, and a dizzying number of additional systems. Roll20’s Character Sheets are true to their paper counterparts, retaining a familiar yet distinct feel, while bringing an easy-to-use interface, real-time syncing for everyone around the table, and built-in dice rolling macros for speeding up gameplay. For your in-person game, everyone around the table can be up and running in a minute. No more keeping track of paper sheets, and the GM always has access to all the latest up-to-date information on what’s going on with each player. And if you have a newer player at your table, our sheets help aid in quickly getting up to speed with common rolls such as skill checks and attacks, so you spend less time figuring out modifiers and more time telling your story. In addition to sheets, the Roll20 App of course supports our great Handouts system, allowing you to quickly share art, descriptions, puzzles, background information, secret notes, and more with everyone or specific players with a quick tap. Eliminate the need for wasting paper and get more organized! Dice Rolling (and Improved 3D Dice!) The perfect pair to our Character Sheets is our powerful dice system. With the ability to store commonly-used rolls as Macros (simplifying that complicated attack roll down to a single tap!), variables from Character Sheets, prompts, and more, there’s more to Roll20 dice than just rolling a d20. You can now bring all of that impressive rolling capability to your in-person tabletop, speeding up your gameplay and providing a handy record of what’s been rolled. In addition to the dice system, rolling has never looked better thanks to a greatly improved 3D Dice system, that now rolls faster, is easier to read, and for the first time is backed by our one-of-a-kind QuantumRoll technology, guaranteeing absolute fairness in your rolls. Of course you can also roll your own physical dice in-person — it’s whatever works best for your group! Chat We’ve integrated our handy chat system, with support for in-character and out-of-character messages, emotes, descriptions, and whispers both to player and characters. Great for keeping your in-character or out-of-character chatter, or for notifying players or the GM about secret information, performing hidden spot checks, and more. And since we provide an archive of all your game’s chat automatically, you can quickly review previous sessions anytime. Stay Connected, Whatever Lies Ahead You can start using the new Roll20 App with your existing games, or create a new one. Every Roll20 game is fully backed by our entire service, which means that you can switch between playing remotely via our virtual tabletop, or in-person with the new App, anytime. If your group can’t meet up in person due to distance or time constraints, you’ve already got an easy way to start playing online. And you can even mix-and-match, having a player or two play remotely using the Roll20 site while the rest of your group plays in-person on tablets. The App even works great as a second screen for GMs or players who are also using the Roll20 virtual tabletop for remote play and want to have quick access to their character sheet and rolls. Did we mention it’s FREE? Our Mentor subscribers will get access to the App during the Beta phase to give feedback and help us fine-tune, starting in just a few weeks — consider upgrading your account today if you want to participate in that process. When the App is publicly released, it will be free for everyone. (Note that some existing Roll20 features such as the API still require a subscription to work with your game, regardless of whether you play in-person or online). …and even more! Our full turn tracker system (including our new round formulas for keeping track of mechanics such as buffs) provides everyone with a quick overview of who’s going next. A quick roll GUI if you just need to roll a quick d6. And all of our other great Roll20 features are still active behind-the-scenes for your game, such as our API, enabling even more possibility for your game. And one more Coming Soon tease for the Update of Holding… The Roll20 Compendium Nothing slows your game down more than a rules lookup. The Roll20 App will feature full support for our new Roll20 Compendium, a community-curated repository of information on the basics (such as spell definitions, stat blocks for the bestiary, class information, and more) of many game systems. Our intent is not to replace needing rule books, but rather to provide a complement to them; so when you see the “Fireball” spell on your Character Sheet and you can’t remember what the range is, a quick tap can tell you that information so you can get on with your game. We’ll be starting with OGL-licensed information such as the Pathfinder SRD and 3.5 SRD, then working with publishers to expand this repository of helpful information in the future. We’ll be unveiling more about this exciting new feature in a future blog post. That’s our first look at the Update of Holding, which will include not only the first version of our Roll20 for iPad and Roll20 for Android apps, but also improved campaign management, our new folder system, the quick-access bar, and improvements to our Looking for Group system. We’ll be unveiling more information about this update as we get closer to launch. As always, your ongoing support is what makes these updates happen— thanks to all of our community for being engaged, and hope you’re excited about the coming months!
Very interesting update. I have a question regarding the Roll20 Compendium. I like the concept, it makes a lot of sense for OGL products. It also has potential to generate revenue for both you and publishers by providing an outlet for licensed material (though this aspect also brings up questions like licensing via individual vs. GM, but I digress). The question I have though is for those of us that homebrew, or would want to take the time to create our own repositories "for personal use in our own games", will creating our own repositories be an option?
1417636984
The Aaron
Roll20 Production Team
API Scripter
... and if it is an option, will we be able to transmogrify it across to other campaigns, an access it via the API?
The Compendium is going to be a lot more than just what's seen in that preview video. That's just one component of it. We'll be discussing it more in a future blog post, as well as introducing the other campaign management features we'll be including in Update of Holding, and hopefully that will answer your questions. So I guess for now you'll have to wait and see on that particular part of it :-)
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vÍnce
Pro
Sheet Author
This is bigger than the Star Wars 7 teaser!
1417660022
Alicia
Sheet Author
Vince said: This is bigger than the Star Wars 7 teaser! And a great deal more exciting!
1417660654
Gold
Forum Champion
The new features sound brilliant. What an exciting announcement post! I've just made posts to tell others about this on at least 2 other D&D forums I know about ( Dragonsfoot etc). With the fact that this app update is intended to increase accommodation for in-person, face-to-face tabletop gamers, I feel like this will attract many new users to Roll20. People who thought they "don't want to play D&D online, only likes playing in person" could still take an interest in these new tabletop digital character-sheet & digital GM-screen ideas. My top question -- and I'll happily wait to find out -- so it sounds like this will be an actual Roll20 App in the app stores (Apple & Android), to download/install? Rather than a "web app" or tablet-optimized webpage that could be reached by typing the address in Safari / Chrome / mobile web browser (which is how Roll20 has been accessed on mobile devices so far, status quo). That's a monumentally interesting development, in itself likely to attract many new users. I'm editorializing, my reaction. If an app, the small drawback is the need for users to find & install (even if free) the app, but on the other hand an excellent upside is that Roll20 will gain audience from the millions of people who search for RPG terms in the App Stores. Will the LFG be accessible from the app? Extra bonus, we'll all gain a nice little Roll20 logo on the app-icon on our tablet screens. This is just going to be great.
These will be actual "store" apps, yes. The totality of what is accessible via the apps is still being decided, but as the trailer shows we've thus far optimized character sheets, dice rolling, and chat.
This is very good! On one hand, this approach will bring in even more users who didn't see a great need for Roll20 before (face to face gamers) while providing added utility to those of us already here. Once again, kudos to your constant development of an already fine product!
1417732380
Actoba
Pro
Sheet Author
Loving this news and hope that this will bring provide useful and meaningful tools for homebrew and "open" licensed systems as well as, fingers crossed, be another step along the path to attract some licensed content/support from 3rd parties here as well. Keep up the good work!
I love the idea of expanding to accommodate in person gamers. I hooked up an external monitor, logged into a second account, and used it to show progress in a dungeon while playing with my kids. A tablet app would be even cooler, but it won't include any sort of map viewing? It's just character sheets? Did I miss something? It would be cool if I didn't have to bother setting up the external monitor.
1417905194
Stephen Koontz
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
Sheet Author
API Scripter
Compendium Curator
Dan, I think what you're looking for already exists. Tablet support for Subscribers and Mentors. <a href="https://app.roll20.net/account/supporter#tabletsupport" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/account/supporter#tabletsupport</a>
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Edited 1417908840
DH Cross
KS Backer
I thought about that Steve, after I posted. Does anybody think there'd be some advantage to having the tablet support (map wise) built into the new app (maybe a feature in the app unlocked by being a subscriber or mentor)? Maybe I'm underestimaing the tablet web-based feature, since I haven't used it (I was a KS backer, but I haven't been a mentor for a while).
The tablet / mobile implementation of Roll20 is fairly solid with the exception of voice/video. One of my players uses it in our in person game (another player connects remotely and a second laptop is hooked up to a TV for everyone else). It would certainly be convenient to have the map within the app, even if it's just essentially embedding a browser window within the app.
I cannot obtain reliable internet where I am, so any gaming I will be doing will require mobile support. So far, I have been using Skype, but there's reasons Skype is infamous for being unreliable. With the significant lack of similar multi-platform tabletop programs, I'm more than willing to help shape this new opportunity for mobile tabletop gamers.
Ive seen a guy play roll20 on his WiiU, will we possibly be seeing enhanced support for that as well?
This update is so just what my group has been wanting that it's a little scary. Better 3d dice? Ability to pop out windows? Better tablet support? Now if we'll be able to edit our own compendiums it'll be absolutely perfect. If it's not an NDA problem can someone report if the new 3D dice are working now on the mentor level? That in itself might be worth an upgrade...
1419972890
Stephen Koontz
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
Sheet Author
API Scripter
Compendium Curator
Mandella, the new 3D dice are live on the Dev server which is available to mentors.
I am going to mentor up just for the accelerated 3D dice yo!