using Roll20 for live games

hey everyone, I'm new here and i was wondering what i would need to intergrate this virtual table top system into a live game (live as in real life). has anyone done it before or is it not worth the extra effort?

There are lots of set ups that use a large monitor/tv as the game board or map. I've seen people use projectors and put the map up on a wall. Also, you might be interested in The Update of Holding .

do you know where i can find videos or examples?

Doombot, I kinda doubt there will be many videos of people sitting at a table with a monitor setup as the map. Most videos are the archives of the live streaming of the map itself along with the mic feed of the players (online gaming not face to face). If you skim through the old posts of the forum, you will spot numerous threads about using roll20 for their maps (one company actually built a display and table to be used for this) at their game table while there is a remote player or two. There were discussions about what mic would work best for the table (remote player used a headset) group. There were discussions about should a lcd tv be used or should a projector be used. There were some other stuff also. What it boils down to is what do you and / or your group want out of it and what type of effort are you willing to put into it?

Ok thanks, Those are helpful, I'll take a look through and find more.

What I used to do was print out a map and put plexi glass over it, the plexi was in permanent marker (grid) and then use dry erase markers for drawing a quick map (when it was random encounters) or adding things. The grid was also large enough for minis to fit. I would imagine the same could happen with a flatscreen laid down and a laptop connected to it (as a monitor). though if you are playing IRL a lot of the fun is drawing the map in front of people OR describing the layout and making your "map keeper" draw.

James K. said: though if you are playing IRL a lot of the fun is drawing the map in front of people OR describing the layout and making your "map keeper" draw. Depends on what system you're playing and how detailed your map is. :> I play a very tactical system and I'd lose a lot of game-session time if I had to draw out encounter maps on the fly. x.x

I GM using my laptop, with a second (the hosts) laptop hooked up to their big screen TV - make Chrome fullscreen and minimise the sidebar and you're good to go! Using Shift+Ping becomes very helpful (makes all the players view the pinged spot).all We then have a local player who uses a tablet and a single remote player (a friend who recently moved to Canada) who connects remotely in the traditional Roll20 fashion. Essentially we end up having a map and a webcam feed on a big TV that everyone sits around.

At the face to face game yesterday, The DM had loaded the encounter into Roll20. Three quarters of us had laptops also so we talked the game to each other and used Roll20 to keep track of character and monster location, figure out ranges, roll dice and turn order. (It's really nice to have the machine do the addition for 8d6 rolls) One encounter he had mapped out, the other was us and the monsters on a blank grid, Worked well.

We used to use a TV as a monitor, but since pretty much all the group have laptops or tablets now we haven't used it lately. We do have an old desktop with webcam set up across the room from the table so remote players can see us all at the table (and since I'm the type of GM who likes to stand up and move around the wider field of view is necessary)... But yes even without the upcoming update that is going to focus on local play Roll20 is already an excellent tool to facilitate face to face gaming.

Since getting in Roll20, I start all my face to face games on it. I have each of the PCs setup with HP/AC/etc, then pull in monsters from other campaigns as needed via the Transmogrifier. Usually, the players don't start out on there, I just use it to setup encounters and track hp and init and run the monsters. So far though, every game I've started that way has ended up going at least partially online with the players, and one I ran as a one-shot turned into a campaign that's run for more than a year. (And we're all getting together to play it for 5 days straight next week!)

You make we wish I still ran a live game. The physical aspect did add a lot, but I don't miss player maps that wander off of the page, cleaning up after several barbarians have laid waste to my house, watching the skinny guy eat 6,000 calories in four hours. I may try a couple of live games for small groups this year.

One of my sit-down Pathfinder groups used a "The Quiet Year" game to generate our homebrew world. We took the final drawn map and put it into a Roll20 campaign to let folks post character sheets and backgrounds. We plan to use roll20 on days we can't all be physically present but still available to play. As the campaign progresses we'll probably add on to the map, online. We use dice and paper when in session, but some of us sign into the Roll20 game on tablets just for the dice rolling convenience.

All of the live games I play, and GM, use roll20 now. Being able to whip out a fairly detailed map with lighting and tokens on layers in an hour or so while the players trickle in, as well as let players who can't remote in has changed our playing dynamic immensely. Having a bunch of people share the "player" control to pan around the visible map, move tokens, and measure effects is marvelous; you've still got everyone sitting around a table, rolling physical dice and hanging out - but you've got extensive digital tools to augment what had for years (for me) been an arduous task of building boards, hand drawing maps - many of which never actually got used, making tokens, and getting up from my comfy GM chair to reach across the room to slide an orc 6 inches.

Thanks everyone, this was more advice than I thought I would get and it helps alot. I liked the idea of using roll20 for combat and exploration in the dark. I have my laptop that I could use for my dm screen and a tablet I could pass around during battles. But based on the feed back I think it would make more sense to do the reverse and use my tablet as the dm board and the PC with a TV for the combat. I also think i will use normal hand outs irl but provide scenic pictures via roll20 to inhance the verbal description.

I guess it varies a bit from group to group but my use of Roll20 is essentially as a fancy map/white board with built in video chat for the single remote player. Most of the face to face group aren't particularly tech savvy so although they love the big map aspect I don't think they'd want to do digital character sheets and the like (much though I would love them to :D).

Pringle said: I don't think they'd want to do digital character sheets and the like (much though I would love them to :D). Heh, make the sheets for them! That's what I do in my 4e game. They make their normal character shet by whatever method they like, and I feed that into Character Builder and generate nice sheets for them, and in turn use that data for making their powercard macros.

I was thinking of it, need to make a nice 7th Sea Character Sheet first (could possibly base it off the L5R one). As 3/5 players actually use devices the other two would still want print outs though. Has anyone printed character sheets from Roll20? How well does it work? Maybe they can have paper ones and I'll make digital ones for my own reference, just have to make sure I keep them in sync.

Here is a link to a video that teaches you how to make your own character sheet on roll20 from scratch <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&e" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&e</a>...

I've had a very quick look and I'm familiar with the HTML/CSS side of things (though I haven't done web dev professionally for a few years so I might need to refresh myself); I'll have a proper look at some point though. At the moment we're doing random one shots while one of our players gets settled in Canada, once he's all sorted we'll return to our ongoing campaign so I'll see if I can get a sheet up and running by then.

I use a projector on the wall with a blue tooth mouse passed around. It actually works fairly well for my in-session campaign.