Best way to port a prewritten dnd 5e module to roll20?

I am trying to set up lost mines of phandelver and I just don't know where to start. Filling in the pregens is a monumental task and I don't even know how to go about the maps and monsters. I have the starter set, and the PH and MM but I never found a resource or articial or tutorial detailing the process of porting existing modules to roll 20. Any help?

You could probably scan the maps in, but to tell you the truth, it might be a lot less work to write a similar adventure for your group. Check and see if the artist sells digital versions of the maps, they will be the hardest part, you will likely have to purchase tokens if you are picky about exacting matches. I stopped using outside material about thirty years ago, I find it is better to write all of my own material, for one thing you damn well know what you meant when you wrote it, while sometimes trying to interpret another's thoughts is hard to impossible.

You just need to learn how to use Roll20.  Once you are familiar with how to use it, you'll figure out how to import your adventure. Start by going through the Roll20 Wiki , the Crash Course and the Getting Started: GMs sections of the wiki. Upload your maps and align them to your grid. Create your creatures. Create Character entries for your players and then assign them. Let your players fill out their character sheets and then start playing.

I would import only the 1st map.  As GM I would do a few other tasks to prepare the game as well*, but not much importing ahead of time.  Bring the Players into the game. Each game session lasts a number of hours, and they can only get so-far along. Have the Players type-up the characters, whether it's transcribing the stats of a pre-gen or making their own PC's, this could save you from importing the pre-gens. Import the 2nd map in the days after the 1st session, and before the game session day when you see they will be reaching the 2nd map location. Since you'll spend much of the 1st game session on setting up characters and exploring the 1st map, you'll get a feeling for the amount of playing hours before they go to the 2nd map. I would create & run the creatures on-the-fly (looking at the stats from your Adventure module, or from the Monster book). You don't need to create bunches of monsters in advance that you aren't sure if the party will reach that position and face that monster.  Just search & find & place the Monster token picture at the time the party reaches that monster location. You can get faster at doing this with practice, over time. At first you might need to say "Hey, you guys can talk strategy or take a 5 minute break. I'm setting up the tokens for the next room / next encounter / the monster you just met / or whatever it is." * Before first game, set up a few things.  Outside the tabletop, in the game details, set the character sheet for the game system you want. On your Settings in VTT, reduce the Player avatars to "Small" size. Enable or disable Video cams & Voice, as required for your game. Make a few global macros and save them in your Macro Quick Bar (such as d20, d100, and maybe a nice macro to roll all 6 stats for a new PC or NPC).  Make a "default map page template" that you can use Duplicate Page Settings to make new pages with the same grid settings and grid appearance as you want, and your favored Fog Of War opacity settings.  Make it a nice large page like 140x120 so that you have margins around your map area, for saving Pictures and extra tokens concealed. Make a Splash page or Welcome Page to start collecting all new PC tokens.

Given the number of times "Phandelver" is mentioned in a search of the forums, there are many people who've walked this path before and would help you out with maps, etc., if you asked. 

Google the maps. You can find some great maps ready for import into your map layer to save you time recreating the maps.

I'm currently DMing a group through the Lost Mine adventure. It's definitely a lot of work setting up, but no more so than if you'd created a homebrew with as many characters and locations. Personally, I've used Mike Schley's maps (he's the artist that made the maps for the adventure book) which are available to purchase  here (though you have to convert them from PDFs to PNG/JPG to import in, but there are plenty of online tools that can do that for free). For the tokens, a good start is Devin Night's Free Set from his website  here (he also submits a lot of tokens to the roll20 marketplace for purchase). Regarding entering the Monster Stats, if you are able, or if your group are willing to pay for you, I would recommend upgrading to Pro on here so that you can access the API scripts, as the guy who makes the 5e Shaped sheet on here (which is the sheet I would recommend using) has an API script to help with importing monsters onto roll20, which I can say has cut down my work massively. The thread for that script is  here . I hope that all this helps, and feel free to ask any more questions.

The Retro Bandit said: I am trying to set up lost mines of phandelver and I just don't know where to start. Filling in the pregens is a monumental task and I don't even know how to go about the maps and monsters. I have the starter set, and the PH and MM but I never found a resource or articial or tutorial detailing the process of porting existing modules to roll 20. Any help? I believe Mike Schley, the cartographer for Lost Mines of Phandelver / D&D Starter Set, has digital versions of his map for sale on his site:&nbsp;<a href="http://mikeschley.zenfolio.com/p856083253" rel="nofollow">http://mikeschley.zenfolio.com/p856083253</a>