Roll20 for board games

So I just discovered roll20 from a few friends and read some stuff on it. I'm curious if I would be able to use this software for board games. For instance, I have several friends in other states that enjoy board gaming as much as I do and one of our favorites is Arkham Horror (entirely D6 and card based). Is it possible to set it up. I have a scanner to get most the items I need into the software, but is it possible to have a randomizer macro to draw things like portal tokens, monster tokens, player characters, and ancient ones? Looking at it, I'm sure I'm able to do all the stuff I need, just gotta figure it out I suppose. But I think it would be awesome to start doing board games with more of my friends from across the country.

I seem to remember people have set up Arkham Horror on Roll20 in the past so it should be fine. If you need help with advice on how to set up specific elements please feel free to ask.  For your randomized tokens you may want to look at the Table feature. Alternately, the card deck might work.  - Gauss

That's what I was thinking. I just gotta play around with the program some more and break stuff! I love breaking programs lol! Thanks. Looking forward to hosting some games!

YES!!! That definitely gives me more motivation for doing this. This is showing just how flexible the software is to me and makes me want to do others after successfully running an arkham horror game.

Porting Arkham Horror was alot of work, but the payoff is worth it.  I have also ported Mayfair Games' Pillars of the Earth game and it play very well.  I am going to try to put together a Game of Arkham Horror for this coming Thursday at about 6:00 eastern if you want to give it a go.

As much as I love to I work that night, and yeah, it is alot of work! I just started scanning all the cards in. I figure knock out the scanning work first for all the cards. I'm going to post my progress in this thread I suppose and as I encounter things I need help with, I'll ask. But, I told some of my friends about this and they are excited to give it a go. other question, I have a friend whom is an excellent DM and wants to DM Arkham Horror once he learns it. if he wants to do it through Roll20, is it possible for me to give him the campaign so he can just start doing his thing without having to rebuild it?

I don't know why but the opportunities these open up excite the! #$@ out of me.  Not to be a stick in the mud but what legalities if any are there if I want to do something like the Arkham Horror?  Maybe a Formula De one or maybe a Settlers of Catan or or or or...OMG so many options!!!!

@Stephen: I don't know, I found this program and saw it had alot of stuff that Arkham has and decided to do a few tests with basic things and it seems that this program works well for games with random decks and die rolls. I WANT TO DO DOMINION ON HERE NOW!!!!!! @Krisitin C: Apparently I have grown fond of the mod team and mentor's here. you guys ROCK at answering and helping with the learnings. I think that after I get it complete and setup to run properly, I'll message everyone here should you all be interested in joining my game. Jeez, I'm just getting more pumped for this! Now, to find the link that lets me throw money to support this.

Not sure if A) this is a good thread to ask this, but it seems appropraite and B) If it's been asked before, but.... Does anyone know if it's in the plans to allow us to share campaigns? I love board games, but each one is a pain to try to port over. I'd love to be able to go to a thread with people willing to share games and be able to create a campaign for said board game. edit: @Keith, Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for the response bro!

I have looked at doing Dominion, but there just aren't the features for a deck building game right now. &nbsp;You can play Dominion online however at...&nbsp; <a href="http://play.goko.com/Dominion/gameClient.html#" rel="nofollow">http://play.goko.com/Dominion/gameClient.html#</a> I am pretty sure that I have also found a way for people to play without having to be a GM. &nbsp;Some of the new features (ahem Roll Queries) have really streamlined play.

Emile, Sharing campaigns, especially something like a board game, opens up some serious legal issues about the right to use the artwork from the game. &nbsp;If you own a game, scan the art yourself, and use if for your own (non-commercial) purposes, you should be fine. &nbsp;If you then give said artwork to someone else, there will be trouble. Now, if the great guys at Fantasy Flight games took a look at what has been done for Arkham Horror with Roll20, they could decide to create a module that I am SURE Nolan would love to put in the marketplace. {Big sigh}

I bet there's a way to get a deck building game like DOminion to work. Just involves creating a mega crap ton of decks. And Fantasy Flight could easily sell a pack of official art and scripts for roll20. Give discounts to people who are confirmed as owners of the board game. Guaranteed it would help spread the word of both Fantasy Flight games AND roll20 in general.

Im not sure (i have never played dominion) but if your problem is the fact that you can setup your deck different every time you play you could just have a folder with all the cards and add them to the deck before you play and empty the deck afterwards (leave 1 so its still there) if this wasnt the problem sorry ^^

The issue with dominion is that you need to take cards out of 10 decks in use and add them to your deck during play. &nbsp;Deck building games are very interesting, but the mechanics in Roll20 address a relatively static deck system. &nbsp;If Riley was going to add features to support this it would most likely require a completely new system.

Keith, could you go into more detail on how many decks etc Dominion uses? Perhaps I can figure out something to help. - Gauss

The dominion box comes with something like 25 decks with about 12 of the same card in them. &nbsp;There are three different kinds of cards; treasure, victory points, and action cards. &nbsp;There are 3 different kind of treasure cards; copper(1), silver(2), and gold(3). &nbsp;There are 3 different kind of victory point cards; estate(1), dutchy(3), province(6). &nbsp;All of the other decks are different action cards that give bonus gold to spend, extra actions, more buying ability, ability to buy cards, etc. &nbsp;Only 10 of the action decks are used in any game. &nbsp;There are a couple different methods for determining which ones. Each player starts with a deck of 3 estates and 7 coppers. &nbsp;Each player's deck is shuffled and they draw 5 cards from the deck. &nbsp;During their turn the player can use one action card and buy one new card. &nbsp;When a player buys a card, whether it is a new action card, treasure card, or victory point card, it is placed on the top of their discard pile. &nbsp;At the end of the players turn, they put all of the cards they used AND the ones in their hand into their discard pile and they draw 5 new cards from their deck. &nbsp;When the deck runs dry (often) the discard pile is reshuffled and the game continues. Since the cards all have a different treasure cost, you may not have enough treasure in your hand to but the card you want. &nbsp;If you start snatching up alot of estates it dilutes the deck and you may have rounds with 5 victory point cards in your hand that have zero value until the end of the game. The biggest challenge for Dominion if Roll20 is that the player decks are being expanded very often as a normal part of game-play. &nbsp;How do you remove a card from one deck and put it in another in an easy and intuitive way. It is a really fun and addicting game. &nbsp;I recommend that you give the link I posted earlier a try. &nbsp;It is a very faithful version of the game online published by Rio Grande games (the publishers of Dominion). -Keith

As a matter of fact, writing that has lit the Dominion fire in me and I am off to play online myself. -Keith

This thread has inspired me to try and port Betrayal at the House on the Hill to Roll20. Room tiles will be the hardest part, I think. We'll see.

Brian said: This thread has inspired me to try and port Betrayal at the House on the Hill to Roll20. Room tiles will be the hardest part, I think. We'll see. Brian, I have been thinking about this for awhile. &nbsp;You are right that the room tiles will be the hardest. &nbsp;They all have different backs. &nbsp;What you could do is make a different deck for each back. &nbsp;Then make a deck that has the backs with the correct quantity of each. &nbsp;When it was time to draw a tile, you draw from the deck to determine which back was in play. &nbsp;If it is an appropriate tile, draw the first one from that deck with the matching back. &nbsp;If it is not appropriate, draw one from the inappropriate back deck and set it aside.

I think it would be a little complicated to set up Betrayal, but with a bit of time, it's possible. Question, because I can't afford the support fee at this time, is there a way to use image files from something like my drop box account (or something similar) to link the images to roll20? Apparently for good quality scans my images are about 1mb apiece and just for the Arkham Encounter cards I hit 73/100 mb.

Yeah, I think the big problem with active deck-building games (Dominion) isn't so much the number of decks you draw from, so much as that each player has his or her own deck that only he or she draws from. &nbsp;The first part is easy, if tedious - create X decks of the same object (ie: deck A, with ten copies of card A). &nbsp;Then just display only the decks that you want in play in any given game. But, since all decks are public, how do you let each player have their own, personal deck, to which they can fluidly add cards, draw to their hand, shuffle, etc? &nbsp;Essentially, you need the deck equivalent of a character sheet. This same problem would occur with any game that requires individual decks (say, Magic the Gathering), but at least most games stay fairly static during the game. I suspect much of this will be made easier once the API handles deck objects, and you can write functions like 'buyCard Estate:BobDeck' that'd remove the card from Estate deck, and add it into Bob's deck. &nbsp;Though then you still have to have a function to sort all the cards after a game...

is your scans jpg or png? If they are not jpg then convert them to it since that usually reduces the image file size.

The process I have right now, as mundane as it is, it works goes like this. Scan the card into computer (scans in as a .tiff file format) Load the files into photoshop and convert to a jpg file with QL at 12 (the max) any lower the text gets blurry. The size of the files are at about 1mb. And this is just for the Arkham Encounter cards (7 card faces + 1 back x 9 areas). I should see what the file size is with a png and if the quality will be good enough. I'm a bit of a quality whore.

I figured out my issue. Photoshop was just being fussy and wasn't saving stuff properly. Managed to drop the image files to about 120kb each. NOW, I should have the ability for at least the base game of Arkham Horror to fit. Maybe. Hopefully.

Lance H. said: I think it would be a little complicated to set up Betrayal, but with a bit of time, it's possible. I'm thinking it may be possible with some API wizardry. It's my new pet project now. =D

Let me know how it goes! I'm kinda doing Arkham Horror as my first project and eventually upgrade to try other games through roll20.

Keith, I went to play Dominion. Using the current (non-API) tools I see no way it can be implemented since it&nbsp;would require adding to a deck on the fly.&nbsp; I thought about using the Tables but that won't work either since after each roll the table's weighting would have to be altered. Note: IF the API has access to changing the table's weighting then the table should be able to handle it.&nbsp; Alternately, if the API can add cards to a deck it would be doable that way.&nbsp; - Gauss

Gauss said: Keith, I went to play Dominion. Using the current (non-API) tools I see no way it can be implemented since it&nbsp;would require adding to a deck on the fly.&nbsp; I thought about using the Tables but that won't work either since after each roll the table's weighting would have to be altered. Note: IF the API has access to changing the table's weighting then the table should be able to handle it.&nbsp; Alternately, if the API can add cards to a deck it would be doable that way.&nbsp; - Gauss Rollable tables and table items can be altered, but they cannot be created in the API. If weight=0 works as expected, though, then that could be used for "removing" things from the table deck. A table item's name and weight are read/write values. AFAIK, the API can't do anything with actual decks, although it can manipulate cards on the map. It cannot create new cards.

Thanks Brian , then a table could work with the API. Weight = 0 does work as expected.&nbsp; Keith , here is how I can see a table+API work:&nbsp; 1) Each card type has a weight equal to the number in your deck. This weight value changes when you gain cards. Cards not in your deck have a weight of zero.&nbsp; Example:&nbsp; If I have 3 "A" cards, 5 "B" cards, and 0 "C" cards the table would be:&nbsp; A weight 3 B weight 5 C weight 0&nbsp; The odds of pulling a "B" card would be 5 in 8.&nbsp; 2) After "drawing a card" (rolling the table) the API reduces the weight of the "card" you drew by one.&nbsp; Using the previous example. If I drew a B card the table would then have weightings of:&nbsp; A weight 3 B weight 4 C weight 0 3) Adding cards to the table should be a simple command which increases the weight of the relevant "card".&nbsp; I am certain other aspects of this kind of API setup would need to be worked out, but this may be a starting point to getting Dominion running on Roll20.&nbsp; - Gauss

Alguma Mesa Vaga ??

Betrayal is coming along nicely. I just added in the small monster tokens today. I removed the number from the corner of the "face-up" side of the token so that I would only need to upload one image for each monster type. For the times when the number is needed, I plan to use the API to put a number on a statusmarker. I'm doing the same thing with the pentagonal item tokens. I did upload two copies of the "face-up" Ouroboros Head monster, since it has two different images. The only images I have left are the room tiles, which I've already taken pictures of, I just haven't cropped 'em down and such. (The images I've already uploaded have totaled 21MB =O Glad I'm a subscriber ~_^)

Gauss and Brian - thanks for the great dialog on using rollable tables with 0 weight. It inspired me to work on a script for drawing tiles using Zooloretto as a proof of concept. I may have found a bug with 0-weight items showing up when you roll a token. <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/421359/rollable-table-tokens-%3E-random-side-0-weight-bug#post-421359" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/421359/rollable-table-tokens-%3E-random-side-0-weight-bug#post-421359</a>