Preparing a Game (Table vs. Roll20

I'm torn here, because I often use my laptop (or print-outs therefrom) to make fairly extensive notes on my upcoming sessions. I like to have a lot prepared, so that the players have some chances to veer from the anticipated course. I even recently took up the habit of writing them in Scrivener, because I could keep them organized in little nodes that way, which is how many games end up going. While I'd love to see this integrated into Roll20, also feel like maybe that is something best kept on my own computer/next to my computer instead. I've tried using the GM layer to put in some notes for on-the-fly reference, but it wasn't suitable at all. Part of me would love to have a Comments function similar to what you can find in Word or in some PDF viewers. Then a token or even a grid square/hex could be tagged with a pop-up-able comment that has the stats for a trap, or an NPCs simplified stat block. On the other hand, I often have a few pages of typed notes and stats at hand that would be great in a form much like the handouts, but not designed so much for images, nor sharable to the players, but more for text uploads, and for GM eyes only. I'm curious how other GMs prepare their campaigns, and how that will change (or not) by using Roll20.

I was thinking as I was playing with it that I would really like an 'add comment' for a token or hex square. Maybe it's just me, but I basically can't see most things on the GM layer, so writing text on it doesn't work. I've put all of my notes into handouts so far, but they're just short notes. I'm not sure the 'add or upload a form' box needs to take up half of the handout screen when you're editing, though, especially when I just want to type some things up.

I'm with you on that, Kage. Ultimately given my 'drothers, I'd have a third option below "Handout" which would be for GM notes, encounters, stat blocks, whatever, and would mostly just be a spring-loaded text box. Or maybe just a stash of Word/Excel documents that I could upload and then open nested in Roll20. If the latter, it might also solve a lot of people's struggles with Character Sheets. And post-launch, letting people upload meaty Office files and PDFs would be one way to encourage people to buy storage.

I was thinking as I was playing with it that I would really like an 'add comment' for a token or hex square. Maybe it's just me, but I basically can't see most things on the GM layer, so writing text on it doesn't work. I've put all of my notes into handouts so far, but they're just short notes. I'm not sure the 'add or upload a form' box needs to take up half of the handout screen when you're editing, though, especially when I just want to type some things up. Oddly enough, up to this point, my handouts have been more "image" centered than text, although most of my handout items are photos of real props, like notes, posters etc.

I find most of my handouts in RL games end up being documents. If its a picture or something, I usually either show it on my computer, or in the more recent past, I had my Mac hooked up to my flatscreen, so I'd just pop it onto the big TV and leave it for people to look at, as long as the person/image was relevant.

I find that if you really want to emphasize something (like if it's a quest/plot hook) and you don't want your players to read it, and immediately forget all about it, it helps to jazz it up a bit. So for notes, I like to soak them in a cup of tea, dry it out, rip it up a bit, and then cook it on the side burner of my BBQ to give it that chunk of beat up parchment look. Now, since I'm online, my players only get to look at a photo of my beat up old note, but it's still surprisingly effective. and I love the journal feature, since now, they can go back at any time, and look at that beat up old note again - even months later when that hook I was dropping will actually become relevant :) I'm just trying to figure out how I'm going to work it cross campaign, since right now I'm dropping hooks to my players that will actually tie into the next campaign. I guess I'd just have to either re-create the journal entries (or import if that tool exists before we get to that point in time) or, just make it all part of one giant multi-paged mega campaign file... Oh well, that bridge is still at least a couple months away, so I don't have to start thinking too hard about it for a while.

I actually started a "import/export" thread, in the suggestions category for that exact reason. I have tie-ins among many campaigns, not to mention recurring NPCs (one of my favorite old GMs always had a Benny in his campaigns, and he was styled after the eponymous character in The Mummy). Anyway, I hope there will eventually be a way to move pieces from one campaign to another.