[Official Announcement] Roll20 is Now an Officially Licensed Partner with Wizards of the Coast

I am so pleased to share, Wizards of the Coast has signed a licensing deal to distribute Dungeons and Dragons content via Roll20! This marks the first licensed collaboration between our two companies, which has been a major goal for Roll20 since our launch in 2012.



This partnership will begin with the introductory adventure module Lost Mine of Phandelver, which is available today. Wizards of the Coast’s latest upcoming adventure, Storm King’s Thunder, is also available now for pre-order and playable on September 6th, 2016 in Roll20.




Ideal for a group of 4 to 6 players, "Lost Mine of Phandelver" includes the entire adventure in a digitized format with 5 pre-generated characters, digital game tokens and maps, digital handouts for both Dungeon Masters and players, and the high-powered customization of the Roll20 interface.

A very special thanks and shoutout to moderator emeritus Kristin C. who contracted with us to make this first official D&D module-- her contributions to the platform remain incredibly important and we're looking forward to working more with her (and others!) in the coming months.

have my babies, my god this will make my life easy

Amazing news!

Sweet! ( Now get the rights to a 4ed compendium :D )

Wow.  Congrats are in order.  You've just made yourself a lot of money, bravo.

Excellent news! A question tho... In the LMoP module, have the maps been set up for Dynamic Lighting?

More generally, does this license mean that the Compendium and Character Sheets will be expanded to include everything in the main books?

Steven C. said:

Excellent news! A question tho... In the LMoP module, have the maps been set up for Dynamic Lighting?

They have! Scroll down to Aarons post in the link below.
https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/3742525/roll20-o...

How stupendously awesome would it be to follow up https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/3742658/official-announcement-roll20-is-now-an-officially-licensed-partner-with-wizards-of-the-coast with an announcement that Roll20 Team made similar arrangements with Paizo for Pathfinder Adventure Paths or even just stand-alone modules?

Just sayin'  :)

Another question comes to mind, with these modules will we still be able to select the specific character sheet that we want to use, or will specific character sheets be required (i.e. the 5e OGL sheet)?

Ravenknight said:

Steven C. said:

Excellent news! A question tho... In the LMoP module, have the maps been set up for Dynamic Lighting?

They have! Scroll down to Aarons post in the link below.
https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/3742525/roll20-o...

Thank you sir! Also saw that the team are still looking at the main books... likely this'll be a while coming.

Kevin said:

Another question comes to mind, with these modules will we still be able to select the specific character sheet that we want to use, or will specific character sheets be required (i.e. the 5e OGL sheet)?

As far as pregenerated stats go, we'll only have the time / ability to pre-load for our own sheet. Wouldn't stop you from switching sheets, but the statistics would not transfer.

Congratulations guys! Great news!

Obviously I'm disappointed to hear that the modules will only work with the official sheet. Is there any possibility of some collaboration here? It'd be a rather poor workflow to ask users who prefer a different sheet (Shaped) to first use OGL and then swap over to the sheet they want to use (at which point the sheet has to convert). I'd love to work together if that is an option. Feel free to PM me to avoid cluttering this post.

Thanks guys. And again congratulations on the deal!

Nolan T. J. said:

Kevin said:

Another question comes to mind, with these modules will we still be able to select the specific character sheet that we want to use, or will specific character sheets be required (i.e. the 5e OGL sheet)?

As far as pregenerated stats go, we'll only have the time / ability to pre-load for our own sheet. Wouldn't stop you from switching sheets, but the statistics would not transfer.

Hi! I'm a newish user and am ecstatic about this announcement, and had the same question as Kevin. I'm glad to hear we can switch out character sheets, but I'm not sure what you mean but the statistics not transferring. Would you mind clarifying? :D Thanks!

Great, thanks Riley! I'll watch for the PM.

Tony, It means that the variables are named differently. So for now only the OGL sheet will work with it. I'll try to get the Shaped sheet working ASAP with either the help of Roll20 or the conversion process I mentioned above.

Mark G. said:

How stupendously awesome would it be to follow up https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/3742658/official-announcement-roll20-is-now-an-officially-licensed-partner-with-wizards-of-the-coast with an announcement that Roll20 Team made similar arrangements with Paizo for Pathfinder Adventure Paths or even just stand-alone modules?

Just sayin'  :)

You read my mind Mark.  ;-)

Great news! I already bought the Lost Mines Module, looked through everything and it looks great! The only thing that concerns me is the scaling on some of the maps. On maps like Ruins of Thundertree and Wave Echo Cave you got tokens taking up 10 foot squares. Currently my group is on the thundertree map and when I set the map up I made sure to split ever 10 foot square into 4 spaces so players can position PC tokens more strategically. This scaled much better so you don't have like 4 10x10 foot zombies taking up a whole a room. You think they would change/fix this?

Can anyone tell me if the art for all creatures that are encountered are included with the d and d modules? I'm not talking about the tokens. I'm talking about the pictures in the bestiary for the monsters that are encountered. 

Will the Dynamic Lighting that comes pre-installed on purchased modules, be specific to that module only? For instance, will someone with a free R20 account, be able to use DL with a purchased module, but not in their own created games, correct?

Sorry, no.

Drop the price a bunch and I might think about it. Currently, they are the same price as the physical copies and I won't pay double for something I already own (may own), especially where 'digital' products are involved.  I can guarantee you aren't getting everything since there is a lot more than just maps & encounters in these products.

I'm doing well enough not having to pay twice and managing my games.  I just wish that others would hold out and not dive in until the price is more reasonable.  If they at least included a downloadable pdf of the full product it might be worth it.

I realize that Roll20 has their agreements with the publishers (who are setting the price) and that Roll20 probably tried their best, however, I'm tired of seeing physical media pricing for digital 'equivalents' as also found with Fantasy Grounds.

With the pricing of the Storm King's Thunder module identical to that of the printed book, how complete is the Roll20 experience going to be as compared to the book?  If it is at least 100% the content of the book, I will probably go and cancel my pre-order of the book.  But if there is content missing, then it's going to be difficult to justify the additional cost of the Roll20 module alongside the book.

Kryx said:

Great, thanks Riley! I'll watch for the PM.

Tony, It means that the variables are named differently. So for now only the OGL sheet will work with it. I'll try to get the Shaped sheet working ASAP with either the help of Roll20 or the conversion process I mentioned above.

awesome, now i understand! thanks very much :D keep up the great work!

It seems that you can only use the content from the modules in a new game currently. Will we be able to incorporate them into existing games whether it be in whole or in part?

Stephen J. said:

It seems that you can only use the content from the modules in a new game currently. Will we be able to incorporate them into existing games whether it be in whole or in part?

You can Transmogrify content over to other campaigns, just make an LMoP campaign and start moving things over.

Great news!  I look forward to purchasing the module.

Andrew said:

Stephen J. said:

It seems that you can only use the content from the modules in a new game currently. Will we be able to incorporate them into existing games whether it be in whole or in part?

You can Transmogrify content over to other campaigns, just make an LMoP campaign and start moving things over.

Yup, that's what I did. Took me a few minutes, but it worked fine. 

I really the like the pre-built monster tokens. The built-in statblocks with macros including are incredibly helpful! Does anything like this exist for the rest of the 5e Monster Manual? If not, is there any plan to create something like that, now that you guys are partnered with Wizards? Because I would definitely pay for it. 

A bit of a newbie question, but do you have to use the pregenerated characters or can you just make your own like normal?

Andrew said:

With the pricing of the Storm King's Thunder module identical to that of the printed book, how complete is the Roll20 experience going to be as compared to the book?  If it is at least 100% the content of the book, I will probably go and cancel my pre-order of the book.  But if there is content missing, then it's going to be difficult to justify the additional cost of the Roll20 module alongside the book.

I think the clearest answer of this is that we're going to make a product that has everything you need to play the game. It is not necessarily going to be a "1 to 1" experience (as we'll have things like Dynamic Lighting, but won't have the same layout as a book), but we have full intention (and permission) to create Storm King's Thunder in Roll20. 

I'll also say that we're still figuring out exactly what the preferred Roll20 experience of D&D is-- Kristin did a lot of rad things with Lost Mine of Phandelver, James Intracaso did a lot of rad things with our free Open Gaming License adventure The Master's Vault, and our coding team has done a LOT in terms what the character sheet / Compendium integration has available to it. We'll be using all of this knowledge and effort going forward to make better and better stuff!

Gabriel B. said:

A bit of a newbie question, but do you have to use the pregenerated characters or can you just make your own like normal?

Nope, once you create the campaign, it's a fully featured Roll20 campaign.  Add as much content as you wish to it.

Dorgrim said:

Sorry, no.

Drop the price a bunch and I might think about it. Currently, they are the same price as the physical copies and I won't pay double for something I already own (may own), especially where 'digital' products are involved.  I can guarantee you aren't getting everything since there is a lot more than just maps & encounters in these products.

I'm doing well enough not having to pay twice and managing my games.  I just wish that others would hold out and not dive in until the price is more reasonable.  If they at least included a downloadable pdf of the full product it might be worth it.

I realize that Roll20 has their agreements with the publishers (who are setting the price) and that Roll20 probably tried their best, however, I'm tired of seeing physical media pricing for digital 'equivalents' as also found with Fantasy Grounds.

What you're essentially paying for here is not so much the media, but the significant amount of prep-work and integration of the module into the Roll20 (or Fantasy Grounds, or wherever) system.  The adventure may cost similar or the same in both mediums, but you're also getting both the adventure and the setup in Roll20.  To many folks, the prep-work alone is worth the value.

The best way I evaluate the value of an online product, video, etc.  is by asking "How many hours would it take me to duplicate/play/watch/use this product?"  If it's a better time/money ration than buying a ticket to the movies, it's probably worth it :)   (esp. when you consider you can run it with different groups, transmogrify the content into other games, character-vault the characters and NPC's, etc.) 

Nolan T. J. said:

I think the clearest answer of this is that we're going to make a product that has everything you need to play the game. It is not necessarily going to be a "1 to 1" experience (as we'll have things like Dynamic Lighting, but won't have the same layout as a book), but we have full intention (and permission) to create Storm King's Thunder in Roll20. 

Ok, then I will clarify my question:  Is the "not necessarily 1 to 1" experience going to weigh heavier on the Roll20 side, as compared to the book?  If there is even a sidebar in the book that isn't in Roll20, then that will weigh heavily against my decision to buy the module.  Because I'm definitely not buying the book and the Roll20 module.  Up until this afternoon, I was fully prepared to recreate the entire adventure on my own, as I did with OotA and CoS.  I really do want to buy the module on Roll20 (I sort of consider supporting Roll20 comparable to supporting my FLGS).

After talking with one of my DMs about it, let me come at this at a different angle.

The Marketplace listing states: "...provides everything a Dungeon Master needs to create an exciting and memorable play experience".  That is a little ambiguous as to whether it has everything that the book has.  I would agree that all the extra Roll20 content and integration (including all the digital maps that we'd have to buy separately from Schley and Blando anyway) alone is worth the listed price (if not more).  So if it were advertised as enough to run the adventure, but for the full experience, you'll need to buy the book (essentially as a supplement to the book), I would be willing to buy both.  Right now (with the ambiguous description), it kind of sounds like I'm buying the book and the Roll20 experience.

Kristin C. said:

The module has the entire content of the Phandelver booklet transcribed into handout form. It's been split up and organized into their specific adventure chapters and battle maps so it's not one enormous unwieldy single handout.

I was actually quoting the Storm King's Thunder listing, but thank you.  That is a great assurance for the upcoming SKT module.

Great news indeed!

I'm assuming that "digital game tokens" means all of the monsters with their stats?

Awesome news! Now how long do I have to wait for PotA and Strahd????

Craig H. said:

Will the Dynamic Lighting that comes pre-installed on purchased modules, be specific to that module only? For instance, will someone with a free R20 account, be able to use DL with a purchased module, but not in their own created games, correct?

This is a critical piece of information that I need to know the answer to, as well.

I don't mind supporting the site through a subscription, but to be honest if it's not necessary to do so in order to use Dynamic Lighting on a purchased module, I probably won't. Money be tight, yo.

That's awesome news! I just have one question. Would I need the module AND the book or will the module include everything I need to set up the adventure?

Genesis C. said:

That's awesome news! I just have one question. Would I need the module AND the book or will the module include everything I need to set up the adventure?

"The module has the entire content of the Phandelver booklet transcribed into handout form. It's been split up and organized into their specific adventure chapters."

It contains everything from the module text. It's split and organized into Handouts (in the Roll20 game), which is a little different from reading a module book, but it is all the words and it is already set up!

Is there a YouTube run through of the features of buying the adventure. If anyone does that, please post here. Would love to watch it. 

This is pretty sweet deal! 

I missed the post by Kryx above, so maybe there is some hope that we can buy licensed content and use it with the 5E Shaped Sheet after all. But then there is the issue of updating the Shaped Sheet Companion. I hope this can happen quickly, but those guys donate a lot of time already, so I'll just be happy if it happens sometime in the coming weeks or months.

Greg said:

Nolan T. J. said:

Kevin said:

Another question comes to mind, with these modules will we still be able to select the specific character sheet that we want to use, or will specific character sheets be required (i.e. the 5e OGL sheet)?

As far as pregenerated stats go, we'll only have the time / ability to pre-load for our own sheet. Wouldn't stop you from switching sheets, but the statistics would not transfer.

PLEASE consider developing a proper way to change to a preferred character sheet without losing all the PC, monster, and NPC stats from a game. I cannot justify buying any licensed D&D products without the ability to use the 5E shaped sheet, which is a vastly superior solution for my purposes, especially with its companion script. I believe strongly that users should have the freedom to use their preferred sheets, especially when the shaped sheet is one of the default options for D&D games.

I would love to support Roll20 and WotC by purchasing licensed content, but not if I have to use the 5E OGL sheet. So I hope an effort will be made to accommodate all users and not just those who use a particular sheet.

Otherwise, I am extremely happy to see this official license and further collaboration between WotC and Roll20. I'm just disappointed that I can't be a part of it without sacrificing a lot of convenience and time-saving features that I get from my preferred sheet.

So go bug Kryx to change the attribute names to match the OGL sheet. It's that simple pretty much.

This is really awesome news. It would be nice to see a list of different features in the marketplace that is specific to this module, and might even help in sales. Until reading this thread, I had no idea there was dynamic lighting support, macros, etc.

SkyCaptainXIII said:

So go bug Kryx to change the attribute names to match the OGL sheet. It's that simple pretty much.

At first, I was going to say that I don't think it's that simple, but I see that Kryx posted about this above. I missed that earlier.

Based on my experience, it always seemed that Roll20 has no capability to switch from an existing sheet to another without losing all your journal data. I thought this was a Roll20 problem that might take a fair bit of development to fix. But maybe Kryx has a solution. I certainly hope so.

But I still wonder about the licensed content. If we buy it pre-configured for the OGL sheet, I'm assuming we have to set the OGL sheet for the game where we will use the content. If we then switch the sheet to a different type, will everything carry over properly if Kryx has updated the attribute names?

Seconded on the scale error - In Thundertree and Wave Echo cavern you have the scale wrong and tokens take up 4 times the space. Also, in Wave Echo Cavern, you have missed some bits of the dynamic lighting that means that characters can see behind walls (especially at dead ends, but also in one place there is simply a bit of wall missing).

Other than that it is great.  It would be awesome if there was a toggle so that I could have attacks and spells appear as token macros (so that I don't need to have character sheets open for basic attacks).

It's looking very good and the tokens being in the circles is just the way I like it.

Greg said:

SkyCaptainXIII said:

So go bug Kryx to change the attribute names to match the OGL sheet. It's that simple pretty much.

At first, I was going to say that I don't think it's that simple, but I see that Kryx posted about this above. I missed that earlier.

Based on my experience, it always seemed that Roll20 has no capability to switch from an existing sheet to another without losing all your journal data. I thought this was a Roll20 problem that might take a fair bit of development to fix. But maybe Kryx has a solution. I certainly hope so.

But I still wonder about the licensed content. If we buy it pre-configured for the OGL sheet, I'm assuming we have to set the OGL sheet for the game where we will use the content. If we then switch the sheet to a different type, will everything carry over properly if Kryx has updated the attribute names?

You never 'lose' the data, the attributes created will always exist on a character (autocalc'd values won't however...), the only issue is that they are no longer displayed in the user friendly way that character sheets provide unless the sheets utilise the same naming conventions.

For example, if I have a sheet that uses the values 'Name', 'Age', 'Race', fill those in and then change to a sheet that uses 'Name', 'PlayerAge', 'PlayerRace', the name field will still be filled in on the new sheet but the age and race fields will be empty since they have a different attribute name... my original information can still be found as attributes on the attributes tab however, and could even still be called by macros!

While it is difficult for different sheets, even for the same system, to use the exact same naming conventions for their fields due to the way in which they use those fields to feed other fields. That being said, in a perfect world there would be some sort of fail safe method to switch between two sheets for the same system... and if anyone can find a way to do that, Riley and Kryx can! Fingers crossed for all 5e fans out there :)

With this new partnership with D&D will there be updates to the 5e (or other version) SRD on Roll 20? I'd love to see more spells and feats and other components on the SRD. I would certainly have more conficance to use it, if I knew that is was more complete.

Love these new adventures too and plan on using some of them for some quick fun with friends!

I think one of the main clarifications that's needed is where do bugs associated with modules go? For example it has been mentioned a few times that the scale of two maps in relation to the the tokens is off (corrected by doubling the size of the map, redrawing dynamic lighting, resetting map scale, and re-positioning monsters). Should this be opened in the bug forum, or someplace else?