PC Token troubles and general questions

So, my group has finally made the switch over to Roll20 after knowing about it for a year or more, and things seem to be going swimmingly for the most part. I am however running into a couple issues. 1) First and foremost, I cannot seem to keep character tokens linked properly, unless I'm just misunderstanding how it works. I have journals set up for each of the PCs, each of which has a "default token" selected. When I drag the character from the journal tab onto a map, the correct token and name appears, but each time I end up with it defaulting to not showing any information (including names) to the players, the "controlled by" line is blank, and the token info no longer shows it as representing a specific character. This means, among other things, that the players cannot move or otherwise mess with their own tokens until I take the time to go into each token individually and reselect all of those options so the correct player has control of it. I would hope this isn't how it should always go, so can anyone tell me what I'm missing or doing wrong? 2) My other main trouble is mapping. When I was first messing about with Roll20 a while back, I was able to find all sorts of tilesets in the art library. Now, I only seem to get a lot of random junk from dundjinni.com or cartographers guild, few of which seem to be anything other than pages of tokens or textures for use in making your own maps on editing software. I was at one point able to patch together a city block from street/building tiles, but it seems like all of the tiles are locked behind pay walls now. Is this actually the case, or am I just failing when I try to do searches for these tiles? I'm more than willing to eventually hop into the Mentor program and help support Roll20, but I can't really justify dropping $5/set to grab random tile sets that may or may not actually work for what I need. Thanks in advance for any advice you might be able to offer.

Problem 1: remove default token. Setup token fully then make it default. You have the default set to the presetup token so all your work is not being kept. When you set the default it is taking a snapshot of the token as it is at that moment.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks, MK!

I have three recommendations for mapping, depending on money/effort: 1) Drawing Tools. There's nothing wrong with colored squares circles, and polygons. Most tabletop RPGs are designed around playing with a mat and some dry erase markers, if that. Your imagination is the real artist when it comes to these games...nothing says you have to make everything perfect and pretty. That being said, you can draw just about any environment/object using the polygon tool and some smart use of background and line color. Pros: It's free, it's fast, it's effective. Cons: It's not very pretty, and if you aren't going into areas that look distinct very often, can get a bit boring. 2) External Programs. Cartographer, Maptool, Paint.net, Photoshop...there's a bunch of 3rd party tools out there for drawing that can make very pretty maps. Some are free, some cost more than your first born child (*cough* Photoshop *cough), but all can make maps. If you already have one of these programs or knowledge of computer art this offers the most visual appeal and versatility by far. Pros: You can make some really impressive stuff. You can do all your artwork outside of Roll20 and in a program you may be already familiar with. You can literally create anything you want if you have the time and ability. Cons: Can be expensive, depending on the program. Potentially requires learning a new tool. Easily the most time consuming for prep work. Eats up your image storage like candy, especially for big maps. 3) "DIY" Tiles. This is the one I use the most and my preferred method. I have a couple sets of dungeon tiles I've bought off the store specifically designed to work together and allow for virtually any layout. I use the "flip" and "rotate" functions extensively to add variety to the dungeon tiles, along with tinted lighting to create a lot of different effects. The mid point between the simplicity of the drawing tools and the art quality of external programs. Pros: Fairly cheap, I think I've spent like $10 or maybe $15 (I bought some tokens as well). Saves space versus external programs because you're reusing the same art assets (no extra storage cost). Can look very good with some time, practice, and use of environmental tokens. Fairly intuitive setup (drag and drop). Easy to alter your layout later. Cons: Not free. Areas are going to look fairly similar. Requires more time to set up than drawing tools. Tempting to keep buying a ton of tiles that don't work with each other so you end up never using them (still cheaper than Photoshop). My biggest overall recommendation for mapping is to not worry about perfection or aesthetics if they interfere with functionality. Your players will be impressed for about 10 seconds with your pretty map but they'll remember the encounters forever. While some may disagree with this philosophy, I highly recommend focusing on fun first and realism second. If you try to make your maps completely realistic you'll spend a ton of time building assets that your players will probably ignore. Think about what would be fun and cool and then build out from there. Get all the big things and don't sweat the details...you can add them in the description. If you're spending more than two or three hours setting up one hour of gameplay you probably need to reevaluate your workflow unless you want to spend more than 8-12 hours a week setting up a 4 hour game (I sure don't!). Good luck =).

Another option for maps can be using actual maps. A little while ago in the campaign I'm running, the background layer of my map was, literally, a section of New York's Central Park taken from Google Maps. The game wasn't taking place in NYC; hell, it wasn't even taking place on Earth , but a park is still a park. On the "world map" for the same campaign, I've incorporated some photographs of the San Palo desert and Badlands National Park. If New Zealand is good enough to look like Middle Earth, I can use random bits of real-world geography for my campaign. =)