Advice/help requested for going semi-digital

[MrFahrenheit]

So at the room I DM our 5e game in, there's a big tv that almost never gets turned on. My players and I only meet in person, but recently I've been toying with the idea of putting the tv to use, and transitioning our world/local/battlemaps to software on my laptop, then hooking said laptop up to the tv.

All of the dice rolling, character sheets, books and players would still be in person, at the table. But the visuals would be on-screen. I've now played around with four different tools to that end, and am looking for advice on how to streamline things more effectively. Here are my subjective thoughts on these programs:

1. Roll20: this would be nice, except I don't have an upgraded account and can't find painting tools. Maybe I'm just blind, but the overall lack of options for creating an impromptu battlemap in quick seconds is a major drawback. I've seen people Twitch stream and it looks beautiful, but I also haven't seen anyone stream homemade campaigns iirc. So this is a no.

2. Fantasy Grounds: A friend of mine bought me an account with a ton of dnd stuff as a gift. Man, these tokens are awesome! Only problem is in finding a way to drag/drop quickly - and even draw maps quickly. What happens if the party pisses off someone or falls into a random encounter? Would take me a while to set that up. I didn't find the tutorial all that helpful, though admittedly I need to play around with it more.

3. Table Top Simulator: this is the most beautiful of the bunch, but if FG and R20 had slow user interfaces, this one takes the cake. Select...bag of minis. Wait, wrong bag. Ok, select another bag of minis...this time I'll search for the mini I want before adding the bag to the table. Pick up desired mini...drop gently on board. Ok, why did that take five minutes?! Nonetheless, I may still use it for my campaign's final boss battle.

4. NBOS fractal mapper: ok, customizable world maps, dungeon maps, city maps, building interior maps and battle maps - and they can be done QUICK if necessary. So far, so good! But...hardly any tokens/"minis." If I could import the FG tokens here, I'd be in business. Sigh...

Keep in mind that I don't want/need to input character sheets into any of the software that allows it, as what I'm looking for is purely the in-person visual, so I'm fine keeping everything in DM mode and playing "pass the mouse."

[sir_argo]

My group uses Roll20 and it's working out great.

I'm actually going to list Cons first.

Cons


Cost. To really use Roll20 right, you need a Pro account. Yes, you can use it at Plus or free, but the better features require an upgraded account.
Learning Curve. It took us at least a couple months go start really using Roll20 efficiently. When we first tried it, we only used the map (we literally put lead figures on the tabletop). After learning all the features, we're now using almost all them: dynamic lighting, API's, automated initiative. While it works great, it takes time to learn.
Profit Based Design. There are several features that would be fantastic, but they've made preserving their profit as a priority. Example, I have created spell graphics for every spell that has an AoE. I can upload these to any game in which I play, but they want to deter sharing so they only allow copying in bulk between your own games. There's nothing illegal about me sharing a graphic that I made, but because they want to encourage you to buy their tokens, they make it difficult to share large collections.
Lag. Please refer to Profit Based Design above. Roll20 could easily be a stand alone application that you just run on your own PC. But since they want to ensure you are a paying customer, they run it from their own servers. So come game day, let's just say it... it's Saturday... everybody games on Saturday, the servers seem to get bogged down. They could resolve this by letting you run the instance just on your own PC, ah but the money!


Pros


Digital Character Sheet. This puts the bulk of the math behind the scenes. When you add weapon to your character, it computes all your mods. When playing the game, all you do is click on the weapon and it does the rest. Very robust. Can handle advantage, disadvantage, even keeping track of ammo and spell slots.
Automated Turn Order. I'm not sure many will notice, but this has been great. Our DM can just drag a net around all his mobs, hit an API function that rolls separate initiative for every mob, and sorts it all out with our characters. He just hits the Next button and it automatically moves to the next mob in order. He has said he can now throw 20 mobs at us without it being a logistical nightmare. Wait, maybe that's a bad thing.
Aesthetics. It looks great. Since you can use pretty much any map, they are as beautiful as whatever you upload. No more dry erase lines on a checkerboard. Actual images of dungeons with stone floors, blood stains, etc. Also, Dynamic Lighting is fantastic. We are using an API that restricts vision to only the character whose turn it is. So when it's Bob's turn, every other character's vision is turned off and the only part of the map that is visible is whatever Bob can see.


You also made a comment about not being able to find painting tools. Dude, Gimp 2. It's free and very, very good.

[MrFahrenheit]

I think the lack of painting tools was more in regards to roll20/FG. NBOS is great for that though.

[gfishfunk]

I have some really ugly looking roll20 maps that I 'hand draw' (using roll20 tools) while we are going. Its ugly but it works.

There is a bit of a learning curve, as stated.

Some I draw ahead of time, some I draw at the time of. I often use features that do not require a subscription or fee. There is some set-up time, but it can be integrated into typical DM Prep: figuring out the enemies (just build them into the character sheets as you create them) and figuring out the map (draw it on roll20 as you go).

[Aurthur]

Use whatever paint app you like to make the maps, then you can just import them into Roll20.net. *shrug*

[Hrugner]

Just use the paint app itself, it sounds like you don't want anything else out of it. If you have adobe illustrator, I'd use that since it's more intuitive to lock objects and you can use a mask over player tokens for fog of war. Zoom in enough and assume 10 pixels per foot distance using the line tool as a range finder. It is possible that this would be super hard and I'm blinded by my own fluency with the program, but I don't think that's the case here.

[BW022]

MrFahrenheit,

I'll step you back a bit.

Projecting a battlemap on to a large screen on the wall is not helpful in D&D. It is one thing making a table out of the TV set (laying a TV flat and building it into a table -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PghNU-5PEPg) so you can have people move figures by hand on top of it, but if it is only on the wall, then either you'll need to move the figure in your program (annoying and time consuming), or they'll each need a tablet and way of connecting to the software.

If you just want a screen to project images, aids, pictures, scrolls, hand-outs, etc. sure. Various file viewers would work for that. I'm not sure how helpful that would be. Initiative tracking... various simple programs would do that.

Assuming the TV was build into a table... I use Roll20 and it is fine.


Maps
I've not had any real issues with this in Roll20.

Most maps are uploaded. You draw them out ahead of time with Paint PaintShop, or some other graphics program and upload them. Alternately you can scan them or get them from a digital source. Roll20 has all sorts of options for scaling and matching them to grids. Works fine. I've uploaded campaign maps (scan or download a large scale setting map), small scale maps (drew myself on tablet/pen), and individual encounter dungeon maps (which I created ages ago using Paint Brush Pro). You can honestly draw them on graph paper and scan them if you wanted to.

For ad-hocs... scan a bunch of dungeon tiles, random maps online (cities, forest, mountains, inn, roadway, etc.) A dozen or so is fine. Most players won't care if it is 100% accurate to the situation. If you need something new... you create a new page, add a grid, and just insert a few symbols (using the search for say tree, wagon, etc.). Again, players just need to see the key things. Most of the time, you want to avoid ad-hoc as random encounters are time consuming. However, I've done it in Roll20... no problem.

The tutorials and forums are great. It just takes time learning how to use the layer system. Once you get it... no big deal.


Aids
I use Roll20 all the time for aids. I Google various images for terrain (mountains, lakes, old cities, etc.) which match the campaign. Just put them on a page, turn off the grid, and maybe add a text object for a caption. You only need a few of these.


Monsters/Character Sheets
Useful for quick stats. Roll20's NPC option makes this easy. You can bring up the character sheet and see the information.


Initiative Tracking
Roll20 works fine for this. You just need simple tokens for the PCs and then manually fill out initiatives if they are rolling. Then again, lots of programs for this.




1. Roll20: this would be nice, except I don't have an upgraded account and can't find painting tools. Maybe I'm just blind, but the overall lack of options for creating an impromptu battlemap in quick seconds is a major drawback. I've seen people Twitch stream and it looks beautiful, but I also haven't seen anyone stream homemade campaigns iirc. So this is a no.


I have a full campaign in Roll20. I had a 3.5 campaign I ran over a decade ago. I did it up as a series of Word documents with maps, stats, descriptions, roleplaying notes, etc. When I moved to 5E I ran the campaign in Roll20. I had to update the campaign itself to 5E and then upload the maps, aids, creatures, etc. to Roll20. It might have taken a couple of hours per module (four hour session). In the end, I had 17 "modules" uploaded, representing some 50 or so maps/pages, 80 monsters, and a few dozen hand outs.

My advice... try writing the module as a Word document with inserted maps. Once done... it is pretty easy to convert to Roll20.

[MrFahrenheit]

Interesting. One question on the tv vs table issue: I was thinking of playing "pass the mouse" which would be wireless and have a trackball. Would it really be that difficult/disengaging?

[sir_argo]

Interesting. One question on the tv vs table issue: I was thinking of playing "pass the mouse" which would be wireless and have a trackball. Would it really be that difficult/disengaging?

Our group does this. There is some difficulty in that the mouse works great for the person who is seeing the image right-side up. However, if you're on the side, or viewing top-side down, the mouse pointer is difficult to control. I guess you could try to hold the mouse rotated to match your viewing angle. Another option is to give everybody their own wireless mouse. You can have multiple mice... just tell the players to cooperate and only the player whose turn it is controls the pointer. If you use a separate mouse for each player, you should be able to adjust the orientation for each mouse. That would be something you do at the start of the session.

[MrFahrenheit]

Glad to hear it works. I don't think the angle issue will be as much a problem since it'll be on a standing tv.