Roll20: Best ways to make turns go faster?

[Endarire]

*EDIT*: I mostly seek things on the player side to expedite turns as I'm presently a player.

Greetings, all!

When playing on Roll20 (an online tabletop RPG platform), what are the best ways besides those listed here to make turns to faster? This post is primarily for D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder, but other systems' details that translate easily into 3.5/PF also work.

-[GM] Label all creatures with #1, #2, #3, etc. so people can easily direct attacks and effects at specific locations/subjects.

-[GM & PC] Make macros for everything!

-[GM & PC] Be prepared in general. This means knowing what your character(s) can do and having their macros at the ready.

[Mike Miller]

GM and PC : pay attention. Similar to what you have but slightly different than be prepared. Sometimes even having macros doesn't help if a player isn't paying attention.

GM : keep the players engaged, especially when it isn't their turn

[Talverin]

Definitely macros are the way to go. Also, keep on-task. Have another chat room where players can conduct OOC chatter during game. It's gonna happen - embrace it, but make sure it isn't disruptive.

If you're gonna be doing voice chat, establish some kind of 'quiet down' code-word. "Check" is one I use out of habit from my EVE days. Make sure the relevant information is on-screen. Display token names for everyone, make sure everyone has easy access to their sheets and information. Keeping everyone on track is the hardest part to do, but you can do it by interjecting things people can work with. For example,

"After his attack, he turns toward (X), and takes a defensive stance."

"The hit looks like it really hurt the bandit, and he staggers, looking like his guard is down."

"You notice that two of the bandits seem to be clustered a little too close together."

"The other Orc draws a huge, nasty-looking bow, and has eyes only for the poor, squishy wizard."

Also, Roll20 has an on-screen initiative tool, and it is -awesome-. Make sure everyone's aware whose turn it is and who's coming next. Call out between each one. "Alright, B. You're up. C, you're after."

Enjoy! Roll20 is awesome when done right.

[Crake]

keep in mind that macros can include a "target", which allows a user to click on a token and, for example, you can select the token name and print it in your macro, so you can simply click your macro, click on the orc you want to attack, and the macro will say "<User> Attacks Orc1 <insert attack roll and damage>"

[Endarire]

I mostly seek things on the player side to expedite turns as I'm presently a player. What other suggestions have you?

Updated original post with such.

[Mordaedil]

My website (still in somewhat of development) has a generator that automatically transcribes spells into Roll20 macros, which I imagine are really useful. It doesn't quite do the rolls and stuff, but it sets up most of the text just fine. So once that is done, that should allow people to make most spells really quickly into decent macros.

For most other things, I think what roll20 already gives you gives you a fair pace to things?

[Hal0Badger]

I mostly seek things on the player side to expedite turns as I'm presently a player. What other suggestions have you?

Updated original post with such.
Be ready. Talk with other characters, in short sentences of course, even it is not your turn. Telling a player he should not charge to 60 ft away target because you need a flanking partner is not nice, but asking in character " Hey Fighter, let's take down this badguy here!" is much more engaging.


Know your mechanics, and know them well. You cannot expect a DM to remember all mechanics, at best he would know where to look. If you gonna build, for example a grappler, go over grapple rules with your dm off game-time, make sure you are on the same page, and then remember those rules well. A DM might not know everything, and when you ask a question about grapple he might need to consult a chart or something, losing you precious game time. However if you already know the mechanic, and DM trusts you because you have gone over that earlier on, it will be much more faster.

Make macros for your most frequently used attacks/spells. Roll20 default template is easy to use

[Mordaedil]

This goes for everyone at the table, make one of your weapon macros "Touch attack".

Even if you're not a spellcaster, you're going to be rolling that for special actions during combat, like tripping, grappling etc.

[Mike Miller]

My website (still in somewhat of development) has a generator that automatically transcribes spells into Roll20 macros, which I imagine are really useful. It doesn't quite do the rolls and stuff, but it sets up most of the text just fine. So once that is done, that should allow people to make most spells really quickly into decent macros.

For most other things, I think what roll20 already gives you gives you a fair pace to things?

Is the website action yet? That sounds very useful

[Grod_The_Giant]

Based on my experiences, I'd actually suggest staying away from macros-- far too often, I see people having to stop and try to figure out "wait, did that include the bardic music bonus? Where's this damage number coming from, it doesn't look right." /roll is plenty. Pinging the target of your attack, or where you're centering a spell, is fine. You might be able to squeeze a few seconds off of everyone's turn with fancy features (assuming they work right), but the real slow-down in combat has always been human. Just like a live game, making sure everyone knows/has references for their abilities and has a plan for when their turn arrives is the key point.

[Elkad]

Based on my experiences, I'd actually suggest staying away from macros-- far too often, I see people having to stop and try to figure out "wait, did that include the bardic music bonus? Where's this damage number coming from, it doesn't look right." /roll is plenty. Pinging the target of your attack, or where you're centering a spell, is fine. You might be able to squeeze a few seconds off of everyone's turn with fancy features (assuming they work right), but the real slow-down in combat has always been human. Just like a live game, making sure everyone knows/has references for their abilities and has a plan for when their turn arrives is the key point.

On the standard 3.5 sheet, that is sorta a concern.
On Pathfinder it's much less of one. You make a buff called "bard music" with the appropriate bonuses, check the box, and it's on until you uncheck it. Same with your Mage Armor, Shield (cast or equipped), Bless, Haste, etc.
And if you customize your macros, you can include a "floating bonus" box anyway, or tag conditionals on as text at the end.

So when my 3.5 dwarf makes a save I push the button and it outputs "23 - add +2 if vs spells/poison". If Inspire Courage is up and I get hit with a Fear, I have to add that manually, but it's no slower than checking my sheet to see Will+7, +2 for dwarf vs spell, +3 for IC, adding it all in my head and typing out "/r 1d20+12" And when it isn't a Fear save, it's a single click and a potential bonus that is listed right there (and obviously NOT included).

Take another example. Energy Ray (Sonic). Variable amount of (d6-1). If I /r 7d6-7, I have to check each die for the (1) results and add a point back on for each manually. Whereas my macro asks for X? PP, and rolls Xd6-X,Xd1, Best X and totals, automatically eliminating all those invalid dice with a result of 0. (And yes, I'm aware that is one interpretation of the rules. The other is that the whole Energy Ray has a minimum of 1pt instead of each die. In which case you still need a check to raise the minimum damage to 1 if ALL the dice come up as 1-1=0)

Plus a macro has all the other stuff you only need sometimes. Miss chance, spell resistance, concentration checks, precision damage as a separate line item, crit confirmation, the reminder that you have a LifeDrinking crystal in your weapon, etc.


Roll20 does need better status trackers. But the sheets (especially PF - which has some of them) are already so slow, they really need to change to a better system before piling even more on.




Other considerations. I use 3 monitors, and more would be better, so I can have the game board, all my sheets, etc up at the same time. I still find myself spilling over to my laptop as a 4th screen for general looking-up of rules, etc.

If you are using voice (no matter if it's skype or discord or whatever), require everyone to use Push-to-talk. Nobody wants to listen to someone else's TV or desk fan or crying baby the whole session.

Just like tabletop gaming, schedule your breaks, so you keep the random AFKs to a minimum.

If you are good at macros, help your fellow players. If one has a favorite spell he keeps typing out manually, make him a macro to paste into his sheet for the next session.

[Anxe]

I'd also suggest having exciting music playing softly in the background. Does a lot to keep people focused.

[Elkad]

I'd also suggest having exciting music playing softly in the background. Does a lot to keep people focused.

On the jukebox thing? I mute that instantly in every game.

[Anxe]

On the jukebox thing? I mute that instantly in every game.

True, It's not helpful to everyone, but the modularity of it means it can't hurt anyone's engagement.

[DarkSoul]

I mostly seek things on the player side to expedite turns as I'm presently a player. What other suggestions have you?

Updated original post with such.Learn how the character sheet's built-in macro functions work, and how to modify them. See below for details. Also, use the macro bars in game so you don't have to have your sheet open all the time. Learn the space + move pathing so there's no question about where a character moves and if they provoke AoO's en route.


Based on my experiences, I'd actually suggest staying away from macros-- far too often, I see people having to stop and try to figure out "wait, did that include the bardic music bonus? Where's this damage number coming from, it doesn't look right." /roll is plenty. Pinging the target of your attack, or where you're centering a spell, is fine. You might be able to squeeze a few seconds off of everyone's turn with fancy features (assuming they work right), but the real slow-down in combat has always been human. Just like a live game, making sure everyone knows/has references for their abilities and has a plan for when their turn arrives is the key point.I disagree completely about the macros and in fact it irritates me when players just /roll for their attacks, when there's a perfectly usable macro system that will: roll for up to 10 attacks, check for critical hits, roll to confirm the crit for each, then roll normal and critical damage for all of them in the space of about 30 seconds (assuming some time to input conditional values), and finally output all the results in a nicely formatted box rather than a string of rolls that flood the in-game chat for a screen and a half. For example, I'm playing a cleric archer and my attack macros ask if I get the point blank shot bonus, what my knowledge devotion value is, what my holy warrior value is and then asks for any other attack or damage modifers I might have.

The same thing applies to spells. Put the most commonly used spells into the sheet in macro form and they can: scale by caster level to a cap value, roll concentration checks to determine if you provoke AoO's for casting, caster level checks to penetrate SR, and roll spell damage, then output everything in a single box.

I DO agree that most of the slow-down is human; not learning the macro system just makes it worse though.

[Zanos]

Based on my experiences, I'd actually suggest staying away from macros-- far too often, I see people having to stop and try to figure out "wait, did that include the bardic music bonus? Where's this damage number coming from, it doesn't look right." /roll is plenty. Pinging the target of your attack, or where you're centering a spell, is fine. You might be able to squeeze a few seconds off of everyone's turn with fancy features (assuming they work right), but the real slow-down in combat has always been human. Just like a live game, making sure everyone knows/has references for their abilities and has a plan for when their turn arrives is the key point.
Considering I've had people spend tons of time screwing around with broken macros during games, I'm inclined to agree. And I'm a programmer.