Roll20 essentials

[Elder_Basilisk]

So our group is going to have to meet online for at least a little while, so I'm going to need to learn to run roll20.

What are the best tutorials for getting up and running quickly? Any tips beyond the tutorials?

And what art/token packs are essential if you are trying to minimize cost and don't plan to spend hours meticulously creating maps/prepping?

Preliminarily looking at it, it looks like the free tokens are adequate if not terribly exciting and full battlemaps would be more useful for a more wilderness and/or sandbox based campaign game since you should be able to drag and drop them straight into play to create a fully realized encounter area on short notice but dungeon tile type things might be better for a site based/mega dungeon style game since you could use them to create an exact map ahead of time even though they're not necessarily practical for in-play drag and drop.

[Blackhawk748]

I've found that you don't need to spend any money to make it work. The tiles are fine but so is just drawing out what you need with the marker.

Also you can upload pictures to use and that's very helpful

[Ason]

I don't know about essentials, but if you're looking for good maps to use (since the freebie ones on Roll20 are rather limited), check out r/battlemaps over on Reddit. D&D nerds with art skills post all sorts of maps on there which you can then use in your campaign.

[schreier]

Can you easily upload maps from published adventures (like modules or dungeon magazine)?

[Elder_Basilisk]

Any advice about tutorials. Are the ones on the site fine or are the best one hiding on YouTube or the net (text is ideal) somewhere out of sight?

[KillianHawkeye]

My group just had our first Roll20 game last Sunday. The on-site tutorial seemed pretty thorough to me, although there may be additional tricks that aren't covered for all I know.

[Kitsuneymg]

For tokens, use token stamp from roll advantage.

Use the community pathfinder sheet not the official one of playing pathfinder. Make good use of the NPC sheet mode for monsters. The drag and drop compendium is great 85% of the time.

I’ll try to remember to post several useful macros for GMs. Several are huge though and may need to be placed into a gdoc.

[Quentinas]

I use dungeon painter online (which can be used totally free) to create maps without needing to use roll20 tiles... I started to use roll20 without tutorials so i can't help for that

[Elder_Basilisk]

Can you easily upload maps from published adventures (like modules or dungeon magazine)?

My experience from playing around in DM mode again today: it depends on the format of the adventure. I could open a pdf, screen shot it, crop the screenshot to the map in irfanview, and then drag and drop the map onto the tabletop but it took a little resizing to keep it from being wonky. Depending on what format you have the adventure in, it could be easier or harder.

[Troacctid]

If you want ready-made tokens, you can try the Pathfinder Bestiary (https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/bundle/3834/pathfinder-rpg-bestiary), which has most of the SRD stuff.

[Kraynic]

My experience from playing around in DM mode again today: it depends on the format of the adventure. I could open a pdf, screen shot it, crop the screenshot to the map in irfanview, and then drag and drop the map onto the tabletop but it took a little resizing to keep it from being wonky. Depending on what format you have the adventure in, it could be easier or harder.

From a pdf, I have just imported the image page of the pdf into GIMP, then export it as jpg. It can be helpful to crop/scale the image if possible so that the pixel dimensions are some multiple of 70, since the default grid on Roll20 uses 70 x 70 pixel squares. Once the image is in Roll20, I just right click the image, select "set dimensions" and input the exact size of the image. Then I don't have to do any stretching and guessing to get the image to look right.

Edit: The hard part is trying to deal with maps (like from Judge's Guild or similar) from old modules that have been scanned from an old print module and posted on line. Sometimes they are several pages put together and not quite truly aligned, or they were scanned crooked... Some images are a lot easier to work with than others.

[SangoProduction]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/13uKl4CdYlm5TqXWc-6x1O1bSzFyUkmqZY0P9Yig1Dd0/edit

Here you go

[schreier]

What is GIMP, other than the obvious

[DeTess]

What is GIMP, other than the obvious

It's free image editing software, with a lot of the tools you need to make some pretty decent things.

[Kurald Galain]

What is GIMP, other than the obvious

Gnu Image Manipulation Program, aka Adobe Photoshop but for free. If you're geeky enough, that's the obvious one :smallamused:

[Ruethgar]

Back-up of as much as you are willing to keep up with. The Roll20 staff are not responsive, at all, in my experience so better safe than sorry if something goes wrong on the site or someone has you banned without means of appeal. The site is still a good resource though, just best to cover yourself against a potential loss.

[schreier]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/13uKl4CdYlm5TqXWc-6x1O1bSzFyUkmqZY0P9Yig1Dd0/edit

Here you go

Are these the API that you need the Pro membership for?

[Elkad]

Are these the API that you need the Pro membership for?

just skimmed that, but at least most of it is basic macros anyone can use.