Page Updated:   2021-10-22

Brand New To RPGs? First of all, welcome to Tabletop Gaming! We recommend RPG newbies to watch our Introduction To Tabletop RPGs series first to get themselves familiar with the basics of how an RPG is played, how to go about picking a game, and finding a group to play with.

Welcome to Roll20, this page serves as a 101 course for a GM who's looking to move from the physical table to the virtual one. Moderator, Kristin, will guide you through how she sets up a tabletop campaign.

Each video is accompanied with relevant info about the subject covered and includes links to wiki pages that flesh out topics only briefly mentioned in this video series. This crash course is specifically designed as an overview of how to get around Roll20 and what features are available in the application.

Alternatively, check our newly updated, interactive Tutorial

For the nitty gritty details, we recommend topic searching within our wiki or Help Center.

Course Overview

Roll20 is an easy-to-use system agnostic virtual tabletop. It's flexible to handle most Tabletop RPGs as well as simulate popular board and card games. Don't let our product name confuse you. Roll20 can run more than just d20 systems! We have players from around the world who commonly play games such as Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, Fate, GURPS, Fiasco, World of Darkness, Savage Worlds, Dungeon World, and many, many other official and homebrewed games.

Here's what you can expect to see on our virtual tabletop:

• Video and Voice Chat (VOIP) capabilities as well as robust Text Chat
• Character Sheets
• Battle Maps that can use square or hex grids (both vertical and horizontal) or no grid at all - You also have several means to hide terrain and objects from the PCs as they play
• PC and NPC Tokens that can be linked to character sheets and be set up with their own rolling macros
• Several methods of Dice Rolling, including the ability to build Macros for ease of use
• Storage and quick lookup of notes, maps and homebrewed rules
• An Initiative Tracker
• A Media Player for sound effects and background music
• Create custom Card Decks, Counters and Dice
• A Looking For Group system to match up players with GMs

Creating Your First Campaign

In this video series, Kristin will be building a basic Pathfinder campaign. This won't be a system specific tutorial, so if you're not familiar with Pathfinder, you should be able to still follow along just fine. If you are a Pathfinder player, there's a wiki guide dedicated to detailing tips and tricks to setting up a Pathfinder campaign in Roll20.

Kristin's outlined her first session as follows:

1. PCs meet one another in a tavern of a small city
2. Thugs show up to shakedown the tavern's barkeep and a tussle between them and the PCs ensues
3. After the fight, the barkeep discovers his young son missing and the PCs discover a ransom note demanding the barkeep pay his debt or his son's life is forfeit
4. The PCs go around town looking for information on this protection racket - they eventually find out that bandits are operating out of the city sewers
5. The PCs travel into the sewers and find a hidden headquarters of bandits where their leader as well as the barkeep's son are hidden
6. The bandit leader will try to coerce the PCs to work for him, depending on the PCs actions will determine how the next session goes
   

If you purchase a module base from our Marketplace for a board game, card game or RPG campaign, these titles will be listed at the right of the campaign creation page. If you wish to run those modules instead of starting with a blank campaign, click on the desired one to select it before creating the campaign. Purchased module bases can be used and reused as often as you like.

Designing The Tabletop

Map Marketplace Content Used:

1. Fantasy Tavern and Inn map pack - Sean Archer
2. The Dungeon Delve I - Kevin Brown

Wiki Pages
While you can learn how to create Pages and add content to them by just experimenting with the interface, here's a list of wiki links below for more in-depth discussion about each feature of the Tabletop in particular.

• Page Settings: Walks you through all the game system options available for Pages
• Manipulating Graphics: Explains how to move about the Tabletop and transforming images placed upon it
• Drawing Tools: For when you want to freehand a drawing or add text to the tabletop
• Split the Party: When you absolutely have to split the party between Pages

When a grid is activated on a Page, images and objects will be forced to snap to the grid. You can prevent snapping at any time by holding down the ALT key while interacting with content.

Managing Character Sheets and Handouts

All account users have access to the community created character sheet templates. It requires a Pro subscription to customize them or create your own. To see what character sheets are in the works or request help with on, check our Character Sheet forum.
Wiki Pages

• The N Journal-tab: This wiki goes over all the features for character journals and handouts.
• Character Sheets: This wiki covers everything from how to add a template to your campaign to creating your own.
• Category:Character Sheet Documentation how to use the different sheets
• D&D 5E by Roll20 How to use the most popular sheet/game on Roll20

Creating Minis

Token Marketplace Content Used:

1. Adventurer Avatars - by Phillip Wright

Wiki Pages

• Token Features: Everything you need to know about tokens and their properties can be found here.
• Token Actions
• Link Token to Character Sheet

In order for journal linking to work properly, you must first set up the representation on the token. Only then should you add the token to the desired character journal.

Working With Dice

The macro used in the above video only works if every token is not only linked to a journal, but also requires the journal to have the "Initiative" attribute. If these two conditions are not met, the macro supplies an error message in the chat log.

As mentioned in the video, users who plan to use text chat a great deal should look into using [|Inline_Rolls|inline rolls]] for their macros. An inline roll eliminates the several lines of text that result from a dice roll and instead only lists the final tally of the roll. Wiki Pages

• How to Roll Dice: If you want to roll something a little more complicated than the GUI allows, you'll want to read this first
• t Dice Rolling GUI: Simplest means to roll dice
• Dice Reference: This lists all of Roll20's available rolling formulas
• Macros: Macros allow you to roll a formula repeatedly, this wiki explains the selectors available to make rolling dice easier
• Token Actions: Shown at the end tail of this video. Token Actions link rolling macros to tokens
• API:Introduction: A
  Pro
  ^info feature, this allows you to script actions in Roll20 that the application doesn't normally do
• Category:Guides, Category:Tips Category:Games: Some of our users have already created wiki pages explaining tips and tricks of how to play their favorite RPG systems.
• Category:Character Sheet Documentation info on how different character sheets work

Campaign Extras

The two music tracks sampled from SoundCloud were also tracks by Kevin MacLeod.

• Tavern Track: Skye Cuillin
• Sewer Track: The Complex

Wiki Pages

• u Jukebox: This Wiki page walks you through how you can add music and SFX to your campaign
• Fog of War: This tool is available to all account users. It hides and reveals area on the tabletop.
• Dynamic Lighting: Like Fog of War, but more sophisticated. It's an interactive lighting system available to
  Pro
  ^info and
  Plus
  ^info users
• Card Decks and Rollable Tables: These pages talks about how you can use and create your own card decks as well as rollable tables, which can be used to create objects like dice that use pictogram sides or randomized equipment lists.

Inviting Players

Beyond using the LFG system, you can also use the Looking For Group Forum to find players.

Wiki Pages

• Campaign Management:This touches on the all the features one can edit on the Campaign Details page, including inviting and removing players from the campaign

Playing A Session

If your group chooses to go with voice or video chat, Roll20 offers two methods. There's a built-in video service provided by TokBox and you can launch the Roll20 application within a Google Hangout.

Wiki Pages

• Video and Voice Chat: This explains how to set up Roll20 to broadcast your mic/webcam to the rest of the party
• Live Stream and Record Game Sessions: A growing trend on streaming sites like Twitch.tv are gaming groups inviting the internet to come sit in on their games. If your group feels like streaming or recording their game for the masses, this wiki will guide you through the setup for livecasting your campaign.

See Also

• Roll20 Basics
  • (interactive) Roll20 Tutorial
  • Youtube Tutorials about Roll20
• Introduction To Tabletop RPGs
• Roll20 Glossary