Revision as of 18:59, 21 April 2017

WORK-IN-PROGRESS - NEED TO ADD IMAGES

Tips for creating and running D&D5E games on Roll20

You don’t have to spend hours on end preparing each game session.

Realistically, you should probably expect to spend a few hours preparing your first one and then maybe you could cut back to about 1 hour technical prep for a 4-hr game session. You should do a bit of practice with the Monsters, Maps, Dice rolling and Tokens before you start playing the game for real. To be absolutely honest, I have spent a lot longer than this preparing for my D&D 5E games but since Roll20 introduced the Compendium and the ability to drag monster info from the compendium, it has got a lot quicker.

Creating the Campaign From the “Start New Game” option…

 Enter the name for your Campaign
 Choose the Character Sheet called “5th Edition ( OGL by Roll20 )”
 Click “I’m Ready, Create Game”

As soon as you have clicked “I’m Ready, Create Game”, you will Join the Game as the GM. You are taken to an empty page. Before you do anything else, it is worth exiting the game and then going to the “Game Settings” page to set up some default settings.

 Click the Cog Icon on the far right to get to the “My Settings” section
 Click the “Exit Game” button at the top of the “My Settings” section.

This takes you to the “Thank you for playing….” Screen. There’s no need to fill anything in there yet, so just hover over “Games” to see a list of your recent games and click on the image for the one you just created (in my case this was “Demo 5E”)

<IMAGE - Choosing a Game>

From the main Game page, choose the “Settings” option and then choose “Game Settings".

<IMAGE - Choosing "Game Settings">

The Game Settings page has lots of useful info on it – here are my recommendations for a D&D5E game...

This page works a bit strangely, so my advice is to Expand the “Game Default Settings” by clicking on it and this opens up a lot more defaults…

 Some people like to set the “Page Defaults-->Background” to some pale colour other than white,
 as bright white screens are meant to be bad for our eyes.
 In the Player Permissions…
   Name = Tick the “See” option
   Bar 1 = Tick the “See” option
 CLICK “Save Defaults”

After it saves the “Game Default Settings” it will close that section. Now, after saving the “Game Default Settings”, you can change the other settings on the page. If you change other settings before saving the “Game Default Settings” section, it seems to reset the other settings!

The settings in red below are ones I always change from the current defaults …

 Allow Public Access to this game = NO
 Allow players to import their own Characters = YES
 Access Compendium In-Game = Determined by Character Sheet (Default)
 Character Sheet Template = 5th Edition ( OGL by Roll20 )
 In the Default sheet Settings…
   NPC = Ticked
   ROLL QUERIES = Always Roll Advantage
   WHISPER ROLLS TO GM = Never Whisper Rolls
   If you think you will want to make a lot of rolls in secret, 
   it is OK to set this to “Query Whisper Rolls” instead. 
   You might get fed up with this option, but if you want to roll Initiative for monsters 
   the PCs can’t see yet, it can be useful. 
   If you choose the “Query Whisper” option, each time you make an attack roll from a Monster
   character sheet, it will ask if you want it to be public. 
   You can just hit return for most of them, but when you want a secret roll, 
   just toggle the value to “Whisper” instead.
   I prefer to “Never Whisper Rolls” and might write a macro (or even roll a physical dice) 
   for something that I don’t want the players to see). 
   I’ll cover creating a Whispered Macro for Initiative later.
 AUTO DAMAGE ROLL = Auto Roll Damage & Crit
 ADD CHARACTER NAME TO TEMPLATES = On
 INVENTORY = Compendium Compatible
 ENCUMBERANCE = Off
 AMMO TRACKING = Off

Click “Save Changes” at the bottom of the screen.

Now you are ready to “Join the Game” again. This time, head to the Cog Icon and set a few things in the “My Settings” section. These settings will be remembered next time you Join the Game so you shouldn’t have to change them again.

I very much recommend ticking the “Use advanced keyboard shortcuts”.

I recommend not ticking the “Use window popouts for characters”. This is purely because of using the earlier option about “Query Whisper Rolls” or if you later write Macros that ask you to choose or fill-in something. If you use Window Popouts, then the focus isn’t on the main Roll20 Window and the dialog that asks whether to make this a public or whispered roll will appear behind the character sheet and won’t automatically have focus so you can just hit return.

I recommend not ticking the Enable Advanced Dice.

I recommend not ticking the Enable 3D Dice. While some people like to see “real” dice being thrown, it does seem to slow the game slightly and can cause confusion when a D20 shows a 20 but you were rolling with disadvantage and can’t see where the other D20 landed.

I recommend not ticking the Automatically roll 3D Dice.

Adding Monsters The Roll20 Compendium for D&D5E has made a big difference to the amount of work a DM has to do to put monsters into their game - with all their Stats and with clickable Attacks and Saves and Initiative. However, to get the best out of it (make it quick to use during the game), you do have to do a little bit of work for each Monster...

Getting a Monster from the Compendium to appear as a “Character” in your game’s Journal.

1. Go to the (i) symbol in the side bar, this opens the Compendium.

2. Type in the word orc – this will list all compendium items having orc in the title.

3. Click and hold on the name of the monster and drag it onto the main page and let go.

4. This will open the Monster’s character sheet, showing the “Bio & Info” page.

5. Click on the “Character Sheet” tab.

6. Hover over the red name “Orc” and a small cog will appear to the right. You can click this in order to open the “NPC Options” for editing.

7. Replace the name Orc with

@{selected|token_name}  

There are no spaces, the line after the word “selected” is a “pipe” character, there is an underscore between “token” and “name” and the brackets are the curly ones. You’ll see exactly why we are doing this later. It’s to enable multiple tokens to use the same NPC character sheet, but to show the Token’s name rather than just the word “orc” when you make dice rolls for them.

8. Click on the small cog again to close the NPC Options.

9. Close the character sheet for the Orc.

10. Click on the Journal Icon in the sidebar to switch to your Journal section, you will see that your copy of the Orc has appeared in your Journal.

I ALWAYS use a Token for monsters and never use a monster without a Token. The trick described above for getting the Token’s Name to appear in the chat with any Rolls, means the rolls won’t work if there is no Token Selected. If you do need to use a monster without a Token, just open it direct from the compendium again rather than using the one you have created in your Journal.

This trick of using the Token name not only lets you easily see in the Chat which Orc made the rolls but also means you aren’t showing the Players the exact type of monster. So if you have a shambling undead creature

– they won’t immediately know if it is a zombie or a ghoul or something else.

Dropping a Token into your game and associating it with a Monster from your Journal.

Hit the i key and the side bar will switch to display the Art Library. Or you can just click on the Art icon.

Type the word “orc” into the search box and some pictures of Orcs should show up.

Grab one and drag it onto the main page and let go.

This should add a Token. If you click on it, you should see its handles and bars appear.

<IMAGE - Token with handles>

Clicking on the Cog will launch the “Edit Token” screen.

<IMAGE - Edit Token>

Use the drop down list at the top left “Represents Character” to associate this Token with the Journal entry for “Orc”.

Tick the “Show Nameplate?” and type in a name for this token. You can leave it as Orc for now.

If you know the Hit Points of the orc, fill them in in the two boxes for “Bar 1” as 15 and 15

If you know the Armour Class of the orc, fill it in in the first box for “Bar2” as ac13.

<IMAGE - Edit Token filled with Orc Stats>

Click “Save Changes”.

Clicking on the Token should now show the health bar, the current hitpoints (15) and the armour class (ac13).

<IMAGE - Token showing info>

The Players won’t be able to select the Orc, so will only see the health bar, not the number and won’t see the AC.

Now that this token is associated with the Orc in your Journal, you can launch its character sheet by doing Shift+Double-click on the token.

Launch the character sheet and click the “Edit” button in the top right.

This will show the Option for an “Avatar” – this just means a picture to show in the Journal. You can drag the same token picture from your Art Library to make that the default picture of an Orc in your Journal listing. Underneath the Avatar is a “Default Token (Optional)” with a white space under it.

Hover over the white space and the option to “Remove” the current default token will appear. For some reason, the items from the Compendium seem to have a blank image for each monster so you have to remove it before you can add one. Then make sure you still have your Orc Token selected on the main page and click “Use Selected Token”.

Click to “Save Changes” and then close the character sheet and delete the Token from your main page.

Now your “Orc” will appear in your Journal with an image and, if you drag from the Journal onto your main page, it will create an exact copy of that original Token. Drag it again to create another and again to create another.

Now you have 3 Orcs ready to attack your Player Characters.

Shift+Double-click an Orc to get the character sheet to appear, switch to the character sheet tab and then click on the “Greataxe”.

<IMAGE - Greataxe attack>

If you don’t already have the Chat window open you can click “c” to make it appear.

As you can see in the Chat, the Orc rolled a 17 and then did a massive 15 damage (ouch!).

If you followed all my set-up advice, the system is configured to always roll two dice. Use the first result (17) unless the creature has either Advantage or Disadvantage (in which case you either use the highest or lowest of the two results).

The system is also configured to roll the damage at the same time.

The system is also configured to show the name of the creature “Orc” in the chat window, but all three of my tokens have the same name!

Move the character sheet to one side and edit the Tokens (hover over one and click the Cog). Change the names from “Orc” to “Fazgul”, “Jagreth” and “Bladdersnot”.

Now you can click on one and then use the Greataxe and it should show you the name of the currently selected token.

<IMAGE - attacks from different tokens>

Bladdersnot hit AC22 and did 6 damage. Jagreth rolled a natural one (the dice roll shows as red).

Fazgul rolled a natural 20 (the dice roll shows in green) with his javelin attack. Notice that his damage shows the extra critical damage too.

New DMs should be careful when reading the critical damage as the crit damage is shown even if it is the second dice that gets a 20, but you only use the second dice when it is relevant. Because Advantage and Disadvantage are so common in D&D5E, you’ll soon get the hang of when to count the extra damage and which of the two results to ignore.

At any time, you can hover the mouse cursor over a Dice Roll result and it will show you what dice were rolled and what modifiers were added.

If I hover over Fazgul’s Javelin attack rolls, you can see that the 25 shows Fazgul is adding +5 to the 1d20 roll to hit.

<IMAGE - hovering over dice rolls>

WORK-IN-PROGRESS - NEED TO ADD IMAGES + 8 more pages of the original document to add.