Revision as of 04:07, 9 June 2014

Never played a Tabletop RPG before? Check out our Introduction To Tabletop RPGs video series

Welcome to Roll20, this wiki 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. For the nitty gritty details, we recommend topic searching within our wiki for more information.

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 Reading Suggestions

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 indepth 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

Creating Minis

Map Marketplace Content Used:

1. Adventurer Avatars - by Phillip Wright

Working With Dice

Campaign Extras

Wiki Page Topic Index

• The Jukebox
• Fog of War
• Dynamic Lighting
• Card Decks and Rollable Tables

Inviting Players

Playing A Session

WIP