Revision as of 21:41, 16 June 2014

OSR

Old School Revival/Retro-clone games like Basic Fantasy, Labyrinth Lord & Swords and Wizardry are a breeze to set up in Roll20.

The Basics

Map: Many maps in OSR games are black and white drawings. I find uploading as a PNG file works best. Be sure to use the map grid alignment tool to scale your map. https://wiki.roll20.net/Aligning_Maps

Dyson's Delve Level 1 by Dyson Logos

Tokens: I like to get all my player and monster tokens on the map before the game starts. I put them on the GM layer and reveal them to the Token layer when I'd like the players to see them. https://wiki.roll20.net/Layers

Dice: Most OSR games use simple dice mechanics. The Dice Rolling GUI works great. Game play goes very smooth once your players get used to using that interface. https://wiki.roll20.net/Dice_Rolling_GUI

You could play with just what's listed above, but lets go into some more advanced features:

Hiding and Revealing the Map: You may want to hide parts of the map from the players. If you want a real old school flavor you could keep your map on the GM Layer and use the drawing tool on the Map layer as you go, but that can be cumbersome with a mouse. I prefer loading the map on the map layer and using the Fog of War tool to reveal areas to the players. https://wiki.roll20.net/Fog_of_War

Tokens Features: Characters in OSR games have simple stats and abilities in general so it's not too hard to incorporate some advance Roll20.net features. A token with a health bar is easy to set up by giving the player control of the token and making sure they can see and edit the "Name" and "Bar 1". Don't forget to check "Show nameplate?" button as well. https://wiki.roll20.net/Token_Features

Turn Tracker: Turn Tracker works when you have tokens on the Token layer. The players can enter in their initiative roll results into the Turn Tracker interface. Enable a player to control a token, right click that token and choose "Add Turn". Select Turn Tracker from the tool bar. Now it's just a matter of clicking the arrow when it's the next player/monsters turn. https://wiki.roll20.net/Turn_Tracker

Resources

A List of OSR/Retroclone games
OSR Character Sheet Template for Google Docs
Maps by Dyson Logos

Example of OSR gameplay on Roll20.net with the classic dungeon crawl "Stonehell Dungeon" by Michael Curtis.

Random Ideas

Converting an OSR character sheet into the Roll20.net character sheet

Spell book using the Roll20.net card deck. Images from Oubliette Issue 4.