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Roll20 Community FAQ

From Roll20 Wiki

Revision as of 16:07, 6 August 2021 by Kay G. (Talk | contribs)

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This is Community-created Guide, listing common troubles (new) people encounter on Roll20, which aren't too obvious or clearly, or isn't mentioned on the relevant Official Documentation or Community Wiki pages, and where to learn more about them.

The page is maintained by the community.

Contents

Bug Report

Roll20 has a web form for reporting bugs and contacting them for other issues: Contact Roll20

Check Bug Report for general advice.

Browser

Main Page: Browser

Roll20 officially only supports the Firefox & Google Chrome browsers, so if you encounter a problem using other browsers, it's recommended to switch to either of these. And no, using any Chromium-based browser like Microsoft Edge is not the same thing as using Chrome. Roll20 often works well on other browsers, but your mileage may vary.

There is no consensus on which browser works best for Roll20, as it seems to vary based on things like what operating system you use (Windows/Mac/Linux), your hardware (physical computer), your ISP, what browser plugins you use, and even what version of the browser you have.

Some have claimed Chrome is faster, others swear by Firefox. It can be a good idea to try out the other (Firefox/Chrome) in case things are more smooth with it.

Plugins

When you encounter problems with Roll20, you should always check if it's caused by some browser plugin you're using, by temporarily disabling all and seeing if the problem persists.

See the Browser#Plugins for info on popular plugins used with Roll20, such as Beyond20.

Character Sheets

Main Page: Character Sheet

How to create a character

Character can only be created inside a game by a Game Creator, or someone promoted to a Game Master. To use a specific character sheet template, you need to have one assigned to the game. Adding Character Sheet covers how to do both. If you're looking for creating a custom character sheet template, check Building Character Sheets.

If you have created a Character Sheet for a player and they don't see it, you have probably forgotten to change the "Seen By" and "Controlled by" settings for it.

Import Character

Importing & Exporting characters between games is done through the Character Vault.

When a character has been imported to a game, the GM must manually assign the sheet to the player for them to be able to see it. There are also some limitations to what games you can export to.

Guide to the Character Vault

Separate Window

Charactermancer

Charactermancer refers to Roll20's system for integrating character creation into some Official Character Sheets.

Only some official sheets have it.

Change All Sheets to whisper

5E

Over half of all games on Roll20 are D&D 5E, and basically everyone uses the D&D5E by Roll20 character sheet. It has an extensive documentation page: D&D5E by Roll20.

It has a few known issues: D&D5E by Roll20#Known Issues Forums: 5E Sheet Bug Report Megathread(Forum) - latest updates & discussions on the sheet

Pathfinder 2E

Editing/creating template

See Building Character Sheets

Chat

Text Chat not working

If you have problems with your q Text Chat, it's likely the chat (archive) has been corrupted.

To fix the chat, the GM(or Creator) needs to delete the Chat Archive from the Game's Details page. It's a good idea to back it up before clearing/deleting it.

Compendium

The i Compendium can be accessed both out-of-game as well as inside the game from the i Compendium page, if it is enabled in the Game's Compendium Settings.

In-game, your players don't see the i Compendium content you have, unless you have turned on Compendium Sharing.

Players can access compendiums they own in any game that is using that game system's compendium, unless the GM has selectively changed which compendiums are available in that game through Compendium Selection.

GMs can select which compendiums can be seem in a game, blocking their own & player's access to the GM's compendiums if Compendium Sharing is active, but excluding compendiums also affects players' access to compendiums they own themselves. (Eg. If the GM only owns "D&D 5E's Player Handbook" and "Xanathar's Guide to Everything", they can select blocking any other compendiums to be used in that game. That would mean a player owning "Guide to Wildemount" couldn't access it in that game.

Custom Compendium

You can't yet create Custom Compendium entries in Roll20 for normal i Compendium interaction or to be used in the Charactermancer.

Creating & Editing Compendiums is a popular request, but not a feature that that Roll20 have yet. Roll20 seems to consider the current, internal tools used for the system needing more work, before Custom Compendiums can even be considered to start working on a user-accessible version. No timeline have been give when it might eventually get done.

You can vote & follow the discussion on the Custom Compendium(Forum) Suggestion Forum thread.

Dice

Roll20 uses QuantumRoll to provide proper randomness for all rolls.

3D Dice

Main Page: 3D Dice

The 3D Dice always rolls in roll commands, and isn't selective like how some more complicated roll results in the q Text Chat are. The results in the q Text Chat are always accurate, while the number of 3D Dice and how to interpret the results is up to the user, or to check the result as it's shown in the Text Chat.

Dynamic Lighting

Main Page: Dynamic Lighting

Legacy Lighting will be discontinued on May 18th, 2021 when it's ready. An Update to the Legacy Dynamic Lighting Sunset Plan, April 27th(Blog, Archived)

Updated DL vs Legacy DL

The Updated Dynamic Lighting(UDL) is still in development, and still have some Known Issues(Andreas J. (talk) 22:07, 7 March 2021 (UTC)).


Players see only black

There are more than one possible reason why the players might not see anything on the map. Only a Game Master can fix these things. There are some common issues people have:

1. They might not yet have tokens on the current map, which would grant them vision. If you have just changed the active map that the players see, this is likely whats going on. Drag-n-drop their tokens from the N Journal to the right place on the map.

2. (LDL) The player-controlled tokens might not have the "Have Vision" checkbox selected. Open the Token's settings, check the box, and save it.

3. The map might have no light-sources, and the characters don't see in the dark. If you don't have "Global Illumination" turned on, the map is dark by default, and only light sources and dark-vision enables sight on the map.

Keith's Checklist(Forum) go through this list to see everything is in order

  • The token is on the VTT
  • It is assigned to the character
  • The player has control over the character
  • The token is on the Token/Object layer
  • It is not blocked off by DL lines from seeing the immediate surroundings
  • Make sure the player is looking at their token's immediate area. Shift-Click and hold on the token to pull the player's view to that area.
  • If Fog of War is being used, that the area the token is in has been cleared
  • The player has not been Split from the Party (Check the Help Center if this is unfamiliar)
  • If Dynamic Lighting of any kind is being used:
    • The token has sight turned on
    • The token has a light source, or Nightvision (UDL) or personal light (LDL)
    • In UDL it may be necessary to move the token one square to get everything working, or in extreme cases, refresh the (user's) page.

Is Fog of War going away?

No, it's not going away. Fog of War is not impacted by removal of LDL. However, FoW is not compatible with UDL, and Udl-hide-icon.jpg Darkness Tool have taken it's place when you have Updated Dynamic Lighting active.

Sources: mention(Forum) mention 2(Forum) tweet

Mobile/tablet

Mobile App

Mobile have info on the mobile app. It is intended to be a companion app

Tablet

Table on Tablet Roll20 has made some work to make Roll20 work on tablets using the browser, and is generally a better idea than trying to us a mobile phone.

How well Roll20 works on a specific tablet is hard to know, so best bet it to just try it in the browser (Firefox & Chrome is recommended) and see how it goes. You can search the forums for discussions on this.

Touchscreen

Roll20 doesn't work too well with some Touchscreen devices, and it's generally seen that using a mouse is more functional than using touch-based input

Drawing Tablet

Drawing Tablets/Graphics tablet doesn't work too well with Roll20, or there is a great variance in performance. Roll20's Drawing Tool have by many said to work better with mouse.

Old App(discontinued 2020)

The old mobile app was discontinued, and using Roll20 in the browser was enabled for all users.

Performance

There are a number of things that can impact a Roll20 games performance, and here is a non-exhaustive list, along with links to guides.

Things that impact a Roll20 campaigns performance:

  • having tons of maps
  • having tons of character/handouts
    • character sheets with tons of items/spells/stats might be slower to open/use/close, while not necessarily impacting
  • Using UDL or LDL in a game.
    • Maps with UDL/LDL settings might still impact overall performance even when not used

Performance Tips

Players

Main Page: Player

Players in a game have a much more limited number of things they can do on Roll20 than a Game Master(GM)/Game's Creator.

Here is a list of things players can't do in a game, which many new users or GM's thinks players can do.

1. Players can't create their own character sheet, or handouts. The GM must create and assign control of the character/handout to the player(s) for the player to be able to use it. (There exists an API called Welcome Package(Forum) that can automatically do this for players when they join.)

2. Players can't update the image of the Avatar or the Default Token for their Character, nor resize their token. Only the GM can do this.

3. Players can't import from their Character Vault unless the GM have enabled this setting.

Pro users can through APIs somewhat expand or restrict what players can do: Player API

Tokens

Main page: Token

Linking Tokens

Linking Tokens to Character Sheets isn't all to intuitive, but there is a guide for it: Linking Tokens to Journals. If tokens aren't linked to a character sheet, they don't share stats, nor can you quickly drag-n-drop tokens to the map from the N Journal.

Tutorial

The built-in Roll20 Tutorial have several know bugs, such as the P Art Library and u Jukebox sections of it not working correctly.

If you use the tutorial, only use it for the things that work, and when encountering any problems, assume it's a bug( and not user error) and skip the section and go to the next part.

The general community advice is to instead create a real game to test Roll20's features in, and to see many of the Youtube tutorials available.

Crash Course and Keith Curtis' - Starting from Scratch are two recommendations.


It's a good idea to watch more recent Roll20 guides/videos from 2020 or 2019, rather than some older( but still popular) ones like Take20's Roll20 Master Series} from 2017. It's still fairly okay, but several things can be done more easily & better today, and Roll20 have tons of new features that's been added since that guide's creation.

Check the Youtube wiki page, it lists recent guides.

Popular Feature requests

Roll20 have a Suggestions Forum, where people can vote & comment on suggestions, and Roll20 gives occasional updates on them, along with categorizing them so it's more clear what status they have.

Check the threads for situation updates by Roll20 Staff, this page isn't always up-to-date.

Some notable Suggestions:

Foreground Map Layer(Forum) 1000 votes

Roll20 is working toward finishing UDL and sunsetting Legacy DL, before starting to work on new features like this.

Custom Compendium 687 votes

Lots to do before Roll20 can start making it available to users.

A better way to organize pages(Forum) 672 votes

Dark Mode(Forum) 634 votes

In Feb 2021, Dark Mode was implemented for the Help Center.

Dev comment, May 2020(Forum):

"We're still rolling out incremental updates to pages, and as we implement Text Chat and Page Menu updates as mentioned in the Pro Mapping thread, we'll be closer to achieving this option."

One Sided Dynamic Lighting(Forum) 600 votes

Dev response, May 2020(Forum):

"We've been releasing to Updated Dynamic Lighting at a steady clip, along with upgrades to infrastructure. Progress on this particular issue will come after Updated Dynamic Lighting is at feature parity with the Legacy system."

Print Character Sheets(Forum) 513 votes Dev Response, July 2020(Forum):

"The work required to the character sheet system has been identified and is being documented for estimation. The next step will be to schedule that work."

Duplicating Page should copy whole page including all layers(Forum) 508 votes, Queued

It's on the Developer Calendar as of May 2020.

Hover to see token name and bars(Forum) 463 votes, Not Now

Seems low priority to Roll20

Map Pins linked to Handouts(Forum) 427 votes, Blocked

  • Dev Response, Feb 2020(Forum): "We have been focused on Dynamic Lighting along with the upgrades to infrastructure I mentioned in my last post. Work on this feature hasn't been scheduled."
  • Partial Workaround : Map Pins

Allow the GM to delete a line in the chat text(Forum) 381 votes, Researching

Dev Response July 2020:

"Yes, this was mentioned in the last Community Roundtable, and in the Pro Forum post. This feature will be part of several enhancements to the Text Chat functionality."

Folders in addition to Tags for ALL Resource Management(Forum) 359 votes, researching

See Also



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