3/19/2020 Roll20 Crash Course – Roll20

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Roll20 Crash Course

5 hours ago · Updated

Overview
Note: 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 wiki page serves as a 101 course for a GM who's looking to move from the
physical table to the virtual one. 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 helpdesk 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

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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

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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.

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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.

Note: 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

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Map Marketplace Content Used:

1. Fantasy Structures Pack 1 - 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
Importing and Manipulating Images: 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

Note: 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.

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Managing Character Sheets and Handouts

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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.

Recommended Wiki Reading

The 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.

Creating Tokens

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Token Marketplace Content Used:

1. Adventurer Avatars - by Phillip Wright

Recommended Wiki Reading

Token Features: Everything you need to know about tokens and their properties can be found here.

Note: 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.

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Working With Dice

www.youtube.com

As mentioned in the video, users who plan to use text chat a great deal should look into using 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.

Recommended Wiki Reading

Dice Rolling GUI: Simplest means to roll dice

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
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: A Pro subscription feature, this allows you to script actions in Roll20 that the application
doesn't normally do
RPG System Guides: Some of our users have already created wiki pages explaining tips and
tricks of how to play their favorite RPG systems.

Campaign Extras

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Recommended Wiki Reading

The 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.

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Dynamic Lighting: Like Fog of War, but more sophisticated. It's an interactive lighting system
available to Pro and Plus account users
Card Decks and Rollable Tables: This Wiki pages talks about how you can use and create
your own card decks as well as rollable tables that can be used to create objects like dice that
use pictogram sides or randomized equipment lists.

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

Recommended Wiki Reading

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.

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Related articles

Game Management

Accessing and Managing Marketplace Content

Video and Voice Chat Troubleshooting

Linking Tokens to Journals

Solving Technical Issues

Roll20

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