More on Roll20

We didn’t play last night because Carter was traveling, instead, when he’s in town this week we are going to try to all get-together and play on a real table top. Since I don’t have any fumbling halfling stories to share today I thought I’d talk a bit about how things are going on Roll20.

Over the last month or more we’ve been encountering problems as we play on roll20. Roll20 crashes mine and Tyr’s browser at least once a night forcing us to restart our computers. No clue why it’s doing it. Our connection is fast and reliable so the net’s not dropping out and we’ve tried using different browsers. Hal, our resident techie, can’t figure it out either.

Dice rolling issues, we’ve had a couple. There have been a couple of nights where the site won’t roll weapon damage right, but it was only doing it for me. Tyr, Hal, and Carter’s characters were all rolling their damage fine but for some reason every single roll I made resulted in 10 after 10. I had to break out my real dice and roll with them for my NPC’s. The most infuriating dice rolling problem is the initiative. Hal is a supporter of roll20 and the rest of us have free accounts. Over a month ago we realized that the initiative roller wasn’t working. It gives just a straight die roll and doesn’t add the initiative mod. All four of us were having this problem. Hal wasn’t feeling well so one Monday I decided I would report the problem instead of asking him to deal with it. I spent over an hour and a half going back and forth with one of the mentors. He started off telling me I was crazy and that we couldn’t possibly have that problem. I wound up sending him about five screen shots showing him that it wasn’t adding the mod. All I got from him was attitude. In the end, another mentor came on and said that the character sheets had been upgraded to fix that problem but only the mentors had the fix at that point and everyone else would get it in a couple of days. Sure enough, a couple of days later the character sheet was updated. Now Hal can roll initiative because he’s a supporter but we on the free accounts still can’t roll initiative. Since my first experience reporting the problem was so bad I won’t waste my time going round with them again. I’ll just roll actual dice.

Carter plays from an iPad using the roll20 app. It’s glitchy, he gets kicked out a bit but no more than Tyr and I. His main problem is that it very often won’t let him move his token. There’s usually some cursing and then I just move his token for him. It’s not a big deal but I really dislike anything that takes us out of the moment and forces us to focus on the real world.

Speaking of tokens I’ve also had problems getting tokens to tie to character sheets. I’ve gone through and set the token all up tied it to the sheet and when we go to play every time I change to a new map I’m constantly having to go in and adjust who’s allowed to move the token. It only takes a moment but it breaks the flow of things and I hate things that waste time and break the flow of the game.

We’ll keep using roll20, it’s free and easy enough to use. I’ve looked at Fantasy Grounds and Steam but those options can get pretty expensive. Since we’re in different states we’ve got to use some online method and overall roll20 gets the job done. I find that abandoning encounter maps and just using theater of the mind helps to eliminate some of the bumpy parts. Without them no o, e has to move tokens and without tokens the initiative feature can’t be used anyhow. I like my games to be smooth so that my players get immersed and reality is suspended.

I also want games to be smooth because at some point I may try to turn our sessions into a podcast. I’m going to research what all I need to do that and maybe when we start our next campaign if everyone is agreeable I’ll try to do that. I haven’t run the idea past Hal or Carter yet.