Roll20 can do all these things and more. But we’ll warn you now, the platform itself takes some dedication.
What Is Roll20?
Roll20 is an online platform and companion mobile app for tabletop game management. The platform supports resources for over twenty titles, including Dungeons & Dragons, FATE, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and Call of Cthulhu.
It is possible to play a game entirely on the Roll20 platform, provided that all players use Roll20. Otherwise, a “hybrid” model works best, incorporating Roll20 content and physical game tools.
If you plan on being the game master, you can probably stick to the main browser interface, but as a player, the mobile app might be enough.
This article will mainly focus on the browser interface, but the app lets you manage character sheets, roll virtual dice, and other more basic operations that are mainly tangential to a game master’s content in the browser version.
The basic account is free, but there are also subscription tiers that come with more benefits. And, even the free version by itself doesn’t have a lot of teeth without reference material and other content purchased through the platform’s marketplace.
Download: Roll20 for Android | iOS
How Does Roll20 Work?
We can divide the Roll20 ecosystem into five main sections: Home, Games, Marketplace, Tools, and Community, all across the banner menu at the top of the Roll20 page.
Home
Home is the dashboard for active campaigns that you currently have running. It’s also a place for Roll20 to announce new arrivals in the marketplace and make other announcements that the team thinks might interest you.
Games
Games is where you can manage your active campaigns, create new campaigns, or even look for other Roll20 players to start games with remotely through the Join a Game feature.
The Player Directory connects you with Roll20 players that you already know, making it easier to schedule games, share stats, or whatever you’ve got to do.
The bottom item in the Games menu is Tutorial. This is a tutorial of the actual gaming experience for the game master, but it focuses on the map tool.
The map tool lets you place and move character markers and other items, control dynamic lighting and line-of-sight for individual characters, and more. If you plan on using the map, it’s worth doing this short exercise.
Marketplace
The Roll20 Marketplace is where you can buy games and expansion packs or Roll20 merchandise. You can also redeem gift codes here and navigate the purchases that you’ve already made.
The game resources, rulebooks, compendiums, and adventure packs typically range between $20-$50, but other assets like character marker packs, maps, and map effects are usually more to the tune of $5-$13.
These assets work directly in the Roll20 system, but you can also download them and print them off to make physical copies available to your party. That’s handy if not everyone in your party uses the Roll20 system, or if you want to use Roll20’s many tools and features without eliminating the physical components of your favorite tabletop game.
You can also find a purchased item in your account inventory through the Marketplace menu, if you want to request a return. The process is simple and fast, but you can’t return a digital package if you’ve opened it and downloaded assets from it.
Tools
Tools is the home of all of your content on Roll20, including your collected and purchased assets. That includes Compendiums; the basic information texts that you need to start whatever games you play on Roll20.
Compendiums for the supported games are free to navigate through a search feature, but they don’t work in the actual Roll20 gameplay system unless part of a marketplace asset pack.
The Tools tab is also the home of your character markers and is where players and game masters can import and export character data from game to game. Be aware that how many characters you can manage at once is a function of the subscription tier.
Finally, select Manage Audio to manage playlists of background music and sound effects that you can play during your adventures. You can browse through publicly available selections all in-platform, or you can upload your own audio.
Community
The Community tab is home to blogs and forums, help centers and wikis, and videos and live streams. It is also home to the Change Log where the company posts updates to the site. If you follow Roll20 on social media, you will also see that they are constantly fine-tuning user experience.
If you find yourself spending a lot of time in the community tab and change logs, it might be worth thinking about subscribing to the “Pro” tier, which gets more at the back-end of the system.
What Does Roll20 Cost?
Roll20 is free, but there are also two subscription tiers, Plus, and Pro. Each subscription tier comes with more storage for uploadable content, open slots for more games and players, and makes it easier for other players to find you for games.
The two paid tiers also give you dynamic lighting on maps, unlock shared table features and unlimited character storage, and remove ads. The main advantages that Pro offers over Plus have to do with the software, namely API and dev server access.
We wrote this article using the free version, and there weren’t a lot of priced-out features that seemed crucial. It’s easy to see how Plus-level features would come in handy, but most of the Pro-level features really do seem above and beyond the average user’s needs (or wants).
How to Play Tabletop Games With Roll20
Roll20 has solutions for maps and character markers, character and item information, compendiums and dice rolls, even music. But no text editor.
That means that the campaign has to be written and notes need to be taken off-platform. That is, unless you record everything that happens in the open chat, which works but isn’t exactly a smooth operation either.
Where Roll20 really shines is when using content from the marketplace. This content is accessible through the Journal icon in the menu on the right.
When you click on an item from the dropdown, it opens a window for that page. Each page links to other pages. Clicking these links opens another window on the screen.
The result is as ugly as it is useful: a sea of tiles containing vital information for your quest that can move around, resized, buried, rediscovered, and closed. This makes it easier than it’s ever been to switch between locations or characters or go off-script if your party makes unexpected decisions.
Of course, these tiles need to be cleared away in order to reveal the map underneath. Moving character tokens and drawing on the map are simple click-and-drag operations, but there are also advanced features that seem endlessly powerful but also like a lot to manage during a game.
A Platform for the Serious Gamer
Roll20 offers so many tools that learning to use the platform can feel like learning to play a game all over again. Unless everyone at the table is using the platform, the GM needs to toggle back-and-forth between features on the platform or print things out as physical handouts, anyway.
This doesn’t mean that the platform isn’t worthwhile. After taking time to familiarize yourself with it (and maybe printing out some handouts), it really makes managing games a lot easier, which can make all the difference in a fast-paced session. And for the sheer number of games that the platform has resources for, it is a truly unmatched tool.
