Roll20 setup guide

[Heilemann]

You've copied too much. One the Gist page, press the Raw button, and copy that text. It should look like this: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Heile ... checker.js

[kairos]

*facepalm*

Thanks. Will give it a go tonight.

[kairos]

Yes, in fact, it turned out the problem was a bug between the chair and the computer. Thanks.

[Heilemann]

You're most welcome. Let me know if it all works out.

[shipwreck]

Thanks for this! Everything looks great. I wonder if anyone can give me a comparison between Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds? Any big differences?

[Valarian]

Speaking from the Fantasy Grounds side of things, the big upside for me is the ease of setting up a campaign from scratch and the tools. Roll20 seems such a chore to set up each time, with all the macros and stuff. Once someone has gone through that pain in Fantasy Grounds, it's done for everyone. Others can pick up that as a community set, as long as no copyrighted stuff is included.

For example, to run a game of The One Ring in Roll20 you have to do this: https://wiki.roll20.net/The_One_Ring followed by this: https://ringen.squarespace.com/loremast ... or-roll-20

In Fantasy Grounds, you do this:
- go to https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ki...qvo&authuser=0
- put the foundations_core.pak file in to the rulesets folder in the Fantasy Grounds application directory.
- put the fcore-TOR.ext file in to the extensions folder in the Fantasy Grounds application directory.
- create a Foundation Core campaign file with the The One Ring extension selected.
That's it. Done. Ready to play. Just add some maps, the stance mat and NPCs. Some story items. Basically, you're in to campaign design straight away, not setting up the tool.

The other big thing for Fantasy Grounds, for me, is the focus on the story and characters. Roll20 focuses, like many VTTs, on the map and tokens. The character sheet was a very late addition and, I believe, still driven from the token. I must admit to not having retried Roll20 since that change went in. Fantasy Grounds, at its heart, is a template for character sheets, NPC sheets and making combat more streamlined online. The standard items, common to all of the rulesets (templates for the games) is the text chat, story, items and images. You can play a lot of games just with the CoreRPG (default) ruleset. This is a generic ruleset to build a character sheet using just a few list items. However, having dedicated character and NPC sheets for your favourite game is always a bonus. It just makes life a lot smoother when running a game.

Voice chat is separate, people use Google Hangouts, Teamspeak, Skype or any other number of voice chat systems in conjunction with the VTT. The plus side of this is that you can use anything, the downside is that the voice chat is directly integrated. Roll20 is built on top of Google Hangouts, so you do have that direct integration. Personally, I just use the text chat. Slower but more immersive, I feel. You don't have the delicate female NPC speaking with a gruff bass voice.

Happy to do a demo for anyone. I'm available most evenings after 8pm (UK time).

[Heilemann]

I completely concur with Valarian; Roll 20's lack of a ruleset system is a massive annoyance, and Fantasy Grounds has surprisingly broad support (especially considering its poorly documented mod system, which I ran my head against trying to create a simple skin).

Fantasy Grounds is also Windows only. It can be made to run on OS X, but it's a pain in the behind, and at best a hack. And while I have no love for Roll 20's default UI look (it's about as plain and uninspiring as can be), everything about FG feels like it was made over a decade ago and then never truly refined (because it was). It's kept alive, but barely. We always had connection and version/update issues, and the license was quite expensive etc.

With Roll 20, you just go to a URL, and you're off. Major, major selling point for my group. They're also putting out new major features on a regular basis, and they're all powered by core web technologies, which makes it very easy to mod. Yes, it definitely has some catching up to do, and I really hope rulesets become a part of it soon, but if I were a betting man, my money would be on Roll 20 for the future.

In fact, it is, since I'm paying them $10 a month to be a Mentor.

Anyway, my two cents. I'm no sales person for Roll 20, and I have some issues with the way they've built certain things, how they receive bug reports and various other things; nevertheless, there you have it.

[Valarian]

A note on the expense. Fantasy Grounds is a $40 one-off expense (players need licenses), or $150 for the Ultimate license (players don't need licenses). The more you play, the cheaper it gets. With Roll20, to get access to features that Fantasy Grounds has you have to subscribe. After 15 months, Roll20 is more expensive. In addition, Fantasy Grounds have recently started a subscription model ($3.99 and $9.99) so there's that route too if you want to pay more for the product in the long run.

On the connections, Fantasy Grounds run a peer to peer model which means that the GM hosts the game and the players connect. This means that you need to open up a port in your router. If you've played any multi-player game like Call of Duty, etc. you will have had to do this. It's a case of putting the port (1802) through to your PC. There's an alias server that acts as an IP address lookup for the players, which helps with connections (you don't have to keep giving your players your external IP address every week). However, if the server is down you can hand out the IP address to your players and carry on the game. You can't do that with Roll20. As a note, you also can't do that if you're an unlicensed player, they need to connect via the alias server as the GMs Ultimate license needs to be checked.

You can run a demo version (fully functional but it doesn't save changes) that allows you to check out all of the functionality in a demo campaign, including connecting. I would recommend doing all the setup and trying out the software with this before buying.

As far as I know, Fantasy Grounds is the only VTT with official support from publishers. These include Chaosium, Iron Crown and Pinnacle. Savage Worlds is heavily supported as a game system.

[Valarian]

... if I were a betting man, my money would be on Roll 20 for the future.

Mine's on Tabletop Connect

[Heilemann]

In forwarding ports on the router, I just lost at least two of my players.

I don't mind paying an on-going fee for a service, if it means that the service is also developed on-goingly. It's a far more sustainable business model in what even at the best of times is a niche market.

That said, I really wish I could do modules on Roll 20 (or even buy them, it'd save me a heck of a lot of work with Beyond the Mountains of Madness), and boy, do I ever love the dice implementation for FG; it's so damn good.