Brand New to this Place With Questions!

[MaSQue_]

As one of the people who developed that Roll20 material and wrote the How-To it's very easy to install and use although not automatic, you will still need some familiarity with computer skills. It will do the die rolls for you and the official Roll20 TOR character sheet has bells and whistles that assist the LM.

Well, seeing as its just d6's and d12's with fancy icons for the 1 and 6, I really can use normal dice then correct?

[Hermes Serpent]

The macros that can be set up by the LM under Roll20 count up successes for you and automatically select the correct number of dice when clicking on a skill but if you don't use the Roll20 built-in free official TOR character sheets and just roll dice outside of Roll20 then you can use any d6 and d12.

[MaSQue_]

The macros that can be set up by the LM under Roll20 count up successes for you and automatically select the correct number of dice when clicking on a skill but if you don't use the Roll20 built-in free official TOR character sheets and just roll dice outside of Roll20 then you can use any d6 and d12.

Can I add the TOR Dice skinns, load that up and just use the dice roler by itself and still use the TOR skinned dice?

[Hermes Serpent]

Doesn't work like that IIRC. You'd have to go read the wiki there to see if that would work but I doubt it as the dice roller isn't accessible in that way to users.

[SpottedBill]

Can I add the TOR Dice skinns, load that up and just use the dice roler by itself and still use the TOR skinned dice?

The dice roller won't use TOR dice, but using the information in the wiki linked above (big thanks to everyone who've worked on that) you get everything you need with the rollable tables and macros. If you need to roll something that isn't on the character sheets, you can use a macro (feat, lm-feat, and so on). Simple as that.

For our Roll20 game, we haven't set up the more complex things like the automated attack macros, preferring to do it "manually". It's worked very well.

[Jeegen]

Just a thought, Masque. Since you haven't read any of the books, I suggest reading The Hobbit. It's a quick read compared to the trilogy and it should give you an idea of the general feel of Tolkien's world and how it is different from the movies...journeying and recovering; threats that are dealt with or avoided. And...it's a great book!

The movies certainly capture a good part of the world, IMO. But, movies nowadays have to have a good bit of action in them to draw the crowds. I think this is the "silliness" you referred to. And that is where the movies diverge the most from the books.

The Hobbit doesn't have any shield surfing or stuff like that. Instead it shows the struggles a "normal" person would encounter on such a major undertaking.

Also, I'm surprised to not see any mention of the Rankin & Bass animated "The Hobbit" movie. That shaped a HUGE part of my childhood imagination. I see that it is available on a well known online store (think big river in South America). There are probably snippets of it on youtube, as well.

Best of luck with the game. I'm new to the game, as well and recently bought some TOR books and am looking forward to running the Wilderlands adventures right out of the book!