For those of you running Roll20 games: how do you handle mapping?

9 thoughts on “For those of you running Roll20 games: how do you handle mapping?”

1. I think Roll 20 is more for people using PDF maps and grids for movement. Personally I hate the tools for map drawing on the fly in Roll20 and have been using this web based “whiteboard” It’s shareable and easy to use and draw and erase on.

   http://www.twiddla.com/

2. Yeah, I tried Roll20 once or twice, but it’s really too feature-intense for DW. I’ve used white-board apps after that. I like http://www.awwapp.com

3. I’m confused; I don’t see anything on that whiteboard app that you can’t easily do with Roll20?

4. You’re going the wrong way. What do I need to do with Roll20 that I can’t more easily do with a whiteboard app?

   I’d rather have one app work well at doing the one thing I need than have one app work okay at doing the thing I need, but being used because it does a lot of things I don’t need well.

5. Uh, character sheets with automated dice rolling and stuff, mostly. 🙂

   I have yet to find a good replacement for roll20 character sheets.

6. I use a custom google doc for character sheets, nice because it’s editible. I use “Bones” or similar for dice rolling, and I use a white-board app for drawing.

   I could use roll20 for all of them, but I would be settling for a worse drawing app, and less useful character sheets.

   The die rolling is nice, and if I needed tokens/maps, roll20 would be my best friend. But generally speaking, it slows me down more than it speeds me up.

   However, YMMV.

7. I appreciate the input. At this point, I’d prefer to have everything within one app, to reduce the mental overhead of using 3 different tools to accomplish one thing. The Roll20 character sheets are editable. Am I missing something about the character sheets? 

   Anyway, anyone have some more Roll20-centric solutions or ideas?

8. Yes! Create graphics and text for map elements, anything you would put on an index card, on your computer and save it as a .png file. You can use graphics in addition to text, which is nice to set scene and mood.

   Gimp is a free and useful program to do this easily, allowing you to get much more detailed as you see fit.

   Drop the image into your http://roll20.net canvass, and place it appropriately. Draw relationship lines between elements as they are discovered.

   Instead of a geographic map, you are building a concept map using independent elements that can easily be shifted as you play to find out what happens.

   The drawback is that you need to create the elements outside of roll20 and drop them as art assets in the screen. Their native draw features are too clunky for my tastes. But the ability to update an element and drag – and – drop it in is convenient. 

   edit: Alternatively, you could use roll20 and marketplace assets the same way. 

9. I scoured the net for cool pictures for all my magic items and made “handouts” to show to the players who have them. (and I agree – having everything in one place far, far outweighs the minimal benefits of splitting things up)

   And yes, the Roll20 character sheets are editable if you are good at html/css

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