Moderator Chaoswolf Posted February 11 Moderator Share Posted February 11 So, I'm possibly going to start running a long distance RPG game. What are my options? I know of, and have played around with roll20 a little bit, but it seems like most of the content requires you to buy it. I'm not cheap (ok, maybe a little), but I really can't see buying a digital version of something I already own a physical version of. What else is out there? Is there a giant storehouse of free content for roll20 somewhere? What do you use? Any recommendations? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlazingTornado Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 How do you mean that most of the content requires you to buy it? I mean sure if you want to run a 5E adventure and don't want to set up all the maps yourself you're gonna have to buy the premade adventure on their store front but if you have the maps and tokens yourself you can just upload them yourself and set everything up. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inarah Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 Depends on your style, I guess. You want to run official modules with all the premade maps and handouts, yeah you'll pay for that. If you have a more casual game and your own content, you can use Roll20 for free, scan your own maps, or learn to draw using the tools there. If you dig around there are some free games for various systems, and if you are a member (I think at the $5 month level) they often have free content available. Some content KS projects include virtual versions, but most are only doing paper or pdf versions. One of our GMs uses VTT on The Forge, I think that's a little more work than Roll20, but it offers more customization. We prefer Discord for sound. Roll20 can get cranky when user load is high (nights and weekends). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goddesstio Posted February 12 Share Posted February 12 A lot of people on the r/DND subreddit post up free roll20 compatible maps and stuff, if you want to go pick through there. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
golldan Posted February 12 Share Posted February 12 (edited) So I see you want to run virtual RPGs... I would check out Foundry VTT (50 bucks US one time, for GM to host on their PC - you would need to have a decent/newer PC) for Pathfinder 2e or DD 5e. And run discord for Audio. If you want simple and free, I would check out Owlbear Rodeo and use discord for Audio. Edited February 12 by golldan 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buckyball Posted February 12 Share Posted February 12 I have been using Roll20 since the start of the pandemic. You can go a long way without spending a lot of money There is an endless supply of battlemaps available online. I frequently download them from Reddit. The downside here is that if you want a very specific map for a commercially available module, it will be a challenge to find something that fits. One thing I have found that sort of works is to find something that is close then paste other images and maps over it. And you can always hand draw a map OR; if you already own a paper copy of the map, you can scan it and manually fit it to the grid. A freaking huge tool that is available for roll20 and perhaps similar vtts is an app called Token Stamp https://rolladvantage.com/tokenstamp/ You can make custom game tokens. They look like this: Now it is definitely more convenient to just lay down the money for electronically printed modules, especially if you also already have the paper copy of the scenario or campaign. This is what I did with Ghosts of Saltmarsh. But I also used material from Skulls and Shackles, some other older nautical themed modules and Pirates of Freeport. So here's the thing. When I wasn't spending money I was spending time. There are tools available that allow the game to have fog of war and dynamic lighting. But you have to manually block areas off for this feature if you import your own maps. And it is time consuming to do it. I also spent time creating the game tokens but not nearly as much time as I spent painting and photographing the miniatures which were the basis for the game tokens. Hope it helps buckyball 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buckyball Posted February 12 Share Posted February 12 Here is a screenshot of a map I made by layering two different maps. I needed a ship docked at a small pier. So I started with the pier map and layered the ship over an empty part of the map. Unfortunately the water of the ship doesnt match. The game tokens were made from photos of miniatures or by a feature in Heroforge that lets people design and download the tokens from that site 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator Chaoswolf Posted February 12 Author Moderator Share Posted February 12 Thank you for the ideas/feedback. As for 'official' content, I know that's not going to be free. It's still pretty frustrating to own one of the products in PDF form and not be able to upload it in any useable fashion. Or I haven't figured out how to do so yet, one or the other. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goddesstio Posted February 12 Share Posted February 12 Yeah, when we were online during the pandemic, my husband spent a lot of time making up some really nice layered maps in r20, but I personally couldn't be bothered so my games were not as polished as his. I just didn't like fiddling around with the behind the scenes stuff. But, if you put in the time like he did he had really nice maps, click-to-roll player and enemy skills (you can program the skill in and it will automatically roll your dice for you when you click on it), and cool tokens like Bucky said 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ced1106 Posted February 13 Share Posted February 13 Also don't forget collaborative writing, such as "play by forum", "play by email", etc. https://www.roleplayerguild.com/ My own favorite not-quite-storytelling is "Cheat Your Own Adventure". Click on the comments in the BGG thread to see the choices! https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonWorld/comments/9l9bbz/cheat_your_own_adventure_an_homage_to_or_parody/ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ziggy Posted February 14 Share Posted February 14 I use roll20 to play, i upload the tokens/maps i find/create and go from there. There is a DnDBeyond/Roll20 addon(beyond20 i believe) that lets you use DnDBeyond and roll in the roll20 chat. Ive used Inkarnate to create simple maps(Im a terrible creator, others have created much better maps that are available for download). and i use pinterest/google to find maps/tokens that i need. And i use discord for the voice chat. The one game i was playing in for a long time, used discord/zoom for voicechat and for sharing his desktop and used adobe photoshop to display the map and tokens, and we would annotate on the screen where to move our PCs. So you could get by with just discord/zoom to share your one screen, but roll20 works better because the players can move their own tokens. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlazingTornado Posted February 14 Share Posted February 14 On 2/12/2023 at 11:25 AM, Chaoswolf said: Thank you for the ideas/feedback. As for 'official' content, I know that's not going to be free. It's still pretty frustrating to own one of the products in PDF form and not be able to upload it in any useable fashion. Or I haven't figured out how to do so yet, one or the other. Google the name of the module and the word maps and you're very likely to find what you need. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ced1106 Posted February 17 Share Posted February 17 (edited) fyi, If you also play physical games (or at least want physical content!), Loke Battlemats "Box of Adventure" and probably upcoming "RPG Toolkit" will have a code for free digital PDFs of their physical content. Loke Battlemats already has free maps you can practice uploading to various virtual tabletop services. However, it looks like you'd want to buy the virtual module through the virtual service, since it's pre-whatevered to run on virtual service : https://www.reddit.com/r/Roll20/comments/9nqd37/uploading_module_from_pdf/ I have an iPad, so would end up kludging my way through. 😛 Set up a Zoom meeting, and have the camera point to a physical map! Have the players tell me how they want to move the miniatures on the board, and stuff. Edited February 17 by ced1106 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sylverthorne Posted February 19 Share Posted February 19 I use Foundry and a combination of screenshots and my graphics manipulation programs to get PDF maps to be uploadable JPGs or whatever. I've actually done the same with tokens, in many cases, and the rest are Heroforge or somebody Did An Art. My scanner comes in for other stuff; Foundry's got a card system, and I Am Using It, because I'm running Curse of the Crimson Throne, and lo, that's heavily invested in the Harrow deck... but it also means I can use stuff like chase decks and crit/fail cards. I just have to, y'know, scan and upload them. Foundry's support for PF1 is sparse, but it works well enough. Support for anything current is naturally going to be much better; PF2, Starfinder and The Dark Eye are all much more impressive, and I'd be willing to bet the same's true for 5e. If you don't have the gimp or something, photopea .com is pretty functional. You'll have to remove the space, I can't remember if the web-based graphics manipulator has commerce on it or not. 😜 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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