I'm considering DMing online and was wondering how others typically use D&D Beyond and a VTT together. I was considering the Beyond20 extension (which seems to work very well), the new encounter builder here, and Roll20 for just maps, etc. I have so much unlocked here that I don't really want to buy duplicate, digital content on Roll20 (or Fantasy Grounds, etc.) if I can help it. That being said, would it be worth buying the adventures directly on a VTT since they have the maps better integrated there? Or would you just buy those here as well and then just move the maps over to Roll20?
Or if I end up just playing more there, do I just bite the bullet and start acquiring things there, too?
I don't know but I'm in a similar boat. I've purchased the Legendary Bundle on here and would like to try integrating Roll20 into my play (see: quarantine). I'd love to use my DNDBeyond content on Roll20.
I've not tried VTT before and didn't know a lot about it. Do you find the integration with Beyond20 better there than with Roll20? If you run something in VTT, are you just buying the module here on D&D Beyond and then just importing them into VTT?
I just put a lot of hours this weekend into converting my upcoming session's encounter maps into Roll20. I am also using Beyond20 and I really like what I'm seeing. Pretty much you just need to make a token for a monster on Roll20 to represent where it is on the map and Beyond20 takes care of the rest. I would like to give it a test run with my friends before our next session though. I noticed Wizards is giving away a sample Wildemount complete adventure for free and that seems like a good place to test drive it.
I feel a little bad, but I have bought a great many books physically and I have everything unlocked on D&D Beyond. I just can't bring myself to buy all the content a third time.
I have years experience with Fantasy grounds as a player, and I can tell you it's a different game. With all the automation, it feels more like a game of risk than a story. If that's what you want, cool, but my love of D&D was rekindled when I abandoned that style of play and started DMing myself around a table.
I'm currently running Dragon Heist with beyond20 and roll20 and I'm loving it. The prep is the same with entering encounters into Dndbeyond and finding maps to use if I need one. Roll20 can do a lot more automation, but I find the combo to be the Sweet spot for me. I'm also using a free roll20 account, so I'm not spending extra money.
One note though, I will say FG is a great product with excellent customer service if you want to go that way. It just wasn't the type of game I wanted.to play.
Same here. I am giving Foundry VTT, VTTAssests, and Beyond 20 a spin to see how it all works together.
We normally play in person using DDB character sheets and our minitures on a digital map.
Although Foundry has a bit not a learning curve I hope there is some useful functionality that will carry over once our live sessions resume.
This is exactly me. I spent all weekend doing my Monday game's content twice: once on my PC I was going to use to host games and then again on an AWS-hosted instance a player deployed for us. Luckily you can pretty much dump your data directory from one to another and it works, but changes in folder structure broke a bunch of links. Just took time to fix. First game using it is tonight, but I did a tech demo with each of the players before today so we wouldn't have to do the IT dance when we want to be playing D&D.
I just had to make the same switch. I had been using a wet-erase mat and minis at a table, but that's out the window now.
Roll20 is pretty cool, and the Beyond20 extension makes rolling online pretty easy. We're using discord for audio, and enabling the video part of roll20. I still like physical dice, so I don't really care if the players want to roll their own dice and just call out the numbers. I still just track initiative and combat on a notepad rather than worry about building things into roll20.
If you're playing a printed module off here, it's not too hard to grab the "player version" of a map, save it to your desktop, and drop it into Roll20. From there it's just some fiddling to gt the grid to line up, but that's easy enough if you just resize and crop things with GIMP as needed.
I was looking around for a way to make maps for things that aren't in printed modules though (side quests and such) and I just came across Arkenforge. I'm going to start using that to build maps and scenes (and you can export as a jpeg for roll20). And once we can finally start meeting in person again, we're going to have some fun with a virtual tabletop. I might have to get a ceiling-mount projector. :)
Hey. I have been using roll20 for 5 years now, and have had a legendary tier membership here at DNDBeyond for almost 2 years now. I run 5 weekly games and 2 monthly games using them. Needless to say, I use both services all the time and in tandem.
This is exactly me. I spent all weekend doing my Monday game's content twice: once on my PC I was going to use to host games and then again on an AWS-hosted instance a player deployed for us. Luckily you can pretty much dump your data directory from one to another and it works, but changes in folder structure broke a bunch of links. Just took time to fix. First game using it is tonight, but I did a tech demo with each of the players before today so we wouldn't have to do the IT dance when we want to be playing D&D. Got walls and lighting some music, etc.
You are further along than me at the moment. I spent some time trying to create a game and load some assets into the local instance of FoundryVTT then decided to go with The Forge to host. So now I am re-doing all of that original set-up and just playing around with how things work.
I typically run an NPC character with my groups and for some reason, all my rolls are happening twice. I think Beyond20 is sending info twice to FVTT (once for my "player" and once for my "DM" accounts) not sure but that is just my guess. Any similar experience for you?
Anyway, I plan to run a low level one-shot for my players to work out all the kinks before we resume our regular campaign. Playing online really is a whole new world lol.
To the question of importing maps from here vs buying on the VTT: Speaking to Roll20, it all depends on if you use dynamic lighting and/or fog of war, in addition to how much time you want to spend prepping the maps. The maps purchased on Roll20 already have the dynamic lighting set up for you. If you are pressed for time or don't want to deal with that, it might be worth it, but only if you pay for the subscription that gives you dynamic lighting. Also, any unique monsters to that book are already set up as tokens for you. But I will say... doing any of this yourself is not terribly time consuming. One you get the hang of it, setting up maps and tokens is a relatively quick process. (Especially if using Beyond20, but even without it it's not bad)
To the question of importing maps from here vs buying on the VTT: Speaking to Roll20, it all depends on if you use dynamic lighting and/or fog of war, in addition to how much time you want to spend prepping the maps. The maps purchased on Roll20 already have the dynamic lighting set up for you. If you are pressed for time or don't want to deal with that, it might be worth it, but only if you pay for the subscription that gives you dynamic lighting. Also, any unique monsters to that book are already set up as tokens for you. But I will say... doing any of this yourself is not terribly time consuming. One you get the hang of it, setting up maps and tokens is a relatively quick process. (Especially if using Beyond20, but even without it it's not bad)
Thanks so much. This is exactly what I was wondering. I guess the other question about the adventures here in DnD Beyond is if the maps here are actually exportable in a way thats' easily brought into R20. I was only thinking about buying the Adventures on R20 just because of having everything just ready to go. My other bit of reluctance is how easy an adventure might actually be to read up on in R20's UI compared to DnD Beyond's nice full page view of the content.
Hey. I have been using roll20 for 5 years now, and have had a legendary tier membership here at DNDBeyond for almost 2 years now. I run 5 weekly games and 2 monthly games using them. Needless to say, I use both services all the time and in tandem.
Very nice videos. Just trying to decide if I want to buy things in R20 like the PHB, Monster Manual, etc. in addition to what I have here. Wondering how doable it is with Beyond20 and the adventures in R20 maybe. i.e. does it make a huge difference having the books in R20 natively?
I know you can import them, but I'm not sure of the resolution. There is a free Wildemount adventure on Roll20 right now. I would try to run that like a one-shot and then run a regular game with you doing the prep and compare. Actually, I would switch the order, but your preference. I personally am doing the prep because I have uncertain income and three small kids :) but if both are an option for you, then I would run the free adventure and see if it makes that big of a difference to you as a DM.
Either way, keep us posted because I'm very curious. Thanks -Jolin
Hey. I have been using roll20 for 5 years now, and have had a legendary tier membership here at DNDBeyond for almost 2 years now. I run 5 weekly games and 2 monthly games using them. Needless to say, I use both services all the time and in tandem.
Very nice videos. Just trying to decide if I want to buy things in R20 like the PHB, Monster Manual, etc. in addition to what I have here. Wondering how doable it is with Beyond20 and the adventures in R20 maybe. i.e. does it make a huge difference having the books in R20 natively?
There are third party browser plugins that allow you to link DNDBeyond to roll20, which are covered in another thread (it has like 25k views), but for me, running so many games, I need to spend less time on tech support and more time running games. I offer DNDBeyond legendary tier to my players as a resource, but I have acquired all the books and resources for roll20 to make their lives and mine easier within Roll20, without needing special third party stuff. I understand not everyone has the money to do this. My recommendation is to have the group split the cost of the PHB, monster manual, and a pro-account for the DM who can then share everything they get with the players. It's $70 bucks, but split 4-7+ ways it's not an insurmountable start-up cost to keep playing games together. If you are playing a published adventure path, you can save lots and LOTS of time but buying the module, but with PHB and MM anything roll20 becomes much much easier.
Yeah, I think that's pretty much where I'm leaning. I have a lot here, and DnD Beyond is awesome. But time savings and simplicity of having what I need in the VTT, natively sounds good. I was thinking of getting the DM bundle (PHB, MM, Essentials Adventure) and Xanathar's as a start.
As a side comment, I very much prefer the layout and organization plus search functionality DDB offers for it's books and adventures. I might recommend picking up one or 2 adventures on Roll20 as a combo time saved as well as a way to see what they did with the organization so you can have a foot up with creating your own. I generally feel it's good for a DM to have a Master Tier sub here on DDB, and a Plus or Pro on Roll20 while keeping the majority of their purchases here. The pricing is also something to note, as I believe in general you are paying hardback pricing on Roll20 vs what DDB offers.
As a side comment, I very much prefer the layout and organization plus search functionality DDB offers for it's books and adventures. I might recommend picking up one or 2 adventures on Roll20 as a combo time saved as well as a way to see what they did with the organization so you can have a foot up with creating your own. I generally feel it's good for a DM to have a Master Tier sub here on DDB, and a Plus or Pro on Roll20 while keeping the majority of their purchases here. The pricing is also something to note, as I believe in general you are paying hardback pricing on Roll20 vs what DDB offers.
Completely agree. I'm not a fan of how the books and adventures are layed out on Roll20. So much easier to search and reference them during a session on DnDBeyond.
I'm considering DMing online and was wondering how others typically use D&D Beyond and a VTT together. I was considering the Beyond20 extension (which seems to work very well), the new encounter builder here, and Roll20 for just maps, etc. I have so much unlocked here that I don't really want to buy duplicate, digital content on Roll20 (or Fantasy Grounds, etc.) if I can help it. That being said, would it be worth buying the adventures directly on a VTT since they have the maps better integrated there? Or would you just buy those here as well and then just move the maps over to Roll20?
Or if I end up just playing more there, do I just bite the bullet and start acquiring things there, too?
Check out FoundryVTT. This will solve many of your woes.
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I'm considering DMing online and was wondering how others typically use D&D Beyond and a VTT together. I was considering the Beyond20 extension (which seems to work very well), the new encounter builder here, and Roll20 for just maps, etc. I have so much unlocked here that I don't really want to buy duplicate, digital content on Roll20 (or Fantasy Grounds, etc.) if I can help it. That being said, would it be worth buying the adventures directly on a VTT since they have the maps better integrated there? Or would you just buy those here as well and then just move the maps over to Roll20?
Or if I end up just playing more there, do I just bite the bullet and start acquiring things there, too?
I don't know but I'm in a similar boat. I've purchased the Legendary Bundle on here and would like to try integrating Roll20 into my play (see: quarantine). I'd love to use my DNDBeyond content on Roll20.
Same here. I am giving Foundry VTT, VTTAssests, and Beyond 20 a spin to see how it all works together.
We normally play in person using DDB character sheets and our minitures on a digital map.
Although Foundry has a bit not a learning curve I hope there is some useful functionality that will carry over once our live sessions resume.
I've not tried VTT before and didn't know a lot about it. Do you find the integration with Beyond20 better there than with Roll20? If you run something in VTT, are you just buying the module here on D&D Beyond and then just importing them into VTT?
I just put a lot of hours this weekend into converting my upcoming session's encounter maps into Roll20. I am also using Beyond20 and I really like what I'm seeing. Pretty much you just need to make a token for a monster on Roll20 to represent where it is on the map and Beyond20 takes care of the rest. I would like to give it a test run with my friends before our next session though. I noticed Wizards is giving away a sample Wildemount complete adventure for free and that seems like a good place to test drive it.
I feel a little bad, but I have bought a great many books physically and I have everything unlocked on D&D Beyond. I just can't bring myself to buy all the content a third time.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I have years experience with Fantasy grounds as a player, and I can tell you it's a different game. With all the automation, it feels more like a game of risk than a story. If that's what you want, cool, but my love of D&D was rekindled when I abandoned that style of play and started DMing myself around a table.
I'm currently running Dragon Heist with beyond20 and roll20 and I'm loving it. The prep is the same with entering encounters into Dndbeyond and finding maps to use if I need one. Roll20 can do a lot more automation, but I find the combo to be the Sweet spot for me. I'm also using a free roll20 account, so I'm not spending extra money.
One note though, I will say FG is a great product with excellent customer service if you want to go that way. It just wasn't the type of game I wanted.to play.
Hope this helps,
Jolin
This is exactly me. I spent all weekend doing my Monday game's content twice: once on my PC I was going to use to host games and then again on an AWS-hosted instance a player deployed for us. Luckily you can pretty much dump your data directory from one to another and it works, but changes in folder structure broke a bunch of links. Just took time to fix. First game using it is tonight, but I did a tech demo with each of the players before today so we wouldn't have to do the IT dance when we want to be playing D&D.
Got walls and lighting some music, etc.
I just had to make the same switch. I had been using a wet-erase mat and minis at a table, but that's out the window now.
Roll20 is pretty cool, and the Beyond20 extension makes rolling online pretty easy. We're using discord for audio, and enabling the video part of roll20. I still like physical dice, so I don't really care if the players want to roll their own dice and just call out the numbers. I still just track initiative and combat on a notepad rather than worry about building things into roll20.
If you're playing a printed module off here, it's not too hard to grab the "player version" of a map, save it to your desktop, and drop it into Roll20. From there it's just some fiddling to gt the grid to line up, but that's easy enough if you just resize and crop things with GIMP as needed.
I was looking around for a way to make maps for things that aren't in printed modules though (side quests and such) and I just came across Arkenforge. I'm going to start using that to build maps and scenes (and you can export as a jpeg for roll20). And once we can finally start meeting in person again, we're going to have some fun with a virtual tabletop. I might have to get a ceiling-mount projector. :)
Hey. I have been using roll20 for 5 years now, and have had a legendary tier membership here at DNDBeyond for almost 2 years now. I run 5 weekly games and 2 monthly games using them. Needless to say, I use both services all the time and in tandem.
I made a video series on getting started with Roll20. It might be helpful: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaMDrDIHMitJd9u4V32GdDKwNIBeX_t1Y
Currently Running:
Odyssey of the Dragonlords | Skull & Shackles | Mythic Odyssey | West Marches of Paradise Vale
Currently Playing:
Rime of the Frostmaiden
Find out more.
You are further along than me at the moment. I spent some time trying to create a game and load some assets into the local instance of FoundryVTT then decided to go with The Forge to host. So now I am re-doing all of that original set-up and just playing around with how things work.
I typically run an NPC character with my groups and for some reason, all my rolls are happening twice. I think Beyond20 is sending info twice to FVTT (once for my "player" and once for my "DM" accounts) not sure but that is just my guess. Any similar experience for you?
Anyway, I plan to run a low level one-shot for my players to work out all the kinks before we resume our regular campaign. Playing online really is a whole new world lol.
Good luck everyone with your conversions!
To the question of importing maps from here vs buying on the VTT: Speaking to Roll20, it all depends on if you use dynamic lighting and/or fog of war, in addition to how much time you want to spend prepping the maps. The maps purchased on Roll20 already have the dynamic lighting set up for you. If you are pressed for time or don't want to deal with that, it might be worth it, but only if you pay for the subscription that gives you dynamic lighting. Also, any unique monsters to that book are already set up as tokens for you. But I will say... doing any of this yourself is not terribly time consuming. One you get the hang of it, setting up maps and tokens is a relatively quick process. (Especially if using Beyond20, but even without it it's not bad)
Thanks so much. This is exactly what I was wondering. I guess the other question about the adventures here in DnD Beyond is if the maps here are actually exportable in a way thats' easily brought into R20. I was only thinking about buying the Adventures on R20 just because of having everything just ready to go. My other bit of reluctance is how easy an adventure might actually be to read up on in R20's UI compared to DnD Beyond's nice full page view of the content.
Very nice videos. Just trying to decide if I want to buy things in R20 like the PHB, Monster Manual, etc. in addition to what I have here. Wondering how doable it is with Beyond20 and the adventures in R20 maybe. i.e. does it make a huge difference having the books in R20 natively?
I know you can import them, but I'm not sure of the resolution. There is a free Wildemount adventure on Roll20 right now. I would try to run that like a one-shot and then run a regular game with you doing the prep and compare. Actually, I would switch the order, but your preference. I personally am doing the prep because I have uncertain income and three small kids :) but if both are an option for you, then I would run the free adventure and see if it makes that big of a difference to you as a DM.
Either way, keep us posted because I'm very curious. Thanks -Jolin
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D&D Beyond FoundersThe same adventure is also available free on D&D Beyond:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/wa/frozen-sick
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If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
There are third party browser plugins that allow you to link DNDBeyond to roll20, which are covered in another thread (it has like 25k views), but for me, running so many games, I need to spend less time on tech support and more time running games. I offer DNDBeyond legendary tier to my players as a resource, but I have acquired all the books and resources for roll20 to make their lives and mine easier within Roll20, without needing special third party stuff. I understand not everyone has the money to do this. My recommendation is to have the group split the cost of the PHB, monster manual, and a pro-account for the DM who can then share everything they get with the players. It's $70 bucks, but split 4-7+ ways it's not an insurmountable start-up cost to keep playing games together. If you are playing a published adventure path, you can save lots and LOTS of time but buying the module, but with PHB and MM anything roll20 becomes much much easier.
Currently Running:
Odyssey of the Dragonlords | Skull & Shackles | Mythic Odyssey | West Marches of Paradise Vale
Currently Playing:
Rime of the Frostmaiden
Find out more.
Yeah, I think that's pretty much where I'm leaning. I have a lot here, and DnD Beyond is awesome. But time savings and simplicity of having what I need in the VTT, natively sounds good. I was thinking of getting the DM bundle (PHB, MM, Essentials Adventure) and Xanathar's as a start.
As a side comment, I very much prefer the layout and organization plus search functionality DDB offers for it's books and adventures. I might recommend picking up one or 2 adventures on Roll20 as a combo time saved as well as a way to see what they did with the organization so you can have a foot up with creating your own. I generally feel it's good for a DM to have a Master Tier sub here on DDB, and a Plus or Pro on Roll20 while keeping the majority of their purchases here. The pricing is also something to note, as I believe in general you are paying hardback pricing on Roll20 vs what DDB offers.
Completely agree. I'm not a fan of how the books and adventures are layed out on Roll20. So much easier to search and reference them during a session on DnDBeyond.
Check out FoundryVTT. This will solve many of your woes.