Hello all. I've purchased a few books here and would like to run a game for some friends on Roll20, since we aren't currently able to get together in person.
I was hoping to avoid the cost of repurchasing the adventure books I have in Roll20, but am struggling to find an efficient way to import the maps and tokens into Roll20.
Does anyone have any specific help that would make the task less cumbersome?
I think whatever you do will not be efficient because Roll20 really doesn't want you to do that -- they want you to buy the book again in their store. Anything you do will be less ideal than just buying it again. And probably will save you tons of time.
IMO, I would just re-buy it. Frankly if Foundry had the same deal where you could buy stuff IN Foundry I would buy it all again even though I've already bought it twice (once here, once physically). Just to save myself the time of manual copying.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
The easiest way would to rebuy like @BioWizard suggests. I usually do this only with whole modules, since they come with Dynamic Lighting and not with the rulebooks. As for the slightly more cumbersome way:
Battlemaps: Get a nice image/screenshot, resize it until fit, then populate. (Stuff like VTT Enchancement Suite Browser Plugin, makes it a little less tedious since there is an option to "resize fit"). No way around it.
Tokens: Get a nice image, crop it, edit the statblock. Rinse and repeat until your library is full. Not my cup of tea, but definetely worth consindering, if you havea lot of groups to DM for. I usually find myself too lazy to do this regardless. :P
The way I do it is, with Beyond20. I simply pop up a token on the VTT that's somewhat close to what it should represent and say: "This is the enemy." It's easy to give this token initiative and then I open up it's real statblock on DnDBeyond and roll from there. Plain and simple solution, unless you want automatic features and macroing. Sure, you will end up with anywhere from 3-10 different monster tabs on you browser, but that's still easier, than adding all of them individually to Roll20.
Edit: Just saw that you are struggling to find the right maps. Look the Map up on DnDBeyond (e.g. "Wave Echo Cave"), open up the Player Version, rightclick and "save graphic as". Then drag and drop in Roll20. The maps can usually handle some resizing, without breaking too much.
Now that you ask I'm wondering how the hell am I supposed to see what I have purchased here? Going to sources --> adventures gives me no clue which I one bought. I can and did go to order history and guessed which line item was the adventure but there has to be a better way....
Anyway in that adventure the first map I can click for player version, right click save as jpeg and then I would import it from there.
I do it all the time. It's not too bad, but took a while to learn and does take some extra work. Not sure if this is the info you are looking for but what I do is:
To download a copy of the map, just view the adventure, click the map, and then right-click (or similar for whatever device you are on) and save the image.
Then, I check the dimensions of the image to get the ratio of height to width, and then find something close to that for the Roll20 map size.*
In Roll20, you can upload the image by clicking the icon next to chat for "Art Library" then "Upload". Create a new page along top at roughly about the ratio of the image. Switch to the map layer (I sometimes forget this, whoops!). Then drag-n-drop the uploaded map onto the map layer in Roll20. I think it typically defaults it to a tiny 2x3 squares, so then right click the map > Advanced > Set Dimensions to whatever seems to be the appropriate size.
Sizing maps and grids are a bit of an art. There's some tips on how to do it better, but mostly I just experimented a lot with various settings and sizes.
If you want to go for Dynamic Lighting (so players can't see areas they haven't explored yet), it's a cool effect but takes time to set up, and would probably just be frustrating at first, so I'd recommend waiting and building up more complexity over time.
The benefit of buying the adventures on Roll20 is that all of this work is done for you, which is great. Downside is if you have it here, you have to buy it twice, which adds up, even with DnDBeyond's low prices (although if you are running an entire adventure on Roll20, even if you wind up buying it twice, the amount you wind up spending for the weeks and months of entertainment is still an awesome deal... IF you can afford it up front, of course).
But I've run at least all of Out of the Abyss, as well as several different layers from Dungeon of the Mad Mage in Roll20 with the maps and adventures on DDB and loading them into Roll20 myself. It takes work and patience while learning how Roll20 likes to do things, but it is absolutely 100% possible.
Oh, and as for tokens, I've found Token Stamp to be the easiest and fastest one I've tried and absolutely love it! Just drop an image onto it, and you have a token to download!
* Not sure how to explain it that doesn't sound more complicated than it really is - say if dividing the width by the height equals 1.578687...etc., I make a layer in Roll20 that is roughly 1.5 ratio, like 45 squares by 30 squares or something. Like I said above, getting the size right for different grid sizes without making the map ridiculously huge is an art and can be tricky. But most of the time is pretty straightforward once you get used to the process. Easiest way is setting aside time to do it over and over and experiment.
If you run into any particular problems, feel free to message me. I wasn't sure what level of detail help you needed. Although, fair warning, I'm not an expert and am still learning new features all the time!
I wish maps would come with thisXthis tag on DNDbeyond. It would make things a lot easier. I know the maps in the books aren't made specifically for VTTs, but let's be real, at this point, they should be.
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Hello all. I've purchased a few books here and would like to run a game for some friends on Roll20, since we aren't currently able to get together in person.
I was hoping to avoid the cost of repurchasing the adventure books I have in Roll20, but am struggling to find an efficient way to import the maps and tokens into Roll20.
Does anyone have any specific help that would make the task less cumbersome?
Thanks!
I think whatever you do will not be efficient because Roll20 really doesn't want you to do that -- they want you to buy the book again in their store. Anything you do will be less ideal than just buying it again. And probably will save you tons of time.
IMO, I would just re-buy it. Frankly if Foundry had the same deal where you could buy stuff IN Foundry I would buy it all again even though I've already bought it twice (once here, once physically). Just to save myself the time of manual copying.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Sounds weird that it is hard to import a map into Roll20. Isnt that a rather important piece of functionality.
Maybe I'm not finding the proper place to download them from the books here in DDB? I'm just getting started.
The easiest way would to rebuy like @BioWizard suggests. I usually do this only with whole modules, since they come with Dynamic Lighting and not with the rulebooks.
As for the slightly more cumbersome way:
Battlemaps:
Get a nice image/screenshot, resize it until fit, then populate. (Stuff like VTT Enchancement Suite Browser Plugin, makes it a little less tedious since there is an option to "resize fit").
No way around it.
Tokens:
Get a nice image, crop it, edit the statblock. Rinse and repeat until your library is full. Not my cup of tea, but definetely worth consindering, if you havea lot of groups to DM for. I usually find myself too lazy to do this regardless. :P
The way I do it is, with Beyond20. I simply pop up a token on the VTT that's somewhat close to what it should represent and say: "This is the enemy."
It's easy to give this token initiative and then I open up it's real statblock on DnDBeyond and roll from there. Plain and simple solution, unless you want automatic features and macroing.
Sure, you will end up with anywhere from 3-10 different monster tabs on you browser, but that's still easier, than adding all of them individually to Roll20.
Edit: Just saw that you are struggling to find the right maps. Look the Map up on DnDBeyond (e.g. "Wave Echo Cave"), open up the Player Version, rightclick and "save graphic as". Then drag and drop in Roll20. The maps can usually handle some resizing, without breaking too much.
Now that you ask I'm wondering how the hell am I supposed to see what I have purchased here?
Going to sources --> adventures gives me no clue which I one bought.
I can and did go to order history and guessed which line item was the adventure but there has to be a better way....
Anyway in that adventure the first map I can click for player version, right click save as jpeg and then I would import it from there.
I do it all the time. It's not too bad, but took a while to learn and does take some extra work. Not sure if this is the info you are looking for but what I do is:
To download a copy of the map, just view the adventure, click the map, and then right-click (or similar for whatever device you are on) and save the image.
Then, I check the dimensions of the image to get the ratio of height to width, and then find something close to that for the Roll20 map size.*
In Roll20, you can upload the image by clicking the icon next to chat for "Art Library" then "Upload". Create a new page along top at roughly about the ratio of the image. Switch to the map layer (I sometimes forget this, whoops!). Then drag-n-drop the uploaded map onto the map layer in Roll20. I think it typically defaults it to a tiny 2x3 squares, so then right click the map > Advanced > Set Dimensions to whatever seems to be the appropriate size.
Sizing maps and grids are a bit of an art. There's some tips on how to do it better, but mostly I just experimented a lot with various settings and sizes.
If you want to go for Dynamic Lighting (so players can't see areas they haven't explored yet), it's a cool effect but takes time to set up, and would probably just be frustrating at first, so I'd recommend waiting and building up more complexity over time.
The benefit of buying the adventures on Roll20 is that all of this work is done for you, which is great. Downside is if you have it here, you have to buy it twice, which adds up, even with DnDBeyond's low prices (although if you are running an entire adventure on Roll20, even if you wind up buying it twice, the amount you wind up spending for the weeks and months of entertainment is still an awesome deal... IF you can afford it up front, of course).
But I've run at least all of Out of the Abyss, as well as several different layers from Dungeon of the Mad Mage in Roll20 with the maps and adventures on DDB and loading them into Roll20 myself. It takes work and patience while learning how Roll20 likes to do things, but it is absolutely 100% possible.
Oh, and as for tokens, I've found Token Stamp to be the easiest and fastest one I've tried and absolutely love it! Just drop an image onto it, and you have a token to download!
* Not sure how to explain it that doesn't sound more complicated than it really is - say if dividing the width by the height equals 1.578687...etc., I make a layer in Roll20 that is roughly 1.5 ratio, like 45 squares by 30 squares or something. Like I said above, getting the size right for different grid sizes without making the map ridiculously huge is an art and can be tricky. But most of the time is pretty straightforward once you get used to the process. Easiest way is setting aside time to do it over and over and experiment.
Thanks. This is extremely helpful.
I just used Token Stamp, and I really dig it. I appreciate your help with all of this and I'm gonna give it a shot.
If you run into any particular problems, feel free to message me. I wasn't sure what level of detail help you needed. Although, fair warning, I'm not an expert and am still learning new features all the time!
Good luck!
I wish maps would come with thisXthis tag on DNDbeyond. It would make things a lot easier. I know the maps in the books aren't made specifically for VTTs, but let's be real, at this point, they should be.