This is the first in what may be an ongoing series if I continue to learn things that I think improve my game. Also things that bug me. My players are in different time zones so we use Roll20. There might be better platforms out there, I don't know, but I'm sort of invested in Roll20 now after a year or more so I'm staying unless they piss me off (and the POD wing of DriveThru which is part of Roll20 is working hard on that).
- Not much of a trick but pay whatever small amount they demand for Dynamic Lighting. It's not hard to set up and really worth it to prevent players from just moving their tokens wherever they damn feel while you are taking a restroom break (yeah my crew would never do that unless they got bored or thought it might give them an advantage of some kind). I believe the same cost allows you to slide assets between campaigns which is helpful when they get tired of fighting giants and want to do some urban adventure and you don't want all the maps of the forgotten realms clogging up the work where you plan to put a ton of building interior maps.
- In the My Settings (on the right) select "Hover to show nameplate and bar overlay". This removes the clutter that gets unmanageable when tokens are next to each other. Instead in the token use the Name field to give them a name and select nameplate to have that name displayed when you mouse-over. Or use the name field to have their actual name (as opposed to the name given for the statblock which is the default name in the field) so that you don't have to make one up on the spot. You can plug this in earlier and its ready to go. Doing things ahead of time is big with me as I don't want to have a ton of notes to dig up during the session.
The image shows the always on name on the left, and a mouse-over name on the right.
- Continuing from the bullet above, sort of, is the best tip. Give them a name in the name field but don't select the button unless the PCs know the person by reputation or they truly know them. If the person is a stranger the button goes unchecked and check the Tooltips button to have that show on a mouse-over instead. So the name is there if you need it, but now you can use the tool tip field to describe the NPC. I like to do this in a voice as if the characters are judging the person. "Nervous little coward" "Wet his pants in fear" "Clearly hiding something behind his back". "Looks like he knows how to fight" "Noble in fine clothes with snotty attitude" You get the hint. This way I don't have to describe every NPC when they encounter a group that have similar tokens, and the players don't have to point at who they want to attack, they can say I'm gonna hit "Wet his pants in fear".
- Every NPC should be set up to autoroll damage. This is stupid default to have that off. Edit an NPC sheet and it's below the normal stuff, just a checkbox near the always roll at Advantage. Check it so you don't have to roll separately. I guess having it off is useful if you go with the average damage each time but average damage only speeds things up at the table, when the system autorolls the damage on a hit there is no speed advantage.
- Set up Abilities for each token (do this before duplicating the tokens). These are little buttons that appear on the top of the screen when you select the token. They are set up on the character sheet. One tab of the sheet is what you see but one tab is Attributes & Abilities and that's where you set it up. I set them up for the PCs to save time. Put a button for initiative, each weapon they use, if they have spells. I do this for the NPCs as well to ensure I don't have to have 3 or 4 different NPC sheets up at once (assuming a mixed group of enemies).
- Lean on ChatGPT. You may hate AI but if you want to know how to do something in Roll20 ask ChatGPT and it'll spit out how to do it in seconds. If you want a list of 20 British sounding fantasy names it'll make the list for you. If you want a list of descriptions dockyard scum, or orcs, it'll provide that too so you can plug stuff in ahead of time and leave your brain for the real creative work.
- Duplicate a token and then rename and edit it. Give it more HP or different weapons. its not difficult and once you've duplicated the token you aren't screwing up the original. ChatGPT can pump out a variety of statblocks to make your dockyard scum have variety.
- Use an AI art program to create new token images. Give your game some style instead of using the mismatched tokens of different products. The prompt I generally use is "color circular token for VTT, of a dockyard thug, in the style of " then pick an artist or style you like. Play around because sometimes it 'gets it' and most of the time it doesn't. That or you can buy tokens. https://thefatefulforce.com sells tokens and they also have a token maker that works nicely to drop those AI created tokens and have them spit out as png with invisible backgrounds outside the circle (cuts off any weapons going out of the circle but nothing is perfect, and this is free).
- Remember what size maps work well. Failing that when you add a map to Roll20 there are two options: Try them both because sometimes things look blurry or the wrong scale. I know if you pay attention to the art dimensions this shouldn't be a problem but I don't. I just download cool battlemaps and load them up and find they are the wrong scale or too blurry. So load them up twice, pick the two choices and see what you like best. Eventually you'll get used to the sizes and not have to bother.
Most sites that make battlemaps already have your back on this but I've been dragging maps out of PDFs (including an old Waterdeep Boxed set) and the sizes, never meant for a VTT can be all over the place.
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