Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 blamekeiko Jan 20, 2015 11:05:18	I am interested in running a published module on roll20, mainly because I can't seem to organise a party in real life due to limited time, and none of my friends are into D&D.   I really like the theatre of the mind style, but I'm interested in revisiting some old modules, such as B1 Search for the Unknown, and some other basic D&D modules. I think it will convert really well into 5E but roll20's map system is extremely limited. There is no way you can recreate the dungeon maps in a lot of published modules. A lot of curves and uneven structures. You can't really scan the maps in the modules either because they give away a lot of the surprises. There is also no real flexible facility for having the party map as you describe. I'd love some tried and tested tips and tricks for how people have run some of the older modules on roll20 before, particularly under the 5E system. Will most roll20 players expect tokens and battle maps? Is there another system you think is better and more suitable?
#2 iserith Jan 20, 2015 11:15:44	Scan the maps in, then turn on the Fog of War. This blacks out the map to the players except for the portions you choose to reveal. If the map has labels or the like, see if you can remove those labels in the image-editing software of your choosing.   You can do some pretty sophisticated maps in Roll20 (see the Content I Created in my signature), but it may take some time to learn how. You might also want to repost this thread to the Roll20 community forums for additional assistance.
#3 gecko85 Jan 20, 2015 13:44:02	Yep, scan and import the maps: https://wiki.roll20.net/Aligning_Maps   Also, I don't use Fog of War anymore, I use Dynamic Lighting instead. To me it's much more flexible and easy to use (but does require some setup time...) I set up all of Lost Mines of Phandelver in roll20, with dynamic lighting.    Here's someone's tutorial on dynamic lighting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNOqNcufTKk   Also, fwiw, there's a really good 5e character sheet available in roll20 that auto-calulates everything.
#4 paulstrait Jan 20, 2015 15:50:58	I import a lot of maps into maptool along the same lines.  The really old handdrawn maps cause a lot of trouble, but even stuff from like 10 years ago or even more recently can be problematic because the images get shrunk before they are published, and they don't always have an even number of pixels per square.  The solution is to put the images in gimp, measure the pixels in the map, decide how many pixels per square you want, do some basic arithematic and then enlarge or reduce the map proportionally so that the squares each have the right number of pixels.  It is tricky at first but after a couple maps it is pretty straightforward.   Another thing you can do is just recreate the map.  Sometimes even after getting the size right, I might not want to use the actual map image itself b/c it is littered with numbers (for the map key) or otherwise just doesn't look good when enlarged.  In that case, I import the map, and then draw over it, using it as a guide.  That method works pretty quickly if you aren't trying to do anything too fancy.  I assume that you can do something similar in roll20...
#5 pauldanielj2 Jan 20, 2015 21:20:34	There's great mapping software out there (I use Campaign Cartographer, others use Maptools, there are others still no doubt). I'd also suggest that you don't need to recreate maps from adventures exactly. You might want to get it close, but your players will never know that the 40'x30' rectangular room they're looking at was a 30'x40' eliptical room in the original map.
#6 Synjin Jan 21, 2015 9:09:57	gecko85 wrote:
#7 paulstrait Jan 21, 2015 11:23:04	(or is free if you use maptool)
#8 Synjin Jan 21, 2015 13:29:53	paulstrait wrote:
#9 ankiyavon Jan 21, 2015 13:47:11	Synjin wrote:
(Reply to #9) AaronOfBarbaria	ankiyavon wrote:
#11 paulstrait Jan 21, 2015 20:17:19	ankiyavon wrote:
#12 ankiyavon Jan 21, 2015 21:03:22	paulstrait wrote:
#13 paulstrait Jan 22, 2015 0:11:43	Yeah, I suppose it isn't a super testable proposition, but all I can say is that years ago it was buggy, but now it isn't, and I've been through several machines (windows, linux, and apple) and a couple different groups of people, and I've used a combination of different vision settings, different color lights, lights that give off dim light at a certain distance, square and radius lighting, extensive vision-blocking, etc.  Anyway, it doesn't really make a difference for people who like the current setup they have now; I just think it makes sense for people who don't have a virtual tabletop that they use regularly and are comfortable with to try one that is free before trying one that they have to pay for.