Humble Bundle - Everything for Your Adventures - A Roll20 Exclusive

I am a long-time Roll20 user and fan. Heck, I have a Lifetime Pro account, as I was a backer of the Roll20 Kickstarter back in the day. In all that time, I've never bought, let alone installed, a ruleset or rulebook within Roll20. That may change with the current Roll20 Bundle on Humble Bundle.

Gather up your role-playing group (wherever they are!) for some epic online adventures with this treasury of resources for Roll20! This bundle for the world's most popular virtual RPG tabletop features:

• Compendiums to play Pathfinder 2E, Dune: Adventures in the Imperium, and more containing rules, art, lore, adventures, and more resources for use in Roll20.
• Additional Roll20 expansions and resources like Deep Magic, filled with new spells adaptable for multiple systems; maps and tokens; and more.
• 1-month Roll20 Plus subscription, unlocking additional features such as more upload storage, upgraded Compendium sharing, and an all-access character vault.

 

         Previews Of Hasbro's New D&D 'FAST' Channel - Gods Help Us All!

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. The Tavern DOES NOT do "Paid For" Articles and discloses personal connections to products and creators written about when applicable.

DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  You can catch the daily Tavern Chat cast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar  

Roll20 Goes Mobile (VTT)

Over the weekend, Roll20 announced their Mobile App. At the moment, it only works with Dungeons & Dragons 5e, but other rulesets/character sheets are apparently in the works.

Available for Android and iOS

Roll20 Player Companion

Your characters. Your friends. Your table.

Take your Roll20 characters with you, wherever you go. Keep your character in your back pocket at the game store or your living room! Reference and make rolls on your TTRPG character sheet from your phone or tablet.

* Free for all Roll20 users!

* Swipe and tap to select your games and character sheets.

* View your character’s stats, skills, features, and proficiencies.

* Roll for skill checks, combat, and spells (don’t worry, Roll20 will do the math for you).

* The sheet displays your character’s important information including their armor class, HP, speed, and character portrait.

* Send all your rolls right to the VTT chat, powered by Roll20’s signature quantum roll server.

 

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern. 

You can catch the daily Tavern Chat podcast on Anchor, YouTube, or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar  

Roll20 ORR Report for 3rd Quarter 2021

 

Yep, the latest ORR Report has landed for the 3rd Quarter of 2021. Some numbers of note:

D&D 5e - 53.7% of campaigns on Roll20

Pathfinder 1e has over 2x the campaigns compared to Pathfinder 2. Together they have 4.6% of campaigns.

Call of Cthulhu comes in at 11.9%.

All others and Uncategorized come in at 31.3%.

I'm disappointed that the third-quarter report lacks a detailed breakdown of the lesser-played RPGs.

Now I need to see if Fantasy Grounds has updated numbers...

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern. 

You can catch the daily Tavern Chat podcast on Anchor, YouTube, or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar  

Orr Report / Roll 20 for 2nd Quarter 2021 is Here - The Rise of Cthulhu!

Alright, I'm not sure how accurate the numbers graphic is, as they don't match the numbers in the chart. I will say, I'm surprised by the share of campaigns Call of Cthulhu has snared, and sadly not surprised to see Pathfinder / Paizo is still languishing.

It will be interesting to see if Paizo / Pathfinder takes a hit in the going forward after the PR fiasco they recently suffered.

You can read the original Orr Report here.

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern. 

You can catch the daily Tavern Chat podcast on Anchor, YouTube,  or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. - Tenkar  

Fantasy Grounds 4th Quarter Report Shows 71% of Game Sessions on the VTT are using D&D 5e

If we needed other proof that Dungeons & Dragons 5e was the "bully on the block", dwarfing all other RPGs, the 4th quarter report for the Fantasy Grounds Virtual Table Top shows the stark reality. 5e comes in with an ungodly 71% of 4th quarter game sessions on the platform.

Paizo comes in at 15% IF you combine Pathfinder 1e, Pathfinder 2e, and StarFinder as a single figure.

The following graph shows the influence of the pandemic on virtual play, at least using Fantasy Grounds (I'll be discussing 5e specifically below ):

Holding steady at around 20k sessions a month through February 2020, 5e spiked to over 80k sessions by April, and even the summer dip didn't go below 45k-ish. As for January 2021, it's knocking on 100k - nearly a five-fold increase.

These are just the numbers from Fantasy Grounds. Roll20's last ORR (3rd quarter 2020) report is less revealing, as we don't get to see the increase, if any, in sessions played (although 5e has a 53% share of the games and Paizo's share is even smaller than on FG). There is one tidbit of interesting information on the latest ORR report, and I'll share that below:

For less 5e games played to still equal a greater part of the pie, would mean that Roll20 saw a decrease in usage compared to the Second Quarter of 2020. Interesting.

Actually, FG2 might have seen a similar, small drop

I'd love to see Foundry's usage stats.

The Tavern is supported by readers like you. The easiest way to support The Tavern is to shop via our affiliate links. DTRPG, Amazon, and Humble Bundle are affiliate programs that support The Tavern.  

You can catch the daily Tavern Chat podcast on Anchor, YouTube, 

or wherever you listen to your podcast collection. 

 

The Orr Group Industry Report: Q4 2019 (Roll20 Play Statistics)

I always enjoy looking at industry reports, especially the games being played. The first chart we get from the fine folks at Roll20 is Campaign Percentage. Campaign Percentage: How many Roll20 campaigns use this game system.

https://blog.roll20.net/post/190665086865/the-orr-group-industry-report-q4-2020-a

What can we take from this chart? There are about 8x as many D&D 5e campaigns as there are Pathfinder and Pathfinder 2e - combined. You are looking at the reason why Paizo released Pathfinder 2 - an attempt to reclaim its heights prior to D&D 5e. Also, Starfinder doesn't even crack the Top 10.

Next up is Account Percentage: Account Percentage: How many Roll20 users play this game system.

At least with Account Percentage, Starfinder actually makes the chart - at number 10 with 0.72%. Pretty sad considering all the hype it had on release.

Now, the last chart I will highlight is where you make otherwise shitty statistics for Pathfinder 2e suddenly look good. Lipstick on a pig if you will.

Well, look at that! Pathfinder 2e saw a growth of 82.64% Woot! heh

Here is the full list:

Roll20 -The Orr Group Industry Report: Q2 2019 - No More "Apple to Apples"

Its been over a year since Roll20 has released an Orr Group Report, or a percentage breakdown of what players are playing on Roll20 for the 2nd quarter of 2019. Now, I knew that Pathfinder numbers were on a downward trend, but the report is striking in how much so. Be aware that they are now crunching numbers with a new method, but let's take a peek, shall we?

Notice how you no longer get pure numbers of campaigns or players. We don't even get a sample size. Wonder why that is?

There's a new category of "Uncharacterized". I'm guessing if you don't flag the system your game uses, you fit here.

D&D 5e, down to nearly 52% from 61%, but Pathfinder is down from nearly 10% to about a 6.5% share. So, if D&D lost 20% of its share, Pathfinder lost about 35%. But these numbers are "shares", and for all we know, there might be 50% more campaigns being run on Roll20 and both numbers in pure percentages rose.

Or to put it another way, if there were 6x the number of 5e games than Pathfinder games in 1st quarter 2018, there are now about 7.5 times the number of 5e games to Pathfinder. That's apples to apples, as best I can.

I'll dig a bit deeper into this over the next day or so.

Roll20 Security Breach - They Were Hacked

Here's the direct link to the announcement: https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/7209691/roll20-security-breach

Here's the full text:

Steve K. Roll20 Team

Earlier today, Roll20 was named in a report as one of several victims of an attack by cybercriminals. While we can confirm a breach did occur, we are currently focused on finding out all the facts. For now, it’s important to note the report makes clear that no financial data was included in the breach.  

Our security teams work tirelessly to fix potential weaknesses in our systems, and we take seriously our responsibility to safeguard our users’ personal information.
Here’s how we do that: 

Roll20 only maintains the following personal information: users’ name, email address, hashed password, last login IP and time of login, and the last 4 credit card digits.
We use Stripe and PayPal to process transactions; all billing information is handled by them and never touches our servers.  

We utilize bcrypt for password hashing, which means that it cannot be reverse-engineered for utilization with other sites or to access Roll20. 

We know it’s frustrating to not have all the facts, and we’re working to uncover the full extent of this breach. We will be continuously updating our members with information as our investigation continues.

Thanks to Vince Florio for the tip: https://www.theevildm.com/2019/02/reporting-news-roll20net-data-breach.html?fbclid=IwAR2cHya_uOtgpQhls_jp2BnjTbovQPYzY2OFXwiZDUpOY8zTmXSj-3MXCdk

Link to report: https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/14/hacker-strikes-again/

Has Roll20 Stopped Releasing Orr Group Industry Reports? No Quarterly Usage Numbers Since 1st Quarter 2018

It looks like Roll20 is no longer issuing Orr Group Industry Reports.

The 1st Quarter of 2018 Orr Report was released on June 12th, 2018 and even that was late:

We’ll be releasing the Q2 Industry Report pretty soon as the Q1 report was a little delayed. Until then, please enjoy the complete Q1 2018 Industry report below:

The 1st Quarter report follows the above paragraph on the original post, found here.

As far as I can tell, no 2nd or 3rd quarter reports have been posted by Roll20 (I'm guessing its still too early for a 4th quarter report).  I wonder if they've lost some of their user base with last year's Nolan T Jones fiasco.

In any case, if the reports have been released and I've missed them please point me in the right direction. I'd like to see and analyze the numbers.

The Tavern Chat Podcast - E 137 - Meltdown in the Roll20 SubReddit Makes Newsweek

How often does our corner of the universe make it to a news outlet like Newsweek? I'm not talking major announcements, I'm talking dumpster fires.

First, thank you for all of the support. It means more than you know. We have voicemails from Jason Hobbs and Old Man Grognard. The news section is about Roll20 moderator, cofounder and manager Nolan T banning a Reddit user, the backlash and dumpster fire that resulted and the actions taken to resolve the public relations nightmare.

Link to Episode 137 -  https://anchor.fm/tavernchat/episodes/E-137---Meltdown-in-the-Roll20-SubReddit-Makes-Newsweek-e2ajet

Link to Reddit Thread 

https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/9iwarj/after_5_years_on_roll20_i_just_cancelled_and/?st=JML9EREZ&sh=251d99b5

Link to Newsweek Article - https://www.newsweek.com/roll20-reddit-nolant-jones-apostleo-apostleoftruth-dungeons-and-dragons-ban-1142706

ICv2 - Top 5 RPGs Fall 2017 - Starfinder Surpasses Pathfinder - D&D 5e Remains #1

Starfinder got the huge bump of a Gen Con release. 5e holds strong to the first position.

Star Wars traditionally holds a top 5 spot and Star Trek Adventures is a new release.

While I find the ICv2 rankings interesting, "the charts are based on interviews with retailers, distributors, and manufacturers." I prefer hard numbers. I need to find the latest ORR (Roll20) report.

And found it:

If 5e has twice the players as Pathfinder, I can see why they are rebooting to reclaim their share of the market.

Starfinder is much further down the list here...

Discord Thoughts - An OSR Online Con - Dare I Say? TenKon!

So, this kept me up late on Friday night. At the moment we are nearing 90 members of the Tenkar's Tavern Live Discord Server. That got me thinking. I've toyed with the idea of an Online OSR Convention for the last 2 years. I just never saw all of the pieces in place to allow such to happen without major planning and software and associated costs

Discord plus Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds 2 is a viable solution.

So, here are the questions, not just for the Tenkar's Tavern Community but the OSR at large:

- Would you play a game session in an Online OSR Convention?

- Would you run a game session in an Online OSR Convention?

- Would you attend a panel discussion in an Online OSR Convention?

The cost to attend would be ZERO. The Tavern would offer some random gifts to attendees with perhaps further gifts offered from publishers.

I'm toying with the idea of calling such a potential convention TenKon but as all things that is subject to change ;)

What say you?

Spread the word on this post, because if there is enough interest we'll get the ball running.

Total side note - if you are a member of the Tenkar's Tavern Live Discord Server, drop into the swords - wizardry - light channel. The Swords & Wizardry Continual Light Beta Rules are linked there for your enjoyment. Not sure how long I'll leave them up there, so grab them soon. Work commences on laying out the SWCL rules via InDesign and with edits, corrections and clarifications this week and continues until completion.

Roll20 Hits the 2 Million Player Mark

Roll20 has hit the 2 million player mark and then some. I was an early backer of the Roll20 Kickstarter, and truth be told, I was a little nervous with the initial release. While I wasn't asking for much, even some basic things as drawing tools were borked.

Flash ahead a bit over 4 1/2 years and not only has Roll20 become my Virtual Table Top (VTT) of choice, but that of over 2 million other players. Pretty impressive. Actually, it was my VTT of choice even with the initial quirks as the potential was just that good.

I've used MapTools, Klooge, ScreenMonkey, Fantasy Grounds 1 & 2 and a handful of other VTTs that have come and gone over the last 10 years or so and none have come close to the usability of Roll20 for me. The learning curve is small and the depth is huge.

As I've said elsewhere, I'm very much a minimalist when it comes to running my games online but there are a few features I absolutely need: online die roller, chat and fog of war (we use a third party app for voice and video usually) for my game map. Everything else is optional and not needed for my use (you milage and needs may vary). The scalability of the features in Roll20 is probably its strongest asset.

Which reminds me, now that we've resurrected the once a month "B" Team its probably time to bring back the Saturday Night Team, now with a "Lighter" Swords & Wizardry ;)

This is How I Roll... Online

Well, I had a comment to the previous post which I figured needed a follow up answer and a post of its own:

Hey, barkeep. Remind us how you do your online play. I seem to recall Hangouts, but do you mix in any other apps? 

Right now I'm targeting Rolz, plus Skype. (Roll20 is just too ... much.) I don't know if I want to trust Hangouts when they are sunsetting app support. 

Regards,
Bob P

Historically I used Google Hangouts with the Roll 20 app inside the hangout. Yeah, couldn't figure out how to get ANY apps open in Google Hangouts. Google, the only company that can make great applications basically useless. Alright, maybe not the only company...

So, this is what we did:

We used Google Hangout for voice and video. I actually like seeing my players expressions and I'm sure they enjoy seeing my cat's ass in HD ;)

Then I loaded up the Roll 20 app which I had set up earlier in less that 15 minutes, sent out invite and used that on my main screen. On my vertical side screen I had the Hangout and various PDFs open.

The map is a +Dyson Logos . Its a perfect dungeon for what I needed. Support his Patreon for more awesome maps for the RPG community. Find his maps at his blog.

I use Fog of War to show may players what they can see and where they have been. I reveal new parts as the party progresses. Sure, part of the fun and challenge from my teen and college years was the mapping. Well, not really. No one ever wanted to be the mapper. Now, its not an issue.

Notice something missing? Tokens. I never use them. I could. Maybe I should. I have access to hundreds, if not thousands of them. Instead, I go more theatre of the mind. Maybe at some point in the future I'll find a nice middle ground between not using them and using all the bells and whistles.

I do use character sheets now. They actually have ones coded for Swords & Wizardry. I'm impressed.

The thing with Roll 20 is use what you need, not what sounds cool. Dynamic lighting would be a blast to use but the time needed to set it up could be better spent making blog posts like this, or writing more SWL content, or drinking more beer, or...

I roll all attack rolls, damage rolls and 99% of adversary saves in the open. I think players trust the DM to do what is right behind the screen when the rolls of chance are all in front of the screen.

As a DM, I want the players to think out of the box. You want your halfing fighter to make a running leap into the half dozen skeletons coming at you, trying to knock some over and block the doorway at the same time? Sure, make an attack roll with a penalty of 2 to the roll.

Oh, in case you missed it, here's Tim's blog post of last night's session.

Peter just put up his post. Read it. Please comment on the possible motto for The Tavern. It came up organically in play ;)

Bringing the Old Group Back to Life - Two Great Games, One Seamless Campaign - DCC RPG adventures and S&W Complete rules

My old gaming group, the one formed in the early 80s when we were in High School, continued in one form or another through college and gamed weekly right through the night before my rookie assignment to the South Bronx, wants to get back to gaming.

Sure, we've done the Everquest, Anarchy Online, Conan Online, Star Wars Galaxies, EverQuest 2 and myriad other MMORPGs together since then, but getting them to sit down for tabletop roleplaying has not been in the cards. Not until now that is.

I've been giving away RPGs every spring when we gather together for out yearly meet, eat and drink and there is always talk about playing but never a consensus. Which is why I was surprised that last month I was getting emails about not "if" we will game again, but "when."

Well, that when is soon. We'll be using Roll20 (as 2 members of out group are in Texas) and the Swords & Wizardry Complete rules. They are close enough to the AD&D that everyone used to play to feel familiar without bogging down in the AD&D rules we used to argue about and then ignore (weapon speed I'm talking to you!)

I gave them the option of campaign play or episodic and they have opted for episodic, at least initially. Which of course made me think about the DCC RPG adventures, which simply scream episodic play.

So, I'm tossing this out to my readers. What DCC RPG Adventures should I put my soon to be resurrected gaming group through? Remember, I'll be using the S&W Complete rules, but I've converted DCC RPG adventures for use with S&W Complete in the past, mostly on the fly and it works fine.

Roll20 2016 Quarter 2 Report is Out - Lets Compare it to the Market

The Roll20 Orr Report for the 2nd Quarter of 2016 was released on August 15th. Lets look at it shall we:

Things to note:

We pull our data from two locations within Roll20 member profiles. Player numbers are drawn from the “Enjoys Playing” and “Seeks Group For” sections, while Game numbers come from the “My Campaigns” section. Our percentages can total more than 100%, particularly Player numbers, since each player will list their interest in multiple games. The report is meant to be a representative sample, and the game listings are curated by Roll20 staff.

Which means you can take this all with a grain of salt. It may show trends, but the science isn't exact. I have nearly a dozen campaigns listed under "My Campaigns" section but I haven't run campaign in nearly a year. I guess I'm skewing the numbers ;)

The numbers for 5e means that over half the users of Roll20 have an interest in 5e. It doesn't mean over half are playing 5e.

Top 2 in the Market Report are the same, and 4 of the top 5 in the Market Report make the top 9 here. AGE didn't make the top 10.

WTF is Maid RPG? I'm picture bad sexual fantasy shit...

AD&D made the top 10 but the drop off is huge after the top 3.

Basic Fantasy RPG (BFRPG) has a huge showing for an OSR game. Even if you assume the numbers are inflated, it still blows every other clone out of the water. Maybe its active online community has something to do with it.

Roll20 Article on Slate - Welcome to the Virtual Tabletop (Finally, there’s a good way to play Dungeons & Dragons online)

Roll20 (and Dungeons & Dragons 5e) have a nice article up on Slate.

Yep, the D&D media love just keeps rolling along.

Gail couldn't have timed her licensing of Gary's works better if she had had a crystal ball...

Here's a small piece from the article:

But if technological developments partly supplanted D&D’s appeal, they may yet also contribute to its recent resurgence. The leader here may be Roll20, a web-based system that attempts to re-create the experience of classic pen-and-paper gaming—not just for Dungeons & Dragons, but for other titles as well. The sophisticated application creates a shared platform for many of the game’s fundamental elements, allowing users to simulate dice rolls and move character and monster tokens around maps (drawn by the game master or imported from the community-generated library). 

Though it’s not quite the same as sharing a pizza in someone’s basement while fumbling for your lucky 20-sided die, it comes surprisingly close. Log in and you’ll be given the opportunity to create a new game or join one in progress. Take the former option, and an array of tools in the sidebar will allow you to draw maps, place monsters, and otherwise prepare things for your players. It’s simple enough to draw a crude map on one of the graphing paper–like templates, but members of Roll20’s community also create and distribute more sophisticated art resources through the site’s marketplace. A shareable URL lets others join the game. Once they do, their faces will pop up in video streaming boxes in the lower third of the screen, offering something like face-to-face interaction.

It seems like there is hope for the hobby yet.

Hey, maybe Gail could license some of Gary's work to Roll20...

Roll20 Industry Report - Q1 2015 - Nearly 1 in 10 Roll20 Players Express an Interest in AD&D

Roll20 has just released their most recent usage report and the numbers are interesting, at least as far as Old School Gaming goes.

But before we get to that, note that there are over 18k D&D 5e games listed and a hair under 22k players expressing interest in 5e - which should indicate an abundance of 5e games with room for players, which isn't the results I've heard.

Now lets look at AD&D. While only 1.59% (730 games) of the games listed on Roll20 are AD&D, 9.62% or 4,556 players express an interest in AD&D. That's nearly 1 in 10 players on Roll20.

Stars Without Number has 598 games and over 1,300 players. Basic Fantasy RPG has 432 games and over 1,110 players. OD&D has 193 games and over 1,600 players. DCC RPG has 75 games and nearly 400 players. Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry have 41 games each and 144 / 182 players respectively. Castles Crusades has 25 games and 124 players. This isn't even touching upon games like the Palladium System, Traveller, Warhammer, Hackmaster, CoC, RuneQuest, Rolemaster and the like.

Just looking at the number of games (as players can and do identify with more than one system, so those numbers will add up to over 100%) shows how strong Old School Gaming is on the Roll20 VTT platform.

About The Orr Group Industry Report 

We pull our data from two locations within Roll20 member profiles. Player numbers are drawn from the “Enjoys Playing” and “Seeks Group For” sections, while Game numbers come from the “My Campaigns” section. Our percentages can total more than 100%, particularly Player numbers, since each player will list their interest in multiple games. The report is meant to be a representative sample, and the game listings are curated by Roll20 staff. 

24 Hour Roll20CON to be Held in June

Sadly, June 3rd is the day NTRPG Con kicks off, so I doubt I'll have a chance to see any of Roll20's online con in action. I hope it is successful and there are ore of them in the future, possibly even themed (OSR, Horror, Scifi, 5e, etc)

Here's an excerpt from the Escapist article:

According to Roll20, the site, later this year, will be hosting its first "online-only tabletop gaming convention." Dubbed Roll20CON, the event will run for 24-hours beginning on June 3, 2016 and ending at 11:59 (PT) that night. During Roll20CON, gamers will be able to access "an organized schedule of tabletop games" along with a selection of "panels and demonstrations." These events will all be streamed via Twitch. Attendees will likewise be encouraged to play their own games and try out "subscription features" normally reserved for Plus-level members of the site. Assisting Roll20 in its efforts will be the anti-bullying group Cybersmile. During the event Roll20 will work with attendees and sponsors to raise money for Cybersmile.

Google Hangouts Getting an Upgrade - Looks Like Apps Will Miss the Cut - Roll20 Users Take Note

Engadget has a short article on Google's currently being rolled out update to Google Hangouts. Simpler interface, improved video quality, no apps. Yep, you read that right - those apps you love - and no, not the sound effects and the goofy hats, but apps like Roll20 - do not work with the new update.

Here's the relevant quote from the Engadget article:

Just be aware that you may lose some features you like -- as one early adopter notes, app support within Hangouts is currently missing. That doesn't necessarily mean that the support is gone for good, but you shouldn't count on it coming back.

 And here's Google's official statement:

The comments in the G+ thread are very interesting and there are some names many of The Tavern's readers will recognize.

Another interesting G+ thread:

In the meantime, here's the link to the old Hangouts:

http://g.co/hangouts