5 Roll20 Features All Tabletop Game Players Should Use

If you like tabletop games and find it difficult to manage them, especially if you play a long campaign, you should try Roll20. This website offers an ever-expanding and growing set of tabletop game management tools, allowing you to keep things simple no matter how complex your game is.

But with all that Roll20 can do, it can be easy to overlook features that could improve your game. So here are some of the site’s best features that you can incorporate into your next session.

1. The Compendium

The Roll20 Compendium is the site’s digital reference library. The Compendium is not limited to Dungeon and Dragons. The site offers material for over forty tabletop and role-playing games, including Marvel’s Multiverse Role-playing Game, Vampire: The Masquerade, and Warhammer Fantasy Role-play.

How you use the Compendium and how much access you have depends on your affiliation with Roll20. For example, the Dungeons&Dragons compendium is freely searchable for basic spells, items, monsters, and more.

However, to access more specific content, extensions must be purchased from the site’s digital marketplace. Expansions usually include at least one playable campaign, as well as character maps, markers and sheets, and exclusive items you can use in Roll20.

The content management system has been greatly improved over the years. In the early days of Roll20, each page of a resource opened in its own little window. Since then, a PDF viewer has made the site’s content easier to use.

The Compendium is the first article of Things from the banner drop-down menu at the top of the page. The Market is its own drop-down menu. Now, to learn more about the tabletop gaming companion, you should check out our explanation of what the Roll20 is and how to use it.

2. The Character Vault

Character Vault allows users to transfer characters between games they manage on the platform. This tool is handy for users who have multiple expansions and manage multiple Roll20 games, especially if they want to use consistent, pre-made non-playable characters.

Character Vault (or, at least, the free version) isn’t as robust as other character builders out there, which means it’s not useful for creating playable characters. So if you and your party already use other important tabletop tools for character creation, Roll20 probably won’t completely replace those tools.

The Character Vault is located just below the Compendium in the section Things scrolling menu.

3: The library of token markers

Tokens are used to track effects on characters and objects on the game map. Roll20’s token library includes over forty tokens, as well as a simple system to create your own tokens from downloaded images. Most expansions purchased in Roll20 also have additional markers for NPCs.

If you use Roll20’s digital maps to manage your gaming sessions, it’s easy to place markers on the maps and virtually interact with them. If you still prefer physical cards, the marker library can be used as a template for tokens printed on your actual table. You can also create different sets of markers to separate them from game to game.

The Token Marker Library also under Things scrolling menu.

4. Join a game

Roll20’s Join a Game feature allows players and Game Masters to share platform resources. And this, whether you play together around a physical table or remotely, is completely platform dependent.

This is true if you know the game master, the game, and the other players. But this is also true if you want to play between meetings of your own game.

The tool also allows you to view open games from anywhere with a “games to do” list that refreshes every minute. Wherever you are and whatever the time, you’ll likely find a group of new friends to join their session, whether it’s a one-shot or a campaign in progress.

You can access the Join a game The tool is taken directly from the homepage, the Games or the drop-down menu Community scrolling menu.

5. The GM Hub, Blog and Forums

GM Hub is another Roll20 feature that is very handy whether your group is playing on the platform or not. This page is a collection of tools for creating maps and encounters, staying organized with calculators, managing game rules, and just general advice.

Some resources are from the Roll20 ecosystem, but others are links to external tools and sites. Spending some time in the GM Hub outside of an actual game can be a great way to learn new tips and tools that you can use, even in games that don’t revolve around the Roll20 platform itself.

You can also use Roll20 to learn from other avid players. The site has a blog that contains a mix of site updates and game tips. There is also a forum where users interact and answer questions about how they are using the site, including troubleshooting and innovations.

The website GM hub is below the Things while the drop-down menu Blog and Forum they are both at the bottom Community scrolling menu.

Keep tabletop games simple and manageable

The beauty of role-playing games is their complexity. The great thing about Roll20 is how easy they are to make. The platform is designed so that an entire game can be played using nothing else.

Whether you play this way or not, there are definitely tools and resources on the site to improve your game.