Our first step, is of course to create a free Roll20 account. This provides us a centralized location to collect and organize all the content for our adventure. Later us and our players will use this to actually play the game as well!
If you haven't already, you can create your account from here: https://roll20.net/
Once you've made your new account and worked through the introduction information, we can immediately go to making our game!
Creating a new game
Click the "Games" button at the top left and select "Create New Game" in order to navigate to the game creation screen. You can also navigate directly to the game creation screen from this link: https://app.roll20.net/campaigns/new/
Once you are on the nea game screen, you will see a variety of options. In our case we are going to do the following:
- For the game name, we'll set it to "Super Awesome Game" -- you can name your game whatever you like!
- Make sure the "Game Engine" is set to Jumpgate -- this is the latest version of Roll20 and utilizes newer and faster functionality.
- For our character sheet, we are going to actually select the "D&D 5E 2024 by Roll20" sheet since it offers a lot of helpful features and improvements.
- We will NOT be selecting a "Module" for this guide as we are going to be discussing building a game from scratch. However, a number of Free Modules are available if you'd like to jump right in and explore with a fully built adventure!
If you'd like to know more about modules, you can read our article here: Modules
Once we've made all of our selections, we just need to click "I'm Ready, Create Game!"
Game details page
Once our game has been created, we will be directed to the "Game Details" page which has a number of handy features.
On the right side, you can see the game creator as well as where you can invite players via email or access an invite link code.
In the middle, you can upload a cover image for your adventure as well as update the name if you like (Just click the title of your game).
Just below that are buttons to launch your game as well as access some settings for your game. For this demo, we are just going to launch into the game directly, by clicking "Launch Game"
If you'd like to know more about the game settings, you can read our article here: Game Management