5. Setting up your map in Roll20

January 15, 2025 21:49

With our map now downloaded as an image, we just need to upload that to Roll20.

Since this is a map, we are going to head to inside of our Roll20 game and create a new page via the page toolbar.

Once the page toolbar is open, just click "+ Add Page" and this will make a new page. We'll also update the name by clicking the name of the page which will show an edit field. In our case, we are naming the page "The Silent Crypt"

creating new page.png

We are doing this instead of using the "Start" page as we will allow the start page to act as a "Landing" or "Welcome" page for our players. When we start or end a session, we should drag the yellow banner back to that specific page. This helps avoid potential spoilers and keeps everyone together.

It also gives players a good place to doodle that isn't too disruptive!

Once that new page is made, we'll click the page to navigate to it (You should see your screen go black with "Loading..." appear momentarily).

Once here, make sure you are on the "Map" layer from the very bottom left of the toolbar. You can then simply drag-and-drop your map image from your device onto the window with the VTT and it will begin an upload.

Since our map is pretty big, we will also see a prompt that asks if we want to change the image size or the map size. In this case, it is easier if we change the map size on the VTT, so we will select "Adjust Page Size."

adjust page size.png

Because our map was made in Dungeon Scrawl, it should already be sized and scaled properly to work with the existing 70 pixel grid on Roll20 (assuming it was exported following the important note from above!).

However, if for some reason, your map is NOT lining up properly on the grid, you can use the "Align to Grid" tool. We have more details on this tool and other methods to aligning your map here: Sizing and Aligning Maps

Once you have your map, you can also upload extra images to Roll20 or use the drawing tools to add extra flair or embellish the map to your tastes.

Map notes

With our map set up and ready to go, we need to set up a system so we can easily reference what is going on based on where the players are inside the dungeon. To do this, we will set up some numbers around the map we can use as a reference which will point to specific paragraphs in a handout that we'll create in a moment.

First, navigate to the GM layer, then set the text tool to a reasonably large size such as 72. I also recommend using an outline of white around your numbers to ensure they don't blend in with the map.

text tool.png

The first box is the text color. The second box is the outline color (white in this example).

With our text tool, we will go around the map and add numbers to places that may seem particularly interesting or may be points of interest. Below is an sample from the example map of this guide so you can see the number placement. Some are outside, some are inside, but are still relatively close to where it might be.

In most cases, using a simple 1, 2, 3, etc system works well enough and is flexible. You will also see a "T" on this map which is to indicate a "Trap" -- We'll come back to this soon.

number example.png

Since we now have all of our numbers on the map, this is when we'll jot down those more detailed notes and information. The numbers represent the "sections" of our notes, or where we should refer to for more details. To do this, we will make a new handout titled after our page called "The Silent Crypt" and start adding these details.

You can find the text I used for the example below if you'd like to copy paste into your own journal and follow along!

1. Entrance/Entryway