Wanna play at home without needing to worry about dying frಌom a deadly disease? Here’s a few programs to help you out.
So it looks like the COVID-19 pandemic is going to stick around for the foreseeable future, and that might have put a serious crimp on your D&D campaign. Perhaps it’s been months since you’ve seen your friends or playgroup (they’re not necessarily always the same thing), but enough is enough. It’s time to get the gang🍃 back together. Online.
Yes, just like every major 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:convention in 2020, you too can con🍰tinue to operate almost as you normally would by just using the internet. It’ll require some adjustments, but it’s better than being struck low by a highly contagious virus.
But ♐what software and services should you use? We have a few humble suggestions to get you back on the path of adve൩nture.
D&D Beyond
Our first suggestion is . This D&D-focused website is highly🐬 integrated with Wizards of the Coast, so any new sourcebooks or expansions that com🦂e out are available on D&D Beyond as soon as they release. It's also the official D&D companion app of Critical Role, so there's a lot of big names associated with D&D Beyond.
D&D offers an enormous database of both official and homebrew 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons content. It also offers a comprehensive charac♓ter creator and a self-updating character sheet. There's also a Twitch extension, a player app, virtual dice r⛄olls, and encounter builder, and new stuff is being built and added all the time.
The basic stuff from the 5e Player's Handbook is free, but if you want more than six character slots of anything from the various expansions, you'll have to 🧸pay. Luckily, if even one person in your campaign has the content you want, they can share their access with the whole group.
D&D Beyond does ൲NOT have video conferencing or chat functions, so you’ll need something like or to enable online play.
Roll20
The other big and well-known online tabletop program🏅 is . While D&D Beyond is more of a knowledge repository database with a few helpful player functions, Roll20 is an all-in-one solution to playing D&D (or other tabletop RPGs) online.
Roll20 has🍃 character sheets very similar to D&D Beyond, but it also has interactiveꦦ maps where characters can move their own virtual avatars. Special effects will have dragons breath actual fire on player characters, while embedded video conferencing shows the look of mad glee on the DM's face as he burns the group's bard to death.
There’s also a marketplace for player-created content and official modules from Wizards o๊f the Coast, too.
A base account is free, but includes loading screen ads and has none of the great shared tabletop features that Roll20 really sells itself on. Paying $50 per year gives you a shared table and 3GB of storage, but none of the c𓃲ool tools. For $100 per year, you get everything, including development server access to see new stuff that hasn't even been released yet.
MapTool
If allꦯ these dollar signs are distressing, then is the virtual tabletop software for you. Everything about MapTool is free. The development team keeps this lit✨tle project up to date thanks to donations from the community. It's open-source, so anyone can contribute to MapTool's development by adding new features or fixing bugs.
The downside is that MapTool can be a little intimidating. It doesn't have a slick interface or neat little encounter creator that makes it easy for a DM to just whip up a battle from nothin🌌🐈g. But if you're willing to put in the work to learn how to use MapTool, you can do almost anything without spending a single dime.
Astral Tabletop
If you want something that offers thꦦe same interactive map as MapTool but with a sleek and modern interface, then is your program. Astral has tons of features like virtual dice, character sheets, map editing, but it also includes cool stuff like audio and visual effects to make maps really come alive.
Astral Tabletop offers a basic and premium package, where the paid subscription gives you access to a larger 🍰library of tokens, sound effects, weather effects, and 20GB of storage for personal tokens, tiles, and compendiums. It's also relatively cheap at just $10 per month.
Fantasy Grounds
is for the D&D player that wants to turn their campaign into an actual video game. This program offers tools for literally everything so that the player or GM neve𝓰r has to do anything by hand. Fantasy Grounds also has an extremely good UI that▨ lets players have both maps and character sheets laid out side-by-side like on a real tabletop game. You can even buy Fantasy Grounds on .
Unfortunately, Fantasy Grounds can be very expensive. A single license is $40, and separate D&D modul🎶es range in price from $20-$50. Getting everything you want can easily run into the hundreds of dollars, so adventurers on a budget should likely steer clear.
Tabletop Simulator
For getting as close to in-person D&D ✤as possible without actually being in the same room, nothing beats . Everything you used to have in the real world, from a grid-lined battle map to badass figurines, can be found in Tabletop Simulator. And, if everyone has VR hardware, you can even all gather around a virtual table like old times.
The downside is that Tabletop Simulator can be enormously cumbersome even if everyone knows w🉐hat they're doing. For people who've never used Tabletop Simulator before, simple actions like rolling dice or mﷺoving tokens can take much longer than if you'd just used your meat hands, so budget your play session accordingly.