HOW TO USE ROLL20 TO RUN DELTA GREEN

HERE'S PART 2 OF THIS ARTICLE SERIES 

For many, virtual tabletop gaming sites such as Roll20, or applications like The Foundry VTT are arcane magic of the darkest kind, but I have had great experiences in virtual gaming, and right now, for many in the world thanks to the global pandemic, it's the only way to go. It took me sometime to work out all the basics, to learn how to build characters, operations, clues and more. As well as to work out the best practices for running Delta Green on a VTT service. 

So, today we're going to look at the basics of how to set up a Delta Green game on Roll20.

WHAT THE HECK IS ROLL20?
Please forgive the following explanation if this is something you're absurdly familiar with; many people are not.

Roll20 is a virtual tabeltop solution that allows players to play, gathered together over a single, virtual game table, while video chatting with one another. It can roll virtual dice, keep track of Hit Points and Sanity Points, and more. It's basically like a video chat virtual game table so you and your group can play together without being in the same room.

FREE OR PAID
Roll20 is a cool service that offers free or paid accounts. I use a paid account. A paid account expands much of what you can do in the game by allowing APIs (application programming interface) — this is just a fancy way of saying you can write Javascript programs that do things like make sure a certain mechanic is enforced automatically when something triggers it (like say, applying a SAN loss to a bunch of selected characters), or for presentation or informational purposes. For most starting out, the pro features are unnecessary, but later, you might reconsider because when a game is fully set up (with APIs and fog of war and other neat features) it can really push the gaming experience over the top. 

Step 1. For now, let's say you go with a Free Account. (Note: this costs nothing).
Once you're in your new account:

Step 2. Click on CREATE NEW GAME

Step 3. Name Your Game.
Give your Delta Green campaign or operation a name. This will be visible to your players, so be careful what you name it!  

Step 4. Choose the Delta Green by Arc Dream Publishing Character Sheet.
Go to the dropdown menu called Optional: Choose a Character Sheet. For Delta Green, this is most definitely not optional. Marco Menarini — a great guy — has poured many hours of programming sweat into making the Delta Green character sheet sing in Roll20. It is a fully clickable experience. Want to roll Drive? Just click on the skill and the dice are thrown and compared. Want to roll Luck? Ditto, and it'll tell you if you succeed or not. 

Step 5. Click "I'm Ready, Create Game!"
...and it will take you to the Game Launch Page. Think about this as a place to invite players (Invite Players), set game times (Next Game Time Will Be), post discussions only your players can see outside of the game (+Post New Topic). 

Now click Launch Game. 

Step 6. The Virtual Table Top
This is the virtual table top your players will see. Roll20 allows you to make many of these tabletops, and they can hold maps, clues, scene-setting images, and more. Later we'll look at how to best use them for Delta Green, for now, just imagine this as a blank canvas to run your game on.

Next up, let's look at Tokens and Characters and Character Sheets. 

Step 7. Creating a Delta Green Character in Roll20.
Characters are entities that exist on a character sheet. This character sheet allows players (or the Handler) to click on any stat or skill and automatically roll virtual dice to get a result, which makes online gaming fast. 

Look to the right, and you should see 7 grey icons at the top of a column. Select the NEWSPAPER. This brings up folder listings like Characters and Handouts, as well as an +Add button. 

Click the +Add button and select Character. When you create a new element like a Character, Handout or Folder, it will populate the listings below and remain there, unless specifically deleted. 

Step 8. Name Your Character
On the Character Overview Page that pops up, give your character a Name. Don't worry too much about anything else. Click Save Changes. 

Step 9. The Character Sheet!
Three tabs should now be visible on the Character Overview Page: Bio & Info, Character Sheet and Attributes & Abilities. Don't worry about Bio & Info ( a text entry to add info  or Abilities & Attributes right now, and click on Character Sheet. 

Here you can enter stats as you like, add notes and more. Any stat or skill may be clicked on (like Sanity Points (SAN) above. This will ask if there is a modifier, and then instantly roll the dice against the value. Feel free to enter some values and mess around with them. 

This will seem daunting at first, but it becomes so fast and easy that I can create a full game — front to back — in an hour or so.

In the next articles, we'll look at: 

• NPCs and monsters in Delta Green Roll20. 
• Linking Characters to virtual tabletop tokens.
• Landing pages, map and clue board pages.
• Handler best practices for Handouts, hiding information on the VTT, and more.