Roll20 Buys Demiplane - Lazy RPG Talk Show

D&D and RPG news and commentary by Mike Shea of slyflourish.com
Video Contents
00:00 Show Start
01:01 Commentary: Happy Pride Month
01:33 Commentary: How to Get More Engagement on KZbin!
02:18 D&D & RPG News: Roll20 Buys Demiplane
12:43 Kickstarter Spotlight: Voidrunner for 5e by EN World Publishing
16:27 Patreon Spotlight: Infiltration of Bonespur Keep
19:46 DM Tip: Organize Your Gaming PDFs
27:59 DM TIp: Searching PDFs on MacOS
30:49 DM Tip: Search PDFs with Finder on the Mac
32:20 DM Tip: Alfred for Searching PDFs on a Mac
34:18 DM Tip: Search PDFs with Ripgrep All
38:25 Patreon Question: Getting Excited for Longform Campaigns
42:17 Patreon Question: Contingencies for TPKs
Links
Subscribe to the Sly Flourish Newsletter
slyflourish.com/subscribe/
Support Sly Flourish on Patreon
/ slyflourish
Buy Sly Flourish Books:
shop.slyflourish.com/
Roll20 Buys Demiplane
www.enworld.org/threads/roll2...
Adam Bradford Moves to Fantasy Grounds
www.enworld.org/threads/smite...
Voidrunner Kickstarter by EN World Publishing
www.kickstarter.com/projects/...
Organize Your RPG PDFs
slyflourish.com/organizing_di...
Searching PDFs with Spotlight
www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-...
Alfred for MacOS
www.alfredapp.com/
Ripgrep All
github.com/phiresky/ripgrep-all
#dnd #lazydm #dndtips #dmtips

[@nrp_g]

Thanks for sharing the key to engagement! As a reward, here's some engagement 😜

[@TheMfreeb]

Mike great show as usual. I was hoping to get your take on DC20. Maybe next week?

[@peterterry7918]

Yeah, I was surprised that it wasn't even mentioned...

[@moshtradamus92]

Even when Mike misspeaks, he IS RIGHT!

[@Cesoide_]

Dude, I'm sorry I was one of those who commented that it was Venger. That said, I saw one guy giving advice on engagment, and that was a tactic that he used, so maybe it might be a good idea to do that every now and then 😄

[@madjarov42]

I think Mike has been low-key doing that, with "Kyle Brinx" and "Light of Xyraxis". There's quite a few more that I can't think of but at this point I wonder if it's deliberate.

[@grahamward7]

@@madjarov42”eldrick blast”

[@Chardansearavitriol]

Engagement for the engagement gods

[@vegaserik44]

Fantasy Grounds doesn't cost if you're playing usually. The license breaks down to $20 for everyone or $50 for just the gm. With the $50 license anyone can play and use the gm's books with only the demo installed. Yes, you have to install software, but it is a MUCH more robust set of tools than Roll20 has. It's my goto VTT for most games. It wouldn't cost you a penny to play in any of my games with full functionality.

[@SlyFlourish]

Good point!

[@johnmickey5017]

You own offline copies of all your books and the application. And you don’t need their servers, port forwarding works fine. There isn’t an always-online DDB character manager, but the trade off is zero dependency on anyone to keep the tool or your content alive.

[@cojaadams]

License is even "cheaper" for the next few days if you want to play PF2e and get the Humble Bundle that comes with 27 PF2e books and accessories in addition to the standard license. Not to mention that Fantasy Grounds offers basically every WotC-published sourcebook and adventure as an official VTT module.

[@andrewshears2077]

Awesome video! Was not expecting a Pride Month shout out right at the top, but thank you for putting inclusion in our games front and center. Your whole style is about making TTRPGs more accessible and approachable, and being inclusive is a big part of that. I want my tables to feel welcoming to everyone who comes to have fun, slay evil, and tell stories!

[@HeraldofHelios]

Thanks for the Spotlight tutorial, mate. I'm a Mac user too and didn't know this. Great content as usual!

[@DJGeoskWizard]

I literally just started getting physical backups for my PDFs! Tysm for sharing

[@nathanaelthomas9243]

Thanks for the video!

[@GregMcNeish]

I am engaging for the purpose of engagement. Oh, and great show, as always.

[@lonic123]

Thanks

[@michaelsmind]

Having listened to the Roll20+Demoplane announcement interview, the most interesting thing was apparently Demiplane approached Roll20 about the purchase. Which if true hints that Demiplane wasn't looking sustainable. Speculation on my part of course.

[@HereComeMrCee-Jay]

About two years since I've played 5e... playing only games w random character creation right now like dungeon crawl classics and old school essentials. With random character generation, you open up a free online creator, push one button, choose a class... and you're pretty much done! From many hours of character creation in my 5e days to just a few minutes now. It WAS fun trying to build optimized 5e characters, but I find that actual gameplay is much, much more enjoyable for me and my players using random generation. The characters are less precious at the lowest levels (so character death isn't as big of a deal, which encourages more challenging and fulfilling scenarios), yet the fiobles and imperfections of the characters make us more connected to them as they get to higher levels. Invariably a character with weak stats becomes the hero and everyone's favorite! And it unlocks a whole different type of creativity as a player. To each their own of course... And for those of you that have never tried random character generation, I strongly encourage you give it a try in one of your campaigns.

[@Renseru]

Based on an interview I heard, it sounded like Roll20 was hired to developed a new 5.5 chr sheet for table top and they acquired Demiplane to facilitate that.

[@martijnsanders8527]

do you have a link? I would like to listen to that interview.

[@Deep_Freeze_DF]

I'm 27 sessions into my Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign in Faerun and they only just reached level 4! I haven't experienced any burnout yet thankfully. My players are newer overall and tend to explore and move through the campaign very slowly even with me prodding things along often. So I am expecting a 100 session campaign easily at this rate 🙃

[@pheralanpathfinder4897]

I traditionally ran multiple year campaigns. But I've found it rewarding to focus on shorter story arcs. Occasionally with different characters but also with different groups of players and PCs.

[@johnmickey5017]

Adam (Demiplane) went to Fantasy Grounds. I’m glad to see FG make serious investment with accessibility and expanding the audience. They’ve put out more player-friendly updates in the past year than they did for the five years before.

[@johnmickey5017]

You wouldn’t see many BMG DMs use Fantasy Grounds because it is a client-side application. Most DMs are not going to want to walk 6 players through software install for a pick-up AL game. Even ones who prefer FG for campaign play will pick a browser-based solution for pick-up games.

[@Dude80525]

RE: 10-15 sessions vs long campaign. I highly recommend the Scales of War series that was published in Dungeon Magazine for 4E (if you have access/copy). I started converting and running these for 5E about a year ago and each 'chapter' runs about 10-15 sessions. However, they are ALL loosely tied together. Both myself and the players are enjoying them. If we stick with it, then they will all reach level 20 by chapter 17. So, technically, this is a long running campaign, but we have a break after each chapter where some of the players can take a break for a chapter (for real life stuff or to help prevent burn out). The 'chapters' allow for satisfactory endings at the end of each chapter, so we don't feel the slog of a long campaign.

[@patricks2645]

Taron 'Indestructoboy' Pounds recently announced that all of his DMs guild classes are free for the "foreseeable future" if you're just getting the PDF! His class design is some of my favorite in 5e and his new streamlined/solo-compatible Pulp Fantasy RPG is about to go to crowdfunding next month.

[@pheralanpathfinder4897]

Elminster has talked to people in Greyhawk and Dragonlance. It was a series of articles in Dragon Magazine. 🎉

[@michaeljpastor]

Frequently in the software world companies are acquired for 1) patents and other IP 2) the staff - their experience and talents 3) their user base. If they're acquiring a product to integrate into their suite of tools, it's just the brand recognition (in addition to the above reasons), because they have to rework the software product so much it may have been easier just to build it up from scratch.

[@Zr0din]

I'm a subject organizer. I print pdf's of the Subclasses so I can give a player a section of the PDF. But That's as far as I ever segment. For instance when you get a world book, I don't make a section for the magic items.

[@vnavone]

Love the pdf organization topic! One potential foil for searches: some pdf don't contain machine-readable text, but instead are just images of text. Others encode their text in reverse, to prevent copy-pasting (I presume). These could potentially stymy a tool like PDF Search or the ripgrep.

[@SlyFlourish]

Most rpg PDFs have text, thank the gods

[@Deadshot15]

Great video as usual. I really liked the organization discussion but do wish you had some recommendations for Windows users. Perhaps some others might share equivalent software options for the Windows people?

[@Deadshot15]

Oh and you called DriveThruRPG DndBeyond a couple of times. :)

[@Femonnemo]

Similar to Cunningham´s Law, we get the Shea´s Law of engagement.

[@HN-qc8io]

I just finished building a Beyond20 like tool for Pathbuilder called Alseta's Passage for exactly the reason you are describing. It is really important for a TTRPG these days to have a character builder but its also important to have a way to get that character data into Discord, Foundry, Roll20, etc.

[@jasonrhart86]

Hey look ma! I'm engaging!

[@Enn-]

I've sorted my PDFs by how I use them. Different systems all have their own folders, but within my 5e folder, I have (for example) a folder called "Adventures". Within that I have "Campaigns" for bigger adventures that will take many sessions, and the rest of the folders are for level range. That way, if I'm looking for a one-shot for level 5, it's really easy to find. It's not that I don't care who published an adventure, but when I'm looking for something to run, the question of who published it never comes up. Am I looking for a short adventure? Yes. What level range? Level 5 please. Okay, THIS folder has all of those adventures in it.

[@ZeKiwiOfTheNorth]

It's true about mistakes driving engagement, people love to correct others. When i worked at a restaurant, my boss would ask the newspaper he ran his ad through to put in a typo (they wouldn't) because once upon a time there had been a typo, and people called in to tell them about it. I don't know if they actually *ordered* anything, but they called 🤷😄

[@Mr_GoR_]

Actually, yeah, that is one thing that some content creators do to manipulate viewers into engaging in their uploads -intentionally misspeak on something to drive comments up. It works 🤷‍♂

[@MagiofAsura]

Shadow of the Demon Lord really had ton of different stuff which resulted in quite a bit of folders. I

[@sargoto]

Mike, Thank you so much for this weeks Talk Show in particular. Was feeling a little more panicked after the Demiplane news, and was like "I should really take the time to organize my pdfs and ensure my archive strategy can give me a little more stability to help reduce that anxious feeling." Well this show definitely checked both those boxes this week. so Thanks again.

[@creativeplayandpodcastnetwork]

Lol let’s hear it for engagement in videos 😂

[@ivancarabano]

I LOVE all Sly Flourish videos!

[@CAGET_Cat]

Where would I go to buy a copy of Leveled up Advanced 5e? Is it possible to get it on Amazon.

[@JSzekely]

Only thing I'm afraid of is that Roll20 will integrate the most basic of functionality of both DTRPG and Demiplane and shut them down. making 1 bad tool instead of 1 bad one and 2 amazing ones. They could really triple-A game studio it up.

[@bonderoff]

23:11 Mike, you may be interested in Daniel Levitin’s book “The Organized Mind”

[@bonderoff]

He goes into organizing the “junk drawers” of our lives. I think it’s when you have 7 distinct categories he suggests you go a level deeper (break them up into separate folders/drawers/categories)

[@andyv933]

FGU costs nothing to play as long as the DM bought the license, which has dropped to $50 for lifetime. I have hosted 10 unique players, none of whom paid a dime to play.

[@anselmoffrisia2930]

It's "El-min-ster" not "El-min-is-ter". Consider me engaged. Love your videos, by the way.

[@BetterMonsters]

Pfft, Elminister's first appearance was as Elrond in LotR. Gygax just changed the name when he imported him into Greyhawk to avoid another suit.

[@damiansilva2454]

correction: it's pronounced Greyhawk.

[@PoniesNSunshine]

I liked the new foundry collab w beyond, if that's not your thing the Argon Hud with the base character sheet is a game changer as well. I've used three roll20 character sheets (free and paid d&d, and a pathfinder one ) and they were all atrocious, to the point that those of us who had external accounts just used those and used extensions. I wouldn't care so much, except that roll20 has beenthe only game in town for a decade and it's barely changed, meanwhile new competition keeps coming out with better features at lower cost, one time costs, or even free. Given a choice, I will use owlbear any day over roll20 for vtt, discord over roll20 for chat and video, and any number of apps or beyond for character gen. All with better performance and UI.

[@VideoSpielplatz1]

Shard That's it😊

[@dontuserachelslurs]

My favorite city in eberon ❤ shard

[@SlyFlourish]

I like Shard a lot!

[@Kheldul]

Demiplane had just released a bunch of speed/performance improvements. (Which was their main issue.) Adam not being a part of the acquisition is sad. They also have a 5e.. Roll20 is pretty aged.

[@bokodasu]

Oh NOW it's nerd time?

[@chewbacca7856]

Nerds!!!!!!!!😂

[@zeugenberg]

Great show, great advice (if you want an answer, post a wrong answer on the internet.) But.... but.... DC20?! Is Sly Flourish the Isle in the eye of this Kickstarter-KZbin-Storm?!

[@MinorLG]

So, did roll20 buy dimoplane, or did dimoplane buy roll20, because they both say they acquired each other.

[@jeffw991]

Word on the street is that the owner of Roll 20 is not a very nice person, so that could potentially swing the acquisition toward being a bad thing. (Might also explain why Adam B noped out.)

[@the-patient-987]

I'm deeply surprised you didn't even mention the DC20 KS considering its success.

[@minimoose7890]

Can you actually play many RPGs on Roll20? I gave up trying to use their service because it was so slow and crash prone. Absolutely inexcusable how bad it is for a paid service

[@Deadshot15]

I have not had that experience and I have used it for years. Maybe its an internet issue?

[@pheralanpathfinder4897]

Roll20 is the most diverse platform by far. It started as a tabletop grid that let players code game mechanics. And they still can. Now you can also expand maps on the fly for situations where players move beyond the edge of the map. They sell rules for many different systems. The learning curve is much higher than specialized systems but worth it if you want to play many different game systems. Demi plane should be a perfect fit.

[@WeShallLoveOn]

Obligatory comment about how wrong you are for engagement.

[@Maiasgameroom]

Roll20 has such a horrible UI

[@alysylum916]

My mom is vision impaired and can barely use it. It’s not very compatible with her screen reader so she tends to avoid games/one shots that use it. DDB is a lot easier for her to use.

[@duzzo1]

They also have no interest in improving it. Other successful vtts have been built from the ground up in a few years while r20 has sat around doing nothing. With the headstart they've had they could have have been unchallengeable.

[@Maiasgameroom]

@@duzzo1 So true. The main reason I love FoundryVTT is their dedication to improvement and regular updates.

[@johnmickey5017]

Roll20 has been slowly improving their UI. I agree that they slept on it for too long. My guess is the back end of R20 is a nightmare. No VTT has a great UI. Even Owlbear is only great if you stick to basic features. No surprise that screen readers would work better on DDB, which is a much simpler tool than Roll20.

[@andyduvall7090]

It's a teetering tower of legacy code that goes all the way back to when it was basically a Google Hangouts plug-in. I think they're doing a complete code rewrite behind the scenes