I’ve been a part of a weekly D &D group for a year and a half now. Friday nights are reserved for our campaign and we’ve more or less kept that schedule since I’ve joined. I met this particular group through an old workplace. At one point or another, everyone in the group was or still is working there. It used to be a great outlet for discussing frustrations at work but now it’s much more a way to keep in touch with friends I otherwise wouldn’t have.

Before the pandemic, we were in the middle of one of our longest Pathfinder campaigns since I’ve joined. It’s been going strong since last summer. Now that we’re in quarantine, we’ve decided to bring in a few more players and start a D & D 5e campaign.

It turns out, the online tools out there are much better suited for 5e than Pathfinder. Sure, you can make Pathfinder work within tools like Roll20 but there are much better tools and support for 5e.

Case in point, for Pathfinder we’ve been using open-source software called PCGen to create and keep track of our characters. PCGen works for what it’s intended for but there’s a lot of set up and finagling to get it to do what you want. When I first installed it, I had to hunt down an unstable beta version to be able to use the sources I wanted for my character.

For 5e we’re using D&D Beyondwhich is a more streamlined and polished tool. Unlike PCGen, source access is limited to the books you’ve bought. Luckily, only one person needs to own the books and host a campaign for everyone in the campaign to have access to it. Creating a character is a much more straight forward process. It also helps that the set up for a 5e character is simpler than a Pathfinder character as well.

Since our character sheets are on D&D Beyond were able to use the Beyond 20 chrome extension to integrate with Roll20. This allows you to click on a skill, spell, save, and attack and will automatically roll with the correct modifiers in Roll20. It makes rolling painless and way more efficient which speeds up play. And let’s face it, rolling virtual dice is no substitute for rolling real dice.

There’s Roll 20 itself, which is a fantastic tool. I’ve used it for other online sessions in the past. My DM has been working very hard to create the same level of detail and maps he has for our in-person games. It’s working out very well. One of the features we’ve been using that’s a real game-changer is Dynamic Lighting on the maps. For one, you can only see what your character can see. So if you’re in a dark cave and don’t have Darkvision or a torch you don’t see anything. What makes it really interesting is depending on your position you can see enemies you party members otherwise can’t. It’s definitely a feature that can only be used online but it’s a game-changer.

All that said, I miss our in-person sessions. Online sessions just don’t have the same vibe when you’re used to having six people around a table playing around with miniatures. But it is better than nothing and just different enough that it’s an interesting experience all on its own.