Sample 5e D&D Google Document Template

 

I'm gearing up to start a new online Waterdeep Dragon Heist game, and since I was adjusting the previous google document template I use for my online 5e D&D games, thought it was a good time to make a template that could easily be shared. 

Click here to create your own copy of the Antagonist Relations 5e D&D Google Document Template.

I've touched on using a google document for online games before, way back in April 2018, and this version of the google document has almost two additional years of refinement. Feel free to adjust it for your own use. Clicking the link will create a copy that you can modify and share with your players as you want.

Notes and comments about the document follow...

Roll20 Tips and Tricks for GMs

If you haven't already, go ahead and read my post of Roll20 Tips and Tricks for Players. Much of that post also applies for game masters either directly or as good advice to pass onto your players. The rest of this post focuses on Roll20 from the perspective of a GM organizing and running a game.

• Stay on top of prep/have backup options
• Remember that if you’re using digital maps and tokens, you need to try and prep those just as you would using miniatures and a erasable grid mat. It’s handy to make sure you have a selection of tokens “just in case” when you need a random fight with goblins and a blank Roll20 page ready to go.
• Have back up audio
• As nice as many other things in Roll20 are, I’ve never been able to get roll20 audio to work for more than three people at a time. For a long time we used Google voice chat, but lately I’ve used Discord for both of my ongoing online games. In any case, it’s worth having a back-up plan for audio in case a certain service isn’t functioning at game time.
• Have an attendance policy
• I learned this the hard way, but it’s good to have an attendance policy up front that covers how many players are needed for a game “quorum” and the expectation for players missing games and notifying the GM beforehand. 
• It’s also worth considering a policy that covers when a player is considered to have “abandoned” the game, so that the GM can look for a replacement player.
• Here is the attendance policy that I’ve come up with for my games.
• With the episodic nature of the campaign, players can miss the occasional session without issue. If possible provide the DM notice, preferably 24 hour notice. PCs not at a session will not receive XP
• Abandoning the game - If a player misses two sessions without notifying the DM beforehand or if they miss three of any four sessions on a rolling four session basis, they will be considered as having abandoned the game.
• Quorum -The DM will consider any three players a quorum to determine if there are enough PCs to play a session.
• Google documents
• Yes, I already talked about google documents for players, but I want to second this for GMs. While I use the handouts available in Roll20, they are difficult to utilize for longer text or for things you want available to refer to when not in game.
• There are four main documents I have for my online game in google documents, a Player Information Packet, a shared notes document, a group inventory and XP chart.
• The XP chart is fairly self-explanatory, but handy for games where PCs aren’t levelling at the same time.
• The group inventory is likewise fairly straight-forward, though other games might have a player maintaining it instead of the GM.
• The shared notes document has the high-level info on each PC, proficiencies, spells, etc, so that players can easily see what the other PCs have before they put slots towards a particular proficiency. I also have the upcoming sessions listed and its where the players have put notes about NPCs and session notes.
• Finally, the Player Information Packet is locked so that I can edit it, but players can comment. This is the document were I include all the house rules, character creation rules, attendance policy and information I want to make sure is available for players to reference.
• Map hints
• Cover up room numbers, traps and random spots with white squares, or another color that blends into the map well. 
• If you're using Fog of War, consider making your lines a medium-dark grey, rather than black. It makes it easier for players to see the difference.
• Remember color blind players when you're choosing colors and avoid using just red and green as you prep your maps.
• Be careful about what layer you're on. There are three layers: map & background, tokens and objects and GM overlay. While it's incredibly useful to have all three layers, I've found myself forgetting to switch back to the token lair and accidentally dragging my map over a half an inch, revealing all my carefully hidden room numbers and secret doors. 
• Consider a published scenario with map and token pack.
• When I had a player move away temporarily I tried to run an online Curse of Strahd using the module pack from Roll20. While the game unfortunately fell apart due to scheduling conflicts the module pack made running the game incredibly easy. It was fantastic to have all the maps, handouts, tokens, monster/NPC stats and adventure notes at my fingers in Roll20 itself.
• If someone wanted to try GMing for the first time I would highly recommend this as it lets you concentrate on running the game instead of doing lots of uploading of tokens, maps and such. It also makes it easy to improvise as you can utilize what's built into the module to prepare random encounters.

Has anyone else found any other great Roll20 Tricks?

Roll20 Tips and Tricks for Players

Thomas and I have been playing RPGs together since the middle 90's (92 or 93, probably) and so when he was in the Middle East working in November 2014, and our other longtime friend John was in Japan, we decided to try giving Roll20 a shot so we could get our gaming fix. The time differences meant I was getting up to play at 6am or 7am on a Sunday morning, but it was worth it. Thomas ran 13th Age for us and those early mornings exploring Boltstrike Pillar and the Crown of the Lich King are part of why I love 13th Age today.

Then in September of 2015 we started a 2nd Edition AD&D campaign set in the Ruined Kingdoms of al-Qadim, also with Thomas running, and have been playing that game almost every Sunday (now at the more reasonable time of 9am CST) since. I think the longest we've ever had a break has been three weeks.

The summer of 2017, one of my local players had to move to South Carolina for work temporarily, so I used Roll20 to let him telecommute in for our 13th Age Eyes of the Stone Thief campaign and grabbed the online Curse of Strahd module pack to try and run so he could play more. Unfortunately the Curse of Strahd game fizzled due to scheduling issues, but having him join the table via Roll20 worked great for 13th Age (and we even used that Roll20 game to have all the players telecommute in this last weekend when we got 15 inches of snow in April...)

Early this year, I re-read the Great Modron March and decided I wanted to run that, but with my two main groups in the middle of long-term campaigns and my local playgroup busy, I turned to Roll20, put up an ad and found a group online to run for. And since then, I've been looking at trying to add more online gaming to my schedule. With all this time playing and thinking about online games, I wanted to put together some of my tips and tricks. I will admit that I've only used Roll20, but some of this advice would probably apply just as well to other online tabletop platforms. And don't worry DMs and GMs, once you're done reading this post you can click over to my Roll20 Tips and Tricks for GMs post here.

Roll20 Tips and Tricks for Players

• Google Docs
• Or something similar. They’re helpful as you can share them easily and have access to them from most devices.
• For spellcasters, consider having a document with the spells they know/have access to, this lets you quickly look up a spell, especially if you don’t have hardcopies of the books on hand.
• Shared group inventory. It’s great to be able to quickly see how many heling potions the party has left or who is carrying that +1 scimitar or where that large, hard to move scrying bowl is being kept
• Notes. I use a google document to keep a log of the game. I try to write a sentence for each room/location and then will add a sentence to cover what we encounter there. It can be kind of bare bones, but I find it helps me to remember what occurred and taking notes helps keep my attention on the game when my PC isn’t part of a scene. Here’s a sample entry for a day in game.
• Day 102
• Headed up the Kadan river to find statue
• Got a fishing boat to bring us to where other boats had disappeared
• Ambushed by 14 lizardmen, put two to sleep and found that they had not stolen the idol, it had just appeared.
• Cats were sent to track the two sleeping Lizardmen as we released them.
• Found two warriors from Tayaraan, they told us about a giant crocodile and where to find the narrows
• Went to narrows and into swamp to get wood to make a raft and encountered a hydra
• Lizardman tracks led away from where the hydra treasure should have been
• Headset
• I highly recommend using a gaming headset with a microphone. This not only makes it easier to hear, it also minimizes ambient noise for the group, especially for laptops where the microphone picks up the noise of things being set down next to the laptop. You don’t need a really pricey one, I got a $20 wireless set that works really well, but before that I had a cheap wired set that worked okay too.
• Play around
• Almost all GMs should be okay with you popping into the game outside of the scheduled session time to play around. This way you can make sure you know what is where on your character sheet, how the built in roll functions work and perhaps even build a macro or two..
• Learn macros
• Roll20 allows players to create their own macros, little bits of simple code that once written can be used to run the same instructions again and again. In roll20, this means you could set up a macro for a 2nd edition AD&D PC to fire a bow twice, with all the THAC0 calculations done for you or one that automates the same PC attacking with a Khopesh, that does differing damage depending on if the foe is human-sized or larger.
• Test attacks with his short bow, hitting AC [[@{Test|ThAC0} - (d20)]] for [[1d6]] damage with the first shot and hitting AC [[@{Test|ThAC0} - (d20)]] for [[1d6]] damage for the second shot.
• Test attacks with his Khopesh, hitting AC [[@{Test|Thac0} - (d20)]] for [[2d4]] damage to small/medium or [[1d6]] damage to a large foe.
• Default Combat Actions
• It’s worth thinking up one or two “default” combat actions to consider, this can help prevent analysis paralysis when combat starts if you know that you want to first use ranged attacks against enemies who aren’t in melee, and then switch to your mace for melee.
• Check in with your GM regularly.
• Let your GM know if you’ll be missing a session, just like you would for an in-person game, even if it’s just an hour before the game. There are few things as soul-crushing for a GM running an online game than having to deal with players repeatedly missing sessions without any notice before or apology after.
• Help your GM by following up on things, if the party needs to make a decision between session, follow up with the other players instead of relying on the GM to do so. Help keep party notes or group inventory up to date. Offer to look up rules if a rules question comes up for a scene where your character is not as directly involved.
• Let your GM know if there’s something that’s not working about the game as it can be harder to read those cues over a voice chat or even a tiny video display when you’re busy with the technical aspects of running a game online in addition to the normal work of game-mastering.
• And especially let a GM know that you’re enjoying the game and what you’d like to see more of. 

6am Sunday Morning - Time to game! (13th Age thoughts)

I've now played 13th Age twice through the FUTURISTIC MAGIC OF THE INTERWEBS. Though long discussed between John, Thomas and I, we never managed to get an simultaneous online game going (though we did play my troubled VtDA game and may still play a hopefully less troubled Vampire game that Thomas has been threatening to run for half a year now.) but now we have and it's been a blast. Due to wacky time zone differences we play at what is my 6 or 7am in the morning (Thomas is 10 hours ahead of me and John is 5 additional hours ahead of Thomas...) but it's been well worth the early rise, mostly because Thomas and John are two of my favorite people to game with. So here are my thoughts gathered so far based on two early morning sessions of 13th Age played with Roll20 online.

In the Lair of the Ginger Giant: Antagonist Relations Podcast Episode 3 - Rocket Sled to Failure

Long time no podcast... but I finally returned to the lair of the Ginger Giant.

Discussed herein: The depressing end of my Apocalypse World game, things I'm stealing for my Fading Suns game, my online Vampire the Dark Ages influence game and a long tangent on player assumptions leading to wild conclusions.  Oh, we also touch on my blog post about Failure.  Also, other things, but I forget.

Episode Three: Rocket Sled to Failure

We also recorded a second secret podcast that may never see the light of day or the ears of listeners.

PS.  Thomas, who is taking over GM duties on future Online Influence Games, started a new blog: A Game of Influence  If you want to read all about our continuing adventures in attempting to improve influence style games, which I touched on tangentially in my "LARP's Lessons Lost" post, then you'll enjoy his new blog.  I expect to be a regular commentator.

LARP's Lessons Lost

A Blog Post Wherein I Play the Fool.

I used to run and play in a lot of LARPs, or Live-Action Role Playing games for those of you who have arrived at this blog from some other dimension, and some of those games were shit.  Not "the shit" as in good, though some of them were the shit, but some were terrible shit, as in shitty and terrible games.  And I'm talking about the games I ran as well as the games that I played in.  I have run some shit LARPs in my day.  Many of these games I played in, wrote or ran, I also played in, wrote or ran with Thomas and because we enjoy talking about games nearly as much as we enjoy playing them and because it is often easier to talk about games just the two of us than to find a group, schedule a time and play a game, we talked about the problems that we found with LARPs a lot.

Of course, not having played, run or written a LARP in a few years, I forgot all my LARP gripes and lessons when I started running an online influence game using a mishmash of the original World of Darkness Vampire the Dark Ages or VtDA (actually the confusingly re-named Dark Ages: Vampire which has an less impressive DA:V acronym) and a heavily modified Influence System derived mostly from Mind's Eye Theater (MET) Dark Epics.  Since I've been more focused in the last several years on party-driven tabletop games like D&D or even more story-driven games like Dread and Apocalypse World, I let my years of LARP experience go almost completely untapped, much to the detriment of the game I was running.