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Subscribe to the Sly Flourish weekly newsletter.Seven Fantastic Tools to Play RPGs Online.If you're in need of a lightweight virtual tabletop, give Owlbear Rodeo a try. Many have described it being the exact kind of VTT they want. When I'm done, we drop right back out again.Īt this point I've used Owlbear Rodeo with dozens of players and have heard no complaints. I can run the rest of my game in Discord and only drop into Owlbear when I need to use a VTT. I want tools that only do what I need them to do and keep the cruft out of the way. I prefer to keep my D&D games as minimal as possible. If you dig more powerhouse tools, it probably isn't for you. If you're used to a more full-featured VTT like Roll 20, you're likely to find features missing from Owlbear that you really want.
#DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS TABLETOP SIMULATOR HOW TO#
This three minute video by GoGoCamel camel shows how to use both the grid-alignment feature and fog of war. Owlbear Rodeo has two features that aren't the easiest to figure out at first: grid alignment when bringing in a map and using the fog of war. I'm assuming your players aren't a bunch of 4 year olds (that's a big assumption, of course). No accounts means any player can move any token around since everyone's permissions are the same. Not requiring a login makes it easy for players to jump right in. Owlbear uses some sort of cookie to keep track so if you come back it will likely remember what you already uploaded but only if you're coming in from the same machine. You can log in if you want to keep track of your previous maps and tokens, but it isn't necessary. Owlbear Rodeo requires no login or account from either you or your players.

Grabbing an image off the net, dropping it into Token Stamp, and uploading it to Owlbear is fast and easy. If you do want your own tokens, you can upload a bunch of them right into Owlbear Rodeo all at once, whether your tokens are from Printable Heroes (my personal favorite tokens search for "vtt") or your own hand-made tokens using Token Stamp. Owlbear Rodeo makes it easy to drop in a map and includes a bunch of default tokens you can use if you don't feel like adding your own. It has no integrated ruleset, although it does have a shared dice roller in it if you want one.

Owlbear Rodeo is a slimmed down virtual tabletop that focuses on maps and tokens. When I want a VTT, I really just want a map and tokens. My players like using D&D Beyond and I'm not picky about how they roll dice, whether it's with Avrae in Discord or a plug-in like Beyond20. I don't need a fully integrated D&D experience in my VTT. The problem is, I'm fine with running games mostly on Discord. These other VTTs are fine all-in-one systems that integrate D&D's rules with the rest of the tabletop. There are other popular and well-loved tools as well like Foundry but these two typically come up when someone talks about virtual tabletops. The big dogs among virtual tabletop tools are Roll 20 and Fantasty Grounds. Many players and quite a few DMs prefer this style of play. There are times, however, where dropping down a map with tokens for monsters and characters can be useful. For combat, I use text-based combat tracker for rough zone-based combat more similar to theater of the mind than gridded combat.
#DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS TABLETOP SIMULATOR FULL#
By copying and pasting pieces of maps, usually grabbed from Dysonlogos, I can show the players where the characters are without using a full virtual tabletop like Roll 20. My favorite, and the one I've been using for eight months now, is to run D&D over Discord. I moved all of my games, about three a week, online and lept into trying out all sorts of systems for online play. For a lot of us, running games online is an entirely new experience. You can also watch my Owlbear Rodeo walkthrough on Youtube.Ĭovid-19 forced many DMs to move games from in-person to online. If you're seeking a lightweight virtual tabletop, try out Owlbear Rodeo. New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! Owlbear Rodeo: A Simple D&D Virtual Tabletop
