Curse of Strahd - still trying to find the perfect VTT set up

Back with twin screens

I'm still experimenting with the best VTT set up for Curse of Strahd, even after 45 sessions! The most significant recent change is a shift to Roll20 for audio and visual (rather than the audio through Discord). In a big difference to the situation at the start of the campaign, Roll20 is remaining rock solid for AV. Of course, I do wonder how much that is due to general jump in connection standards brought about by the pandemic.

I'm running a couple of scripts in Roll20 now; Combat Tracker (which takes a lot of faff out of big combats), Aura (which puts a colour code around tokens representing damage - only done this for PCs) and conditions. The latter links to combat tracker but I'm struggling with it a little as I can't always remember what the icons mean. Finally, I have GM Sheet. This is useful as it summarises key information about any token you select when you click and run the script. You can see Aura and GM Sheet on the image below. 

Roll20 scripts, and yes, that is a fireball burst radius...

Since I went back to the MacBook, I have tended to run single screen, popping out handouts and monsters onto different tabs. Two sessions ago, I started using my DnDBeyond account (which has the core books and Curse of Strahd on it) as the main reference tool. This was mainly as it felt much less of a faff (and it also avoided me losing everything and having to reopen it if I had to reconnect Roll20 for any reason) and feels faster.

I put the second screen back on; it felt small when I first connected it, but then I remembered you can change the rendering size in a browser which made it nice and useful.

I'm still using the Jabra conference call unit for audio; it is connected through a virtual set up I built with Loopback which also lets me feed in audio from apps. I'm experimenting with Farrago (a soundboard) but really need to find a decent source of sound effects. Music I mainly play via Roll20 (as I've uploaded Travis Savoie's excellent Curse of Strahd soundtrack).

I tend to prepare for sessions by reading the core book, then the MandyMod and Dragnacarta remixes and deciding what elements to draw into the plot. I'll scribble notes on the reMarkable and annotate maps if I need to. I am - increasingly - using additional battle maps when appropriate, but also feeling very free to go theatre of the mind when needed.

I'm sure that this will develop further still as we head towards the conclusion of the game. If anyone else has decent scripts they can recommend, please feel free to share!

2 July 2022