Planning a Roll20 Replacement

Roll20 has been very frustrating sometimes. Odd command issues, weird macro problems (mostly for the players who insist on using macros*), and so on.

Add on the stupidity of icons needs to have vision activated, the confusing mess of Dynamic Fog of War vs. Fog of War, layer issues . . . ugh.

Sunday was the last straw for me.

My players mentioned Swampsedge but then chose it last-minute. So I had to find my map, scan it, trim it, upload it, and then place Fog of War on it.

That took some time, but I did it.

But as we used it, we had issues.

It took a lot of fiddling before anyone could see anything except black.

I ended up having to delete the entire page and re-enter it and re-do it from scratch.

That worked.

Once I figured that out, I started to reveal map sections. So far, so good.

Except.

Except.

Except.

Except for the fact that as I revealed, only some of what I revealed actually displayed. Other things were concealed behind blackness. Not on my screen, but on the PC's screen. I could reveal all I wanted, but some sections stayed opaque. The players saw black, I saw nothing. When I turned Fog of War off, they could see everything.

I tried to fix things, and sort-of did, but then my "Reveal Area" commands revealed different areas, in different shapes, than I had highlighted.

I deleted that one and tried again.

Finally, I put up the map, put an icon on it, give it vision, gave it control to everyone . . . and then it worked. Sort-of. But we have other pages with no icon everyone can see. Why do I need a token to have Fog of War? I clearly don't, except I needed it to have it work sort-of correctly.

That's it. I've had it up to my limit with Roll20 and it cost me actual game time due to actually very stupid issues that should have been simple.

I'm sure someone can explain how this is all user error, but I have new and different frustrations with Roll20 on top of old ones. I've had enough, and it doesn't do what I need it to do well enough to justify putting up with all of the stupid things it does.

We'll stick it out until I'm done with my two books, and then I'll spend time learning a new VTT. This one isn't worth the effort.

* I don't, as I find the player-facing ones take at least as much time as rolling straight-up 3d6, and often need to be checked or double-checked.