Roll20, working with Wizards of the Coast, is bringing the Dungeons and Dragons 5E Monster Manual to Roll20 in February.
Ever since Roll20 signed a licensing deal with Wizards of the Coast in July 2016, we’ve been working towards bringing the Monster Manual to our platform. This is only the second time we’ve released a product that includes fully-statted tokens on Roll20 (the first time was in the most recent Wizards of the Coast release, Volo’s Guide to Monsters).
If you are already using Roll20, the Monster Manual appear in your D&D 5th Edition Compendium tab once purchased.
Roll20 DMs and players can use the Compendium tab within the Roll20 tabletop platform to view Monster Manual entries—and even drag & drop monsters into their pre-existing games! The monsters that are added to Roll20 games will automatically place a gorgeous token on the tabletop and create a new Handout in the platform’s Journal, where the full biography, lore, and clickable NPC character sheet can be perused. This makes it much easier for a DM to suddenly add a displacer beast to their ongoing campaign, to the possible despair of their adventurers!
I have seen a couple of demos of this new system in action, and the company press agent is correct, it is incredibly easy to add monsters to a campaign and get access to all of their stats and attacks.
One thing that is not addressed is how homebrew systems can work with the Monster Manual content. In other words, how easy is it to skin a monster and have it appear in your game? I’ll have to get on the system and find out when the Monster Manual arrives on Roll20 on February 7, 2017. As of this post, the Monster Manual has a $49.95 price tag for the electronic copy that includes the art and integration into Roll20.
2 Comments
This is very exciting news to all of us who use roll20.net for both local and distance gaming! My only problem is the cost. While I am sure it is worth every penny they are asking, I have already invested $40 in the hardback version of the book. It is very unlikely that I will drop another $50 for the convenience of not stating out my own tokens. I know they are a business, and they have to pay for R&D and continuing overhead expenses, but I am already paying $5 per month to use their services as a DM (gotta have the extra storage & dynamic lighting!) so my budget is limited. Maybe I can convince my players to chip in?
It is certainly an option. I don’t know what plans Roll20 and WotC have for new books, but I do know that Frost Giants Fury (or whatever it is called) debuted in print and on Roll20 simultaneously. This may simply be a catch up factor, but in the future maybe you opt for digital version instead of both? If you look on YouTube, you’ll several demos of the Monster Manual in use with Roll20 and it is really nice.