2024 was a tremendous year for Roll20, and it wouldn’t have been possible without your guidance. Thank you so much for your continuous feedback and creative ideas! Before I get to what’s coming, I want to take a brief moment to celebrate some key accomplishments of 2024, where we launched:
- Discord Activity, letting you group jump into Roll20 without ever leaving Discord!
- Jumpgate, an overhaul of the virtual tabletop that brought improved performance, features, and visuals.
- D&D 2024 character sheet and builder, with support to use both 2014 and 2024 sheets in the same game! This new sheet is built on modern design and data structures that we can expand upon for years. Nearly every day we’re releasing improvements and fixes.
- DriveThruRPG.com relaunch, making it more modern and useful to find all the games and supplements you could ever want from publishers big and small!
- Demiplane joined Roll20, bringing new NEXUSes for Pathfinder, Daggerheart, Cyberpunk Red, Cosmere, Marvel Multiverse, and more.
- Two-Factor Authentication was implemented as part of our commitment to security. Alongside, it’s now possible to login to DriveThruRPG with your Roll20 account, and we’re connecting more services soon.
Overhauling, integrating, and introducing so many components wasn’t easy, but it’s necessary for us to build the features we’re dreaming about next. We know that we didn’t nail every launch to your and our expectations, but I’m excited about the journey we’re on to provide everything for your adventures and make TTRPGs easier to play. Our team is listening to your feedback, and the best way to help collate that feedback is to cast your vote on our Suggestion Forum. The more votes we see to build a feature, the more we prioritize it. And if you ever experience an issue, the best way to help us is by reporting it through a bug ticket HERE.
Check out our Year in Review video:
What’s Ahead in 2025
After rebuilding our foundations and introducing new core technologies, we’re really hitting our stride and are less burdened by development and design decisions from a decade ago. I can’t talk about everything just yet, but here are a few areas I’m most excited about.
Monthly AMAs
While not a feature, this is one of the many steps we’re taking to pull you in closer to our development process. Your feedback is critical, and we want to ensure we’re prioritizing updates that you need right now.
We’ve decided to launch a monthly AMA as part of this effort. This will be a chance to ask questions and share ideas directly with the team, product managers, and engineers who are building these products. These AMAs will happen on the first Tuesday of every month, starting in February. We’re going to host these in a few different spots to see which is most effective in connecting with you, starting with the Roll20 forums for the first go around.
Details for February’s AMA
- When: Tuesday, Feb 4th, 2025 from 1PM – 2PM EST
- Where: Roll20 Forums
Additionally, we’ll be opening up a submission form the day before for those who can’t make it. We’ll choose some top questions and feedback from there to address during the AMA.
Foreground Layer
We’ve promised this one before but were forced to delay it due to performance concerns. Now with Jumpgate out the door, and tabletop performance issues becoming a thing of the past, we’re ready to launch this to the public.
The foreground layer is absolutely coming in 2025. This addition will enable many of the enhancements you’ve suggested like rooftops, tree canopies, balconies, and the ability to portray elevation and weather effects. As with everything, we will be listening to your feedback closely, both up to launch and for post-launch feature expansions.
Dungeon Scrawl Integration
In late 2023 we acquired Dungeon Scrawl, a beloved map-making tool. Now, we’re integrating it directly into the Roll20 Tabletop, which will redefine your map making experience. Dungeon Scrawl is one of the fastest ways to craft dungeons, bastions, and any other maps you need. Here’s some highlights to expect:
- A new user interface that allows you to link your Dungeon Scrawl maps to your campaigns in Roll20
- The ability for your Dungeon Scrawl edits to update in near real-time in your Roll20 campaign.
The first iteration of this is launching in Q1 ‘25. This is slightly later than we originally expected because it took us a bit longer to make the two products work together. We can’t wait to hear your experiences and suggestions for continued development.
Demiplane in the Roll20 VTT
In 2025, you’ll be able to access your Demiplane sheets (such as Pathfinder, Starfinder, Daggerheart) directly inside the Roll20 VTT! We’re still refining the details of this integration, but we’re very excited for the best digital rulebooks and character sheets in the world to meet the Roll20 virtual tabletop.
You can expect to see our phase 1 alpha integration in Q1 2025, and we’ll be actively iterating to provide more Demiplane functionality through the spring, summer and beyond. There are a lot of moving parts on this one, so we are committed to working closely with you. You’ll be hearing more from Peter, the head of Demiplane, on this topic in blogs & forums soon!
In the meantime, we are supporting Like-4-Like unlocks on certain titles (hello Pathfinder players!), and plan to grow this campaign. If you’ve purchased a supported title on Roll20 or Demiplane, you’ll automatically have access to it on the other platform for free once this goes live! We have even more plans to help everyone on Roll20 enjoy the benefits of Demiplane’s product, which we’ll introduce in the coming months.
Work in Progress Screenshot
D&D 2024 Features, Fixes, and Support
We’ve introduced so many new D&D features since launch, and we’re now spending the first weeks of 2025 entirely focused on resolving issues and pain points to ensure a smooth experience. After we feel really good on that front, we’ll be going back to developing new features. Right now we’re eyeballing dice syntax, alternative layouts for management of many spells, and better character customization options. We’ll continue to listen to your feedback, and it has been very helpful in our continued development efforts.
More surprises!
This is an early peek into releases and focus areas for the first half of the year, but we have more releases coming as well. Keep an eye on the blog and newsletters for all the updates.
As we look ahead, our mission remains the same: make Roll20 the easiest and most welcoming destination for your games and players. Thank you for letting us be a part of your table.
Happy New Year and Happy Rolling!
Ankit Lal
CEO, Roll20
