Liz Schuh, head of publishing and licensing for Dungeons & Dragons, stated that "virtual play rose 86%" in 2020 "aided by online platforms such as Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds". When the COVID-19 pandemic began to prevent in-person gatherings in 2020, many groups who played in-person role-playing games turned to Roll20 to continue their games virtually. In February 2019, TechCrunch reported that Roll20's databases had been hacked along with those of 8 other companies, with the information of over 4 million users of the site posted for sale on a dark web marketplace. Many users criticized the ban, Jones' response, and the inclusion of Roll20 staff as moderators of the subreddit, leading Roll20 to apologize and turn over moderation of the subreddit to the community. After a failed attempt to get clarification and correction of the ban, ApostleO deleted his Roll20 account and posted a summary to Reddit of the hostile customer service. Jones, acting as head moderator of the Reddit Roll20 subreddit, banned Reddit user ApostleO, mistaking the account for another previously banned account whom Nolan believed to be circumventing the prior ban. In September 2018, one of the co-founders of Roll20, Nolan T. In February 2018, Paizo's Pathfinder and Starfinder games became officially supported on the platform. Along with the announcement, they released the first official module for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition, Lost Mine of Phandelver, on the Roll20 Marketplace, which was followed by other releases.
#Roll20 custom compendium license
In July 2016, Roll20 announced that they had acquired a license from Wizards of the Coast for official Dungeons & Dragons material. Roll20 would enable these players to document and broadcast their actual play experiences for others to consume". Joined with Twitch and YouTube, it constitutes a powerful tool in the kit of industry up-and-comers" and that the "system would impact the play of millions at mass scale. Torner wrote, "Roll20 allows players to seamlessly control information in a shared 'tabletop' era and broadcast content of interest to both the group itself and the wider audience watching it play.
Academic Evan Torner, in the book Watch Us Roll: Essays on Actual Play and Performance in Tabletop Role-Playing Games (2021), highlighted the impact of Roll20 on the actual play movement. Roll20 reported reaching 1 million users in July 2015 and 2 million users in January 2017. After a short beta testing period following the end of the Kickstarter campaign, Roll20 was released to the public in September 2012.
After realizing that their personal app could help others as well, they started a Kickstarter campaign in the spring of 2012 with an initial goal of $5000 the campaign managed to raise almost $40,000. Roll20 was originally conceived as a personal project by three college roommates, Riley Dutton, Nolan Jones, and Richard Zayas, to help them continue to play Dungeons & Dragons after graduating and moving to different cities.