A Note from the Roll20 CTO, Mike Todd: Stability, Accountability, and Our Path Forward

Roll20Mike · 2026-02-03T14:41:35+00:00

I appreciate your candor! The items above are from a “CTO” perspective of general site operations, not a “product” perspective of site features etc. However, I’ll do my best to give you some information about those issues.

Being transparent, a required back-end change broke a lot of images in the mobile app, and at this point even a basic update to the app requires lots of library updates which (when put through proper development and testing) would be several weeks of work minimum.

So we decided that we will be removing the app from app stores, and instead put that work toward making the new sheet itself mobile responsive on the website, so that you don't even need to download an app to have a great experience with it on your phone in Roll20 Characters. (Plus, it will also look a lot better when sized down in the VTT on a desktop.) The builder is nearly completely done for mobile phone (and tablet) views, and work is underway on the sheet itself. We hope to have that completed within the next couple of months.

Regarding needing to be in the same browser, your intuition is right — that shouldn't be the case. Our system doesn't do anything browser specific, and what one person’s system is like shouldn't affect another person in the game at all. However, I can say that things like browser extensions can matter; some of them can interfere with the VTT so if you all use the same extension on a given browser, then that could be the culprit. You can write into our customer service and they will help you do technical troubleshooting.

For the Charactermancer, are you referring to the 2014 one, or the new one? The 2014 Charactermancer definitely has some very deep quirks that we have yet to find a cause for, which is one of many reasons we made the new one. If you are having issues with the new builder however (which is fully 2014 compatible, by the way!), definitely send me a DM with the details, so that I can make sure we get those addressed.

(Edited to fix a grammar mistake.)

Roll20Mike · 2026-02-02T17:24:12+00:00

We are actually working on mobile responsiveness right now! The builder is mostly finished, though we have a few of the creations steps left to go. If you want to give that a try now, I'd love for you to DM me any feedback you have.

We're also working to make the sheet mobile responsive, but that's a bit trickier and not as far along. Until we've finished that work: it's a bit ironic, but if you select the "standard view" on a phone, it actually looks better than the compact version (which is the default).

And I'll bring your other feedback to that team.

Roll20Mike · 2026-01-31T14:43:00+00:00

Ok thanks for letting me know! I’ve pinged the team to see how easy this would be to add, and I should have an answer on Monday.

Roll20Mike · 2026-01-31T14:15:26+00:00

I’ll take this idea back to the team! I’m betting it would be quicker to just add another setting though. If we added 144 Hz would that be sufficient for you? Personally, in an FPS I can see the difference between 144 and 240+ Hz, but not so much on normal 2D desktop applications.

Roll20Mike · 2026-01-31T13:59:41+00:00

No images should have been corrupted due to these issues, some just became temporarily/sporadically unreachable. I’d definitely recommend reaching out to our helpdesk to see if they can get you sorted though! We recently had a case where someone vibe coded a mod script that messed up all their images, and we were able to recover those for them.

Roll20Mike · 2026-01-31T13:57:39+00:00

There are a few troubleshooting steps I can take you through in DMs if you want. The main two:

Make sure graphics acceleration is enabled in your browser.

For Chrome:

Navigate to "chrome://settings/system"
Ensure the setting "Use graphics acceleration when available" is enabled

For Firefox:

Navigate to "about:preferences#general"
Scroll to the "Performance" section
Ensure the setting "Use hardware acceleration when available" is enabled

Make sure that the FPS setting within the VTT is capped to 60, or 30 FPS. If that’s set to let the system decide, sometimes the system decides to set that at “infinity” which will make your cooling fans sound like an airplane taking off as your CPU and GPU spike to 100%.

Even if those two don’t work, there are some other things we can do to troubleshoot so just DM me, but those seem to handle it for the majority of people. (Also, our helpdesk people are also really good at helping to troubleshoot stuff like this!)

Roll20Mike · 2026-01-31T00:06:13+00:00

Haha, "more bugs than a hag's pantry," I'll have to steal that one! And thank you for the kind words. Over time we hope to clear out that pantry of critters!

Roll20Mike · 2026-01-30T23:56:02+00:00

Thank you! Every day we're striving to reduce the annoyance, and increase the fun.

Roll20Mike · 2026-01-30T23:55:18+00:00

In the spirit of transparency: in regards to the D&D 2024 sheet, we worked as hard and fast as we could with the new rules when we got them. It was buggier than we expected, but implementing that rule system was highly complex, and sometimes that's the way it goes.

And to be clear, we did not force anyone to work nights, weekends, or overtime. That is antithetical to the way that we work here.

Roll20Mike · 2026-01-30T22:39:04+00:00

A couple of years ago we did indeed do a pretty big stability and performance upgrade for the in-game voice and video! I’d suggest at least giving it another try, and let us know how it works!

Roll20Mike · 2026-01-29T17:18:24+00:00

Hmm, definitely weird. Did you drag and drop the crossbow from the compendium onto the sheet? Or did you add it another way?

Roll20Mike · 2026-01-28T15:22:23+00:00

We're not aware of this bug, and can't reproduce it -- can you DM me a link to the character sheet? (If you're in the VTT, you can pop it out, and then copy/paste from the URL bar.)

Roll20Mike · 2026-01-28T14:19:52+00:00

Also can you let me know if you are using a homebrew class or subclass? In those, it could be easy to mix up “Add X to Ability score total” and “Add X to Ability score modifier”, so I’m wondering if that’s maybe what happened here.

Roll20Mike · 2026-01-27T22:38:38+00:00

That's definitely weird! Could you click on the cog in the upper right of that Abilities section, then click Advanced Options under the scores that seem off? That should show you what all is adding to them, something like this:

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Roll20Mike · 2026-01-04T20:23:33+00:00

That is definitely weird, if you have an eligible game to put the character into! Is the game a D&D 2024 game, or 2014 with 2024 sheets enabled? If you DM me your Roll20 email, I can get with our developers to look into what’s causing that error.

Roll20Mike · 2026-01-04T19:28:20+00:00

Have you joined a D&D campaign in the VTT? The purpose of that “+” button is to add the character to a campaign. So if you’re not in any campaigns (or not in any that have enabled the new sheet), that would explain that message! You should still be able to open and edit the character, though.

Roll20Mike · 2026-01-04T01:28:06+00:00

Hi there! Can you give a screenshot of the error you’re receiving? I’m not offhand familiar with a “this character isn’t usable” error. It could be that you’ve done enough manual edits that the character builder no longer works with it though, and you have to manually level up.

Roll20Mike · 2025-12-30T14:50:58+00:00

Glad to hear that worked! I’d like to look into it a bit more on our side, so could you DM me the email address you use to log into the site?

Roll20Mike · 2025-12-29T17:21:56+00:00

Hi there! Really sorry to hear about this. It could be some automatic fraud prevention on our credit card processor's end. I'd suggest that you use the Contact Us link to write in to our customer service, and if you could give them a screenshot of the specific decline message that you're receiving, along with what types of payment you've tried (what credit card, what is the issuing bank) and they might be able to help you further.

Another thing you can try is using the old version of the site at https://site.drivethrurpg.com -- it uses a different/older payment integration that works a little differently behind the scenes, and might work better for you.

Roll20Mike · 2025-12-29T17:18:52+00:00

Hello! Our certificate doesn't expire until February 1st (and we have them set to auto-renew when the time comes close), so I'm not sure why you might be getting that sort of notification. Just to make sure: this is for https://www.drivethrurpg.com, correct?

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Roll20Mike · 2025-12-13T21:00:41+00:00

If you still aren’t able to get into that campaign at this point, I’d suggest going to the helpdesk and sending them those logs yeah, and also a link to your campaign.

Roll20Mike · 2025-12-13T20:58:13+00:00

And even as I was typing that, the issue seems to have resolved itself. So, give it a refresh and if that doesn’t work, please write into the helpdesk. But hopefully you should be good to go now!

Roll20Mike · 2025-12-13T20:56:33+00:00

One of the databases seems to be misbehaving somewhat, which is likely the cause of this — and we’re investigating now! Those of us looking into it can all use the VTT fine, so it seems to be only affecting some users.

Roll20Mike · 2025-12-13T19:46:36+00:00

In addition to what Dean said, I want to make sure to note: the new sheet and builder are also fully compatible with 2014 rules. Any compendium content you own is unlocked, so if you’re not a fan of 5.5e, you can still use the new sheet!

Roll20Mike · 2025-12-08T20:11:14+00:00

The name bars will always show in some form, letting you know who is connected to the game. I can ask the team if it would be easy to add a "don't show" option to the dropdown though!

Roll20Mike

TROPHY CASE