D&D & Role Play - Roll20 experience?

Much of my new found D&D group are heading back to college, and as woudl be teh case with people you like playing with this is distressing.

Three of teh members want to use the site Roll20 to take our current adventure online. I have looked around and the DM map making side seems complex, but the rest of ist seems okay. Does anyone here have an experience with it? I'm just newly back into D7D tabletop,s o teh prospect of bring that online feels like biting off a lot.

I think mostly what I want to know is what "prep", if any, people would recommend? i.e. are there things to do before you get into teh game? Modifying my character sheet to be viewed online? Using chat in the Roll20 or using Discord instead? Any advice woudl be most helpful. I'm pretty sure nobody is the group has used Roll20 before either, so I'm looking for outside help for all of us including the poor DM.

You can do as much prep as you want really. Roll20 is a blank paper and you can be as complicated or as simple as you want. My friends and I started out by just drawing simple shapes and using icons to represent ourselves and enemies. Then we'd use the usual pdf for character sheets. I've since moved up to using a premium account to do fancier maps with lighting effects and maps that automatically generate line of sight and user vision. Whoever the dm is, take it one step at a time. It's a great tool and you don't have to dive deep right away if you don't want to.

My group has found that Discord is a lot more reliable for voice chat. Roll20 is fine somedays, but it seems like during busier times (nights and weekends especially) the voice client on Roll20 cuts out a lot.

Yeah, I use Roll20 for the VTT and Discord for voice. It's a lot harder to do spur of the moment maps in it, so I've really been trying to develop my theater of the mind. I will put effor in bigger set piece encounters.

I think digital player character sheets make for lazy players, they don't have to learn to play they can just click a button.