If you’re new GM to Roll20 you might be asking yourself what the heck is a Transmogrifier, or maybe you are already familiar with it and looking for a refresher or some creative new ways to use it - this is where Tome of Tips comes in. Tome of Tips is a new series where we will explore Roll20 features, popular questions and more to help enhance your playing experience on our platform. So, let’s dive in!
The Transmogrifier is a tool available to paid subscribers at the Pro level that allows you to take elements out of any of your games and put them into any other game that you own. It works similarly to the Copy/Extend Game feature, but you can use it to add objects to in-progress games.
To find the Transmogrifier you will need to enter the virtual tabletop and click on the gear icon in the menu on the right side of your screen.
Next, you will scroll down to the bottom of that menu and just click the “Transmogrifier” button under the Experimental Features section.
Then, the Transmogrifier window will open, with the current game pre-selected and from here you can simply choose the two games you want to use in the drop-down menus. A listing of all the objects in the game that are eligible to be moved will appear. Just drag and drop between the two lists to copy elements between the games.
**Note that you are copying elements, not moving them, so the original will remain in the first game.
Please keep in mind that if you are not the owner of the game, you will not see the option to transmogrify even if you have a Pro level subscription.
Here are a few creative things you can do with this feature:
Use the Transmogrifier to carry over a memorable NPC: Sometimes in a campaign, you’ll create an NPC that especially resonates with your player and you might want to upgrade this bit player into a recurring character and have them make a cameo appearance in your next campaign. You can use it to copy over the character and make small tweaks or updates without impacting the character in the original game.
Use the Transmogrifier to store a book of pre-made “random encounters”: Let’s say you want to create some random battles for your players to fall into, but you don’t want to clutter up your campaign with pages you may never use and you want to be able to repurpose unused battle maps for the future. Create a campaign and use it as a “battle-book:” Store your random battle maps in that campaign, and then use the Transmogrifier to copy those maps and “pull them out” of the book to use them on-the-fly.
Use the Transmogrifier to maintain a rollable table of flavor text or random effects: Maybe you have trouble coming up with descriptions of critical successes or failures so, you created a rollable table with random effects or small, sentence-long descriptions of critical success or failure descriptions. Using the Transmogrifier, you can copy that table to any new campaign you start so all of that time and creative energy you spent putting it together isn’t wasted.
**PRO TIP: It’s also very useful for magical items that have random effects–players can carry those magic items with them to a new campaign if you use the Transmogrifier to copy over the relevant table.
Want to dig into the Transmogrifier a bit more? Check out the article in our Roll20 Help Center.