Recording a D&D session on Roll20, which has no record button
Roll20 runs the maps, the dice and — for a lot of tables — the voice chat, and it records none of it. There is no record button anywhere in the product, and its own documentation points at external tools. So the question is not "how do I turn it on" but which of two setups you want, and the answer depends on where your table’s voices live.
· 6 min read
First decide where the voices live
Roll20 has integrated voice and video chat that runs in the browser with no plugin. It works, and it records nothing — there is no capture feature attached to it. Plenty of Roll20 tables never use it anyway and talk on Discord instead, and that single choice decides your whole recording setup.
If the table talks on Discord, recording is a solved problem that has nothing to do with Roll20: invite a recorder bot and the maps and dice never enter into it. If the table talks in Roll20’s own voice chat, nothing inside Roll20 will capture it, so something on your computer has to record what you hear and what you say.
The easy route: voice on Discord, Craig in the channel
If you can move the table’s voices to Discord — or they are already there — this is the least fragile option and it costs nothing. The Craig bot joins your voice channel, records up to six hours per session with one file per speaker, and hands you a download link when you stop it.
The full setup is in the Craig guide, and the wider Discord workflow — including the non-Craig options — is in recording D&D on Discord. Roll20 keeps doing maps and dice; Discord does voice; the bot does the recording. Each piece does the thing it is good at.
Recording Roll20’s own voice chat: OBS is the honest answer
To capture voices that play inside a browser tab, record the computer’s audio. OBS is free, works on every desktop platform, and can record system audio and your microphone as separate tracks in one file. Set the recording format to MKV or MP4 — not FLV, which transcription tools (ours included) reject — press record before the recap of last session, and stop it after the goodbyes.
Two things bite people. The first is headphones: your mic track has your voice, and the system-audio track has everyone else’s, so both tracks matter — a setup that records only the microphone gets four hours of half a conversation. The second is that system audio is everything the computer plays, so Roll20’s jukebox music and every notification chime land in the recording too. Mute what you do not want kept.
A phone on the desk as backup only works if the game is audible in the room — if you wear headphones it hears your side only. For an online game the backup that actually matches the main recording is a second capture on another machine, or simply accepting the risk.
What to do with four hours of MKV
A multi-track OBS recording does not need bouncing down before transcription here: DM Scribe accepts the file whole and mixes the tracks automatically, so the mic track and the system-audio track are both transcribed. Files up to 500 MB and sessions up to 8 hours go in one upload, and recordings over four hours are split and reassembled on our side.
If you are transcribing elsewhere, the same file usually needs the audio extracted first and the tracks mixed yourself — the tool comparison covers who takes what, and the cost guide prices the same four-hour session through every option.
Ask the table first
Same rule as every other setup on this site: say plainly that you are recording, what for, where it lives and when it gets deleted — and get a yes from everyone. An online game can cross state lines, which makes consent more than politeness; the consent guide covers the law and, more usefully, the script for the conversation.
Roll20 figures, with sources
Every third-party figure quoted above, with where it came from and when it was checked. Prices move — if a date here is old, verify before relying on it.
| What | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Roll20 integrated voice and video | Built-in browser voice/video chat requiring no plugins — with no recording feature attached to it | sourceas of 2026-09-07 |
| Recording a Roll20 session | Roll20’s own wiki documents recording and streaming via external tools (OBS and similar) — there is no native record option | sourceas of 2026-09-07 |
How we sourced this: Both rows come from Roll20’s own help centre and wiki. Craig’s six-hour and per-speaker figures are sourced on the Craig guide rather than repeated here. Nothing on this page describes Roll20 features beyond what its own documentation states — VTT products change quickly, and an unsourced claim about someone else’s product is how comparison pages rot.
Related guides
- How long should D&D prep take, and where the time actually goes
Surveyed DMs split almost evenly between an hour and three-plus per session. The useful question is not how long, but what the hour buys.
- How to record your D&D session so the audio is actually usable
Where to put the mic at a real table, how to record Discord and Zoom games, cheap gear that helps, and what good enough session audio actually means.
- How to Take Notes During a D&D Session Without Wrecking the Game
A working note system for DMs: what to capture mid-session, what can wait, the one-line-per-beat method, player scribes, and the 10-minute post-game dump.