Keep in mind you have to host the server yourself for players to join. Otherwise you can use a service like The Forge to host it for you, but then you’re incurring the same kind of monthly fee as roll20. But the interface and responsiveness compared to roll20 is great. Some of the controls take some getting used to
Yeah! I can’t live without my grid paper notepads. Not just for D&D, I use them for everything lol. But yeah they’re great for sketching maps, especially.
I like to make cards too. Like cards that describe the various things my character can do like cast certain spells or use certain features and I can activate them like it’s yugioh lol