Free Roam

Free roam is the main game mode for Red Dead Online and where the overwhelming majority of players spend the bulk of their time. Here, you can set up your camp (and access the Butcher Table for the Trader role, ride where ever you want, visit Bounty Boards (for the Bounty Hunter role), find collection items (for the Collector role), visit your 'Shine Shack (for the Moonshiner role), find Legendary Animals (for the Naturalist role) and participate in various missions and events.

Free Roam sessions can accommodate up to 28 players at a time. A session with a dwindling population will be merged with another active session automatically after a certain point. Sessions with larger player populations may not spawn as many animals as those with fewer players in them.

Join Options
You have several choices of join options available in the Online Menu when loading into Free Roam. When opening this menu, you'll see these options laid out in four different rows: Free Roam, For You, Featured Series and Location. The tiles under Free Roam and Location will load you into a Free Roam session. Some options will almost always be present. Other options will change depending on what bonuses are currently running.

For example, if they are running a bonus for completing Telegram Missions that awards 2x XP, there will be an option for Telegram Missions with the bonus shown in the corner. Where you'll load into will depend on what bonus it's for. If it's a bonus for Bounty Hunting, you may find yourself in front of a bounty board after you load in; if it's a bonus for Trader, you may be loaded into camp an so on. Under Free Roam, you'll find these permanent options: The tiles under Location never change and will load you into a random location in that region if selected. They are:
 * Free Roam - This will load you into a new session at the same location. If you are standing in Valentine when you last left a session and you choose this option, you'll be standing in roughly the same location when you load back in.
 * Camp - This will load you into your camp in the last region you had it in. This is a good way to load in without being shot immediately.
 * Posse Up - This will find a session with a posse that has their join option set to "Open" that has an empty spot and make you a member of that posse. Although not widely used, occasionally this can be a way for you to find others to play with. If you would like to be the Posse Leader and have random players join you in this manner, you need to set your posse join options to "Open" in the posse settings menu.
 * Lead Your Posse - This option is similar to the first but this will also reform your posse automatically. This can save time since you won't have to reform it yourself through the left menu. You'll be loaded in at the last place you were, similar to selecting the Free Roam option. You'll only see this if you left your last play session with your posse formed.
 * Ambarino
 * Lemoyne
 * New Hanover
 * New Austin
 * West Elizabeth

Major Differences Between Online and Story Mode
If you've played Story Mode, you'll find several differences when comparing the Single Player map. For one, there are Fast Travel posts at every main town and also in a few other key locations scattered around the map. These posts allow you to instantly travel to any other Fast Travel post, your camp or your 'Shine Shack for a nominal fee. The further you are away from where you want to go the more it will cost.

Another difference you will notice is the appearance of Showdown and Race Series posts scattered about. These will allow you to join a Showdown or Race lobby if you approach and interact with them.

The third major difference you'll see is the appearance of orange markers with various symbols on them. These indicate the locations of Mission Givers that you can approach and receive missions from. Some Mission Givers are not human, such as Bounty Boards.

Mini-Map
Just like Story Mode, you have a Mini-Map that shows your current position and the immediate surrounding area in the lower left corner of your screen. As you traverse the landscape, other icons will appear and disappear as you get closer to or further away from them. These icons include various Mission Givers, Vendors, Hostile NPCs, among other things. You are also able to see the blips of other players.

You can change the size of the mini-map by holding Down on the DPad and then pressing the corresponding button for the size you want. There are 4 options available: Normal, Extended, Compass and Off.

As you'd expect, Normal is the default setting and Expanded makes it a bit larger (allowing you to see more of the map).

If you like to challenge yourself, you can turn the mini-map into a compass that will just show your player marker relative to the cardinal directions and if you ***really*** want to challenge yourself, you can turn the mini-map off completely and try to use visual landmarks to navigate. With either of these options, you can tap Down on the DPad at any time to quickly check the mini-map, if need be.

If you enjoy taking great in-game screenshots, turning off the mini-map will give you a better unobstructed "camera" with which to do so. Combined with changing the Display options in Settings, you'll be able to get much better shots.