Successful methods for play-by-videochat RPG

Role-playing games
#25

I shall not insist on having the credit for annoying Roger. I have too much of that resource already.

I’ll certainly say that as a GM I work harder when working remotely. I haven’t had to refuse anyone a place in an on-line game but we are stretching it a bit with one five and a GM and one six and a GM pre-existing group. The six is hard work to handle in person and I’m glad it hasn’t been my turn to GM it on line yet. My new group is four newbies and that’s fun though still a little hard.

Let me encourage you to remember to send out a link to where the game is happening a little before and to remember to give everyone (yourself included) a chance to break for five to ten minutes in about the middle of your on-line time.

Some people run to shorter games on-line: I’m certainly not getting through the material as fast as I would in the ‘real world’ ™ but I’m still playing for about three hours, normall from seven to ten.

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#26

Interesting; I’ve found that an on-line group gets through the material I’ve prepared much faster than a face-to-face group, perhaps because there’s less random chat.

Video chat is harder work than face-to-face and I think breaks are well worth having. (I know Michael is a proponent of “the GM works out what’s happening next while in the loo”.)

#27

I use that one every few sessions, when a player comes up with something I hadn’t anticipated and I need to decide what the appropriate outcome is.

#28

A technical note: on Tuesday night’s videoconference game, I had occasion to communicate privately with a player, and Signal worked very well. (People who do Facebook could presumably use WhatsApp.) In particular, having a desktop client made things simpler.

#29

A really nifty trick I found last weekend needs a game set more or less in the modern world, and video chat that does screen sharing (I was using Jitsi, from a separate machine so that the players could still see my lovely face). It also needs Viking, free software which I think is intended mostly for GPS-based route planning. But you can mark up a zoomable scrollable world map (I use OpenStreetMap) with specific locations, plot routes (and work out their length), and use the very neat ruler tool to work out bearings and distances. All right, the players can’t poke at the map themselves at the same time, but that may be regarded as a virtue.

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image1908×1110 1.77 MB

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#30

I’ve been using Photoshop and screen-sharing to reveal maps to my group, which seems to be working well. The primary limitation is that I need to draw all of my own maps - which I quite enjoy - and set them up with separate layers that I can reveal, room by room, as the explore. it also lets me do fun things like update the map with a click when an event causes a change, like an underground chamber flooding.

caverns

The party’s cartographer can take screenshots and mark them up with his notes, which has been a handy bonus. The downside is that I we no longer get to see his hastily- and crudely-drawn maps with scales that exaggerate further the deeper the dungeon delve goes.

I do sort of the opposite for the larger world, concealing a large map beneath a layer of white (and a hex grid). As they move about, I erase the white covering to reveal what’s underneath. I keep hard copies of everything handy, so I can review what’s hidden without tipping my hand.

player map

They haven’t gone far off the beaten path yet…

dm map

…but I have loads of space to add new features and adventures as they do.

7 Likes
#31

How do you get the square or hex grids in Photoshop?

#32

The square grid is adapted from an image I got from Dyson’s Dodecahedron, copied over and purged of its white pixels so it’s a transparent overlay. The hex grid I drew up in CAD. I have dotted-line square grids, too, but the hand-drawn tile look fits the bill for a D&D game so nicely.

I can make them available if anyone wants them. I use letter-size sheets because that’s convenient for printing, but you could modify them however suits you best. Just drop me a private message so we can figure out the right file types and such without filling up the thread.

#33

More things to do with Viking - I’ve been marking up locations for the Monster Hunters (Weird Florida) game in it, and I’ve just written a converter that spits out the waypoints with openstreetmap and Google Street View links.

Campaign page

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#34
  • Roll20 for me. Maps, lighting, music, handouts, tokens, scripts, excellent RPG system support, I had mentors; but
  • AV just seems to vary so much between groups, for some games Roll20 is fine, with other people Discord is better, another GM swears by Google Meet.
  • Smaller groups, 3 is best, or people drift away;
  • Shorter games, 2.5-3 hours, but yes the material can go by nice and fast.

Videoconferencing etiquette takes a while to learn.
GMs need to be firm and in control.
Just cos Roll20 has all the maps and stuff doesn’t mean you can’t just sit back and use it as a Theatre of the Mind table, I do both.

2 Likes
#35

Very useful drawing apps for online:

But the one that is just great for quick and easy dungeons that are VTT compliant and free:

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#36

This article on dicebreaker has a very negative take on lockdown roleplaying. I pretty much disagree - as noted above we have played twice a week since April - much more, and much more focused, D&D. Sure, some things are different, but that includes the players getting a better grasp of rules and character abilities than I have seen in a long time …

#37

I haven’t read the article. I cannot fathom why, even if it were true, this article would have any benefit to anyone. Yes, roleplaying in today’s COVID-19 world is different and is likely disappointing in many ways. What’s the alternative?

I’m so annoyed at the thought of saying “The one tabletop roleplaying outlet you have available to you is bad and here’s why” that I cannot bring myself to actually read the article. At best, it’s a ploy to drum up readership.

EDIT: Wait, what?

The odds of getting a natural 20 - that is, rolling a 20 on a 20-sided die - in a Dungeons & Dragons game is so low that doing so can only be said to be a result of improbable, ludicrous luck.

Apparently a 1-in-20 chance is improbable.

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#38

So how many times are you rolling a d20 in a session? (In my games there have been sessions with no rolls at all, but they’re unusual.)

From a skim of the article I feel that the message is “I expected roleplaying to solve my isolation depression, but it doesn’t”. Also, I’m fortunate in that most of the gamers I play with are quite committed to the game, rather than turning up just because it’s there or their friends are going or whatever.

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#39

I had to explain to my consultant why I viewed a 1% chance of complications as being a risk I wasn’t willing to take.
I think she kind of knew but had assumed I didn’t.
This article is quite clickbaiting.
Some of the stuff on dicebreaker is quite good tho’

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#40

Indeed I eye-rolled at that. One player gets a critical every second roll, another a Fumble. This is the way …

And I agree Dicebreaker has some good stuff, but there is a range of quality. On a similar theme I think the UKs Tabletop Gaming mag has evolved from regurgitated press releases (why I dismissed it initially) to having a more critical focus now, so worth picking up once in a while.

1 Like
#41

I just decided to get a year’s sub to TTG. I had one before and took a year off. I got some nice goodies (tickets their live show in 2021, if it happens two boardgames: Panic Diner and a strategic Marvel Heroclix tie in that’s probably pants but has nice minis, so no bother.

The kick back against lockdown has started I notice:

It was bound to happen and makes sense to query it, since for some people it must be hell… but if the future is hybrid then that would be a good outcome.

#42

One does feel they should have asked people who’d been doing this for longer. My reading plummetted when I stopped commuting and didn’t have reading-only time blocked out of each day, but I learned to do it deliberately instead.

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#43

Yeah … if obligatory travel before work is the only time one has to daydream, meditate, or do nothing at all I would wager not commuting is not the problem …

Routines are really helpful for a lot of people, but pretending that having an extra hour or more of your day locked up on top of work is somehow better for mental health and the thing preventing people from burning out seems kinda wild.

Teleworking is, on the whole, a terrible fit for me. I would much rather have a work day away from home and also skip the commute via teleporter. :stuck_out_tongue:

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#44

Still more things to do with Viking: I parse its file to generate a scrolly zoomy Leaflet.js map with locations sorted into layers, and pop-up links to Streetview.

Lessons from a TV series bible. #4: setting