I tend to focus on here on my painting, modelling and wargaming, but I've covered role-playing as well. I've covered my slow accumulation of monsters for Dungeons and Dragons as well as building various types of terrain and floor plans, indeed, one of my five boxes is dedicated to just such projects.
In the current climate, face to face gaming is clearly impossible outside the household, so what is the answer?
For roleplayers there are several options, and I have been experimenting with some of them with/on my Thursday night group.
The most important requirement is a good way of communicating. Text only can work, but voice is better. Images are even better, but nothing will quite beat actually sitting across from someone. There is always a slight lag, that embarrassed pause straight after someone starts speaking when they realise someone else is also talking.
For our first session, which was mostly to introduce the game and create characters, we simply used Zoom. I offered the standard array method from the Players Handbook, though I was happy for players to roll ability scores if they wished. Some did, and no super powered characters emerged, I do trust them.
For the second session we tried Roll20. This seems highly thought off, and offers a lot of functionality. It's free too, though I seemed to need the subscription to add my own maps. Players only need the free profile though.
I didn't set out to use everything the system offers; my aim was to rely on it for communication, dice rolling and showing maps. I wasn't bothered about such things as initiative tracking or lighting effects. I may investigate these in the future, but I want a good understanding of the basics first.
I created maps for the first adventure using Dundjinni, a great tool for producing maps and floorplans (you can see it being used for my sewer tiles here). Sadly its no longer commercially available, though every so often rumours spring up that it is about to be relaunched via Kickstarter. I then exported them into Roll20. Since I had to borrow a laptop for internet access, this meant copying via USB stick. I then went back and trimmed the images and reloaded them, then realised I had them in the wrong layer, so had to correct that, then I realised the maps covered too large an area for the grid, so I went back and chopped the maps into smaller sections and reloaded them again. By this stage if I hadn't had players ready and wanting to play I might have quit.
But I persevered. Initially we had problems with the sound, faint and tinny. So we used Zoom again, much better.
Unfortunately, one of the players struggled to get Roll20 to load, so had to rely on verbal descriptions. Although since I couldn't get more than the first map to load, soon everyone else was in the same boat. The dice roller proved very useful, for those who could access it.
We managed the set up plus three encounters in just over two hours; quite a bit of time was lost at the beginning. The adventurers are just about to explore a mysterious underground ruin in search of kidnapped tribesfolk.
Before the second session, I went through the tutorial again, and felt I had a slightly better handle on how it worked. I re-edited the maps so that each room had it's own page. This was mostly to avoid having to worry about the 'fog of war' feature. Even so, I started without being able to display maps other than the initial village map (created on MS Paint). Since I can't see what the players can, I was unaware of this, but was able to correct it. Easy, once I had figured it out.
The rest of the session went well and all players were able to access Roll20 this time. My decision to put each room on its own page wasn't so smart. Once the party started splitting up I had to keep switching pages. I determined to redo the maps (again!) and experiment with the 'fog of war' for the next session, learning all the time. The steps you take don't need to be big as long as they are in te right direction.
For the third session the redone maps worked well. Using the fog of war was fun but I still need to work on 'pinging' and I hope to use tokens for monsters and heroes soon.
I may have started this sounding rather negative, that just represents the frustrations of coming to grips with, to me, very new technology. The actual play experience was great fun; we have now completed the first adventure, and the characters are now 2nd level, though the rogue was lucky, nearly been taken out with the instant death rule (one hit point short) after a critical hit.
Unfortunately, the characters are all now under a taboo and must ritually cleanse themselves to be able to reenter their village. This, of course, will be the next adventure, for which they will be joined by a fourth character.
If anyone is interested, I'll do a brief post about the design decisions I made when writing the adventure, just leave a comment below.
In the current climate, face to face gaming is clearly impossible outside the household, so what is the answer?
For roleplayers there are several options, and I have been experimenting with some of them with/on my Thursday night group.
The most important requirement is a good way of communicating. Text only can work, but voice is better. Images are even better, but nothing will quite beat actually sitting across from someone. There is always a slight lag, that embarrassed pause straight after someone starts speaking when they realise someone else is also talking.
For our first session, which was mostly to introduce the game and create characters, we simply used Zoom. I offered the standard array method from the Players Handbook, though I was happy for players to roll ability scores if they wished. Some did, and no super powered characters emerged, I do trust them.
For the second session we tried Roll20. This seems highly thought off, and offers a lot of functionality. It's free too, though I seemed to need the subscription to add my own maps. Players only need the free profile though.
I didn't set out to use everything the system offers; my aim was to rely on it for communication, dice rolling and showing maps. I wasn't bothered about such things as initiative tracking or lighting effects. I may investigate these in the future, but I want a good understanding of the basics first.
I created maps for the first adventure using Dundjinni, a great tool for producing maps and floorplans (you can see it being used for my sewer tiles here). Sadly its no longer commercially available, though every so often rumours spring up that it is about to be relaunched via Kickstarter. I then exported them into Roll20. Since I had to borrow a laptop for internet access, this meant copying via USB stick. I then went back and trimmed the images and reloaded them, then realised I had them in the wrong layer, so had to correct that, then I realised the maps covered too large an area for the grid, so I went back and chopped the maps into smaller sections and reloaded them again. By this stage if I hadn't had players ready and wanting to play I might have quit.
But I persevered. Initially we had problems with the sound, faint and tinny. So we used Zoom again, much better.
Unfortunately, one of the players struggled to get Roll20 to load, so had to rely on verbal descriptions. Although since I couldn't get more than the first map to load, soon everyone else was in the same boat. The dice roller proved very useful, for those who could access it.
We managed the set up plus three encounters in just over two hours; quite a bit of time was lost at the beginning. The adventurers are just about to explore a mysterious underground ruin in search of kidnapped tribesfolk.
Before the second session, I went through the tutorial again, and felt I had a slightly better handle on how it worked. I re-edited the maps so that each room had it's own page. This was mostly to avoid having to worry about the 'fog of war' feature. Even so, I started without being able to display maps other than the initial village map (created on MS Paint). Since I can't see what the players can, I was unaware of this, but was able to correct it. Easy, once I had figured it out.
The rest of the session went well and all players were able to access Roll20 this time. My decision to put each room on its own page wasn't so smart. Once the party started splitting up I had to keep switching pages. I determined to redo the maps (again!) and experiment with the 'fog of war' for the next session, learning all the time. The steps you take don't need to be big as long as they are in te right direction.
For the third session the redone maps worked well. Using the fog of war was fun but I still need to work on 'pinging' and I hope to use tokens for monsters and heroes soon.
I may have started this sounding rather negative, that just represents the frustrations of coming to grips with, to me, very new technology. The actual play experience was great fun; we have now completed the first adventure, and the characters are now 2nd level, though the rogue was lucky, nearly been taken out with the instant death rule (one hit point short) after a critical hit.
Unfortunately, the characters are all now under a taboo and must ritually cleanse themselves to be able to reenter their village. This, of course, will be the next adventure, for which they will be joined by a fourth character.
If anyone is interested, I'll do a brief post about the design decisions I made when writing the adventure, just leave a comment below.
Sounds like an interesting and sometimes, frustrating game, but a bit of fun too. Our group have limited ourselves to a video group chat.
ReplyDeleteThe narrative nature of RPGs, at least how we play them, lends them quite well to the group chat kind of set-up. Roll20 simply adds extra bells and whistles in the form of dice roller and maps.
DeleteFurther to the above, I've heard of some enterprising wargamers running games remotely with one person setting up the table and armies and two other players instructing them where to move based on photos or video of the battlefield.
ReplyDelete