Due to the current limitations to pursue our common hobby, many groups might consider an online variant.
While obviously these cannot replace the fun of playing together in the same place, it would be interesting to share and read your experiences with playing tabletop rpg virtually (how have you solved it, what worked better, which system have you used, etc.)
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Great post here and something I was thinking about posting too.
I know I’m a bit of a ghost around here and shouldn’t really say anything but if you’re planning on meeting up for a game session sometime soon, please reconsider it.
It’s not so much of a problem if you yourself get infected but you may pass it on to someone else who has a worse time of it.
Get on Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds. Or even just give Discord a go. All of them are viable alternatives.
Stay safe and be excellent to each other.
Neil
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I’ve only used Roll20 so far. It may feel a bt clunky at first, but once you get used to it, it feels fine. Having two monitors with a high resolution is really useful, considering that you can keep your character sheet and other stuff such as discord or statblocks for wildshapes/summons/minions open on one screen while having the actual roll20 including the current map on the other screen.
In most of my games I am using the digital Roll20 dice: for Elven Accuracy I have a simple macro that puts out the attack roll 3 times for the attack in question, and most other things can be done with the built-in character sheet options such as damage modifiers. In my SKT damge the DM allowed us to use our actual dice, which works great as well (we trust each other to not fudge rolls and there’s still the option to point a webcam at the dice tray to show everyone your rolls) and might even speed things up compared to digital dice if there’s someone who needs to roll a lot of dice (such as a necromancer with an army of undead), as they can roll all of them at the same time without clogging up the chat.
Neil sighting!
I think the appropriate gaming term is “making a Wisdom check.”
Seriously, people, stay home, be well, and catch you on the flip side!
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@Arthilas thank you for your feedback.
Yesterday we’ve give it a try with FantasyGrounds and D&D5E. The GM has to pay for it (and re-purchase the books), the players can join for free. Just as @Arthilas said with roll20, this system is also veeery clunky (we’ve spent 2/3 of the session to set up the system properly, you have to re-create all your character sheets, etc.), placing characters around different maps were pain-in-the-back (we’ve even dropped the use of maps in the middle of the session) and there is no voice-chat, so we’ve used Discord also (we’ve realized, in Discord you can also generate rolls and it’s free, so if you don’t care about battle maps, minis and fancy looks, you can run sessions here for free!) But after all these, the game was still fun and we decided to continue experimenting with other solutions (but also keeping this one) and we don’t let the CoV hinder us to enjoy our hobby by running virtual sessions.
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Even the forums says “It’s been a while since we’ve seen Neil”
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- Astral: The newest entrant to the market, with greater emphasis on graphics and background music available through their store. Browser-based.
- Fantasy Grounds: An installable program, with more adventures converted in to downloadable files so users do not have to enter everything.
- Roll20: Browser-based, and app compatible depending on your bandwidth. Probably the most commonly used program and the easiest to learn as a player. Full Disclosure: I have worked with Astral and Roll20 before.
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@cwebb maybe one day you should share your thoughts (design-wise), why these softwares are built-as-is (just personally interested)
I just had that post delivered to my door, and decided to spread the co…ntent.
I don’t like any of them so far. Calling them clunky is letting them off easy.