Technological Dependence
I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but I have all manner of empathy for Street Samurai. That’s because my gaming habit has recently gone virtual.
Way back in Recruiting I mentioned that your faithful Handbook of Heroes writer/illustrator team had moved cross country. It’s been a couple of months now, and we’ve settled in nicely. The boxes are (mostly) unpacked, the minis collection is (somewhat) sorted, and we’ve stopped getting lost on the way to our new FLGS. But despite the many miles between our new lair and our old gaming group, we didn’t want to give up on our long-running campaigns. And that meant coming to terms with Roll20.
I’m sure that some of you guys manage online play like it ain’t no thang, but I’ve got gremlins in the worst way. Devices malfunction inexplicably in my hands. Software constantly crashes whenever I use it, components become unusually fragile at my touch, and WIFI links suffer faltering connections and odd interference. And if you recognize any of the above as plagiarized straight from the Shadowrun rule book, it’s because we’re living in a dystopian cyberpunk future and those lines were written about me. At least, that’s how I feel after trying to run a session online.
Hyperbole aside, my most recent session saw a crash on Google Hangouts, excruciating lag on Roll20 itself, randomly muted player mics, and a fully broken audio connection for our poor bard. We wound up quitting early when we realized we were playing a text-based game through Roll20’s chat window. And sure, I know that upgraded tech and a bit of practice can get us around these hurdles, but even that’s not the biggest issue.
The ogre fighter in my group said it best when he called online play the Diet Mountain Dew of gaming. There’s just something about the face-to-face interaction, the ease of in-person RP, that can’t be replicated with a headset. I think it’s the same reason that Sir Ian McKellen lamented all that greenscreen work in The Hobbit films: “I act with other people, I don’t act on my own.” For me, turning a profoundly social activity into a glorified Skype call robs the experience of its fundamental character. You lose body language. You lose eye contact. You can’t riff off of other people when you’re constantly saying, “Sorry. I couldn’t hear that. Someone else was talking. Say it again please.”
To be fair, you do get a lot of cool functionality online. There’s that sweet fog of war feature, the potential for discreet note-passing through chat windows, and all the cool audio tricks you can shake a soundboard at. For some people, that’s enough of an upside to make it worthwhile. And hey, I’ll be the first to say it’s better than quitting my favorite campaigns altogether. But if I’m being honest, I always detect a hint of that unpleasant Diet Dew aftertaste whenever log off at the end of an online session.
What about the rest of you guys? Have you run into any tech troubles in your own games? Do you enjoy or (is it even possible?) actually prefer online play? Let’s hear all about the best and worst of your virtual tabletop experiences down in the comments!
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I often ran into tech troubles when playing online, like not being able to actually load the right map in roll 20, or not being able to join the group, or it just crashing on me. I also do definitely agree that face to face play often just feels better. I will give online table top gaming credit though for how much easier it is to make maps and that the secret note passing can come in handy a lot in intrigue games. I have my problems overall with it, but its still definitely still fun, if a bit less so. It’s not like the situation of playing with absolutely horrid other players or dms, where I would say no dnd is better then horrible dnd. A tleast I would say its better based on what I’ve heard, while I have definitely played with problematic players, i’ve never had anything even close to approaching the horror stories I’ve heard about with actually awful groups.
The “problem players” thing is an interesting angle. Do you think that horror stories are inherently more horrible when they happen in person?
Eh, you can deal with that player easily I believe.
Most through the threats of “Get out of my house”, or physical threats.
Online threats…..Not so much.
Well I mean, presumably you can kick the nerd out of your server.
Oh i wasn’t saying that, I was just saying that while playing online might not be ideal, its still alot of fun, and far better then playing with problem players who seem to try to ruin other peoples fun or just make the game all about themselves or something like that.
I’ve played one D&D session online, because some online friends and I really wanted to put together a game but between 5 of us we’re in 3 different countries and 4 different timezones. It was really great fun, and we didn’t really have any tech troubles, but I couldn’t help feeling it would be better if we could have somehow found a way to get round a real table together.
Granted we didn’t use any tech tricks – we just opened a video chat on Discord and off we went. Battle maps were shown by the DM pointing her webcam at them.
Then again I don’t know how much of a difference being more high-tech would make, and there’s certainly nothing to stop you having the same things in real life. Particularly note passing, as we move towards more and more players running their character sheets on their tablets it’s easy to send a quick message to the GM without others round the table realising you’re not looking up your spells.
Good point! The merger of online and offline RP has a way of sneaking up on you. I didn’t actually think of digital sheets as “D&D&Digital” in the same way as Roll20, but I suppose you’re right. Those devices are already seamlessly integrated into daily life, and so it’s easier to be comfortable with them than the techno-irritation that is a group all learning new software simultaneously. That doesn’t make them any less a part of D&D&D though.
I’ve run an entire campaign through Roll 20, and I find it favors combat heavy, RP-light interactions. Since you can build comparatively large and elaborate set pieces, compared to in person, it’s much harder to improvise when everything goes sideways.
We always have tech trouble, but such is life on the internet. Rarely anything crippling. I personally prefer using discord for my video and audio needs.
And yes, playing in person is ALWAYS better. Cause then you can throw dice at the worst pun makers 🙂
I see you took the perspicacity feat. Clever to focus on the positives when you’re actually using the thing. “I can’t do social situations or improv well, but this other part of the game improves. Let’s design around that!”
I’m sure the glitches and gremlins are just a result of your magnetic personality, as they are with mine…
Empathy, man. So much empathy.
Several problems over time:
– Someone’s Discord is acting up (poor connection and so on…).
– A server is down (Discord, Roll20, etc…)
– That time a lightning storm rolled over our DMs house mid-session and they had to log off or risk killing their PC.
– Someone’s PC actually breaking.
The list goes on.
There are ways around these issues though, and there are times when digital has a leg up on in person too, but anywho.
I will give you this though:
– Roll20 seems to have much better performance on Firefox than Chrome (this is from a friend who prefers Chrome for most things).
– If you are paying for a Roll20 account, then look up the player-made addons you can download. (A few of our favorites are a GM Party Initiative Button that rolls for everyone, and a turn indicator that spins around the token who’s turn it is currently, complete with a “End Turn” button on every token action menu)
The dynamic lighting standard feature also is nice and can really make things fun.
The citizens of Absalom Station thank you for your service. I’ll see about changing browsers. 🙂
A few more things:
– Turn off 3D dice rolling. It’s a cute lil feature that’s out of place, taxing on the browser, and stops play to render.
– If you use something else for voice and video chat, then set the player bars to “Name Only”, and disable sending video and speech.
– THIS-> https://wiki.roll20.net/Dice_Reference Live it. Love it. Macros are life.
– We use Discord, and it works for us. You can make multiple chat channels to keep campaigns separate, and control access to them. Recently they added a group video chat option too.
– There are also videos on YouTube that have a LOT of pointers for Roll20, like splitting the party between maps in a campaign, etc…
Hope these help.
What are you doing for character sheets? We like Google docs for our campaigns…
We just use physical character sheets. Mostly we’re relying on Roll20 as a common tabletop for tactical play. What’s the advantage of going fully integrated?
I gotta say, we live in the lamest cyberpunk future possible. Cybernetics aren’t here yet, magic isn’t a thing at all, and instead of Ares or Aztechnology we get Disney and Unilever for megas.
I would do a run on Epcot. I hear that’s where they keep the mind control tech.
Careful of their robutt (Spelling is wintentional) president security chummer.
Not going to lie: This would be an awesome spoof session.
I’ve never ran into tech trouble and hearing the tech trouble you all had made me wonder why you’re even using google hangouts. No one uses google hangouts. Your gremlins must be demigods.
On the other hand. I can’t stand face to face at all. Online tabletop is the only way I’d ever want to play cus otherwise calculation and die and maps get absurdly annoying to deal with. And i’m not one to be fine with only myself knowing what my stuff looks like, other people must actively be on the same page and roll20 tokens help with that, especially since anyone can upload them.
And then the worst part of all of why I can’t do in person.
I dislike looking people eye to eye, I don’t emote. I don’t feel comfortable outside of my house. And I dislike travel time. And man do paper character sheets suck ass.
True enough on the paper char sheets.
I would buy a tablet for a google doc before ever doing that again.
If someone owned a MS Surface table though, could you use that for a board on Roll20 I wonder?
That would be so cool…
Now see, I think that this is a place where analog games have a leg up on digital. When manual calculation is a part of play, you learn the system more easily. It’s like being immersed in a foreign language vs. using Google Translate. When you have to know where all those numbers are coming from as a player, it becomes easier to learn how to manipulate them as a GM. That was my experience anyway.
Some things I’ve found while using Roll20 to run a campaign over the last 2+ years, just in case they’re helpful to you:
Don’t use “Advanced Fog of War” unless you really need it. LAAAAG. (but so nifty!)
Turn off Autofill on whatever browser you use for Roll20, at least when actually USING Roll20. The more fields on your character sheet, the more it tries to find something to fill them with. Having multiple sheets open multiplies the problem.
Don’t give tokens (other than PC tokens, of course) sight/darkvision, especially if there are a lot of them
Restart your browser entirely every two hours. I think there’s a memory leak?
Discord. I recommend a campaign-specific server. My group uses it for a lot of socializing between sessions and I use it to have character-specific discussions in private text channels that I can refer back to later. We share a lot of Handbook of Heroes links because they’re so appropriate!
A buddy of mine has been talking about Discord as a chat solution. I think Ima take him up on that.
Also, it’s a well-known fact that you get Advantage / Circumstance Bonuses for sharing Handbook links on Roll20. That’s just smart play. 😀
As one of Keryn’s players the above helps, and there’s entirely too much similarities with HoH at times. You’ve seen into our souls!
Truly, I am the id of the community. 😛
Most of these comics come from my experiences in actual games, so I’m glad to know that I’m not alone in my traumatic experiences.
Do that, my friend google hangout kinda sucks at times.
[quote]Discord. I recommend a campaign-specific server. My group uses it for a lot of socializing between sessions and I use it to have character-specific discussions in private text channels that I can refer back to later.[/quote]
This is a really good point – some friends and I set up a campaign-specific Discord chat for the one-shot we did, and half a year later we’re still chatting about our D&D games, Critical Role and High Rollers, comparing campaign stories and DMing tips, and running a play by post on there.
Also, i don’t know how to format quotes on this site.
I think it’s just the greater than key.
I’ve been running a text-based campaign for a couple of years now. It’s a different kettle of fish to meeting in person, but it has some advantages as well. I’m a fairly quiet person, and I find it easier to organize my thoughts and type out lengthy descriptions in text than it would be to say them out loud. There’s a clear delineation between ic and ooc moments; we use separate chat rooms for each. All the math is done automatically. We can play anytime that we’re all online, instead of having to organize weekly sessions.
It helps that my group is a bunch of active writers and readers. Communicating through text just works really well for us. Sure, we don’t have the same dynamic as we’d have in person, but the collaborative storytelling aspect of the game hasn’t suffered at all.
I imagine that it’s also more difficult to have a problem player in a text-based environment. If there’s a feeling of a writerly collaboration in the (virtual) room, it’s much harder to be That Guy.
I’ve talked about running Curse of the Crimson Throne as a text-based game, but I have no idea where to start. Any useful links or advice?
Hah! Finding That Guy in a Play-By-Post game seems way easier than in real life. Though maybe that’s just me. Online there’s very little repercussions for being a terrible player, more so when most DM’s are novices or just not confident enough to speak out against a loud mouth munchkin. At least in real life you could physically threaten someone who is being a terrible gamer, since no one wants things to escalate to that point. But there’s no such garuntee in an online game.
Hmmm… Is that inherent in online play, or just the culture that’s built up around it?
We use two Discord chats for our play-by-post. One is for out of character stuff, declaring your actions and rolling dice (we use a dice roller bot called RPBot for the last bit), the other is for us to describe our actions. So all dialogue happens in the RP channel, and in combat we use the OoC channel to say “I run to this square, attack rolls 7, bonus action second attack rolls 16” and then the RP channel is used for saying “Erik runs towards the orc, wildly swinging a hammer which just glances off his foes shield, before slamming the second hammer into the orc’s collarbone with a sickening crack.”
Also, our DM posts pictures every few combat turns so that we have a good visual of what’s going on, and includes rough health bars so we remember who’s been hit.
Since the most high tech device my group use is a instrument called “Pencil” we don’t usually have that problems. We are, i admit, WyyPhie heretics, we use that strange material called paper for our character sheets. Also since we are normally in the same city we use to play in person, it’s not fun to yeal a person on the screen, i complete agree with that, technology takes away the fun of the fights, the screams, the fist of fury unleashed on the face of your stupid friends that forgot to buy weapons for the group, again. At least US have better wireless connections that my country, here if we try something like that, with so much programs open at the same time we will we unable to use internet 🙁
WyyPhie heretics are generally thrown into bodies of water weighted down with sacks of old floppy discs. If they float, they’re deemed witches and dunked again.
Signal for the signal god, megas for the megas throne.
-Inquisitor of WyyPhie.
Kinda WyyPhie may be the reason why Golarion is gone. Sounds like a terrible, capricious, wrathful god.
Good luck with the online game, it surprise me how many people do it, makes me feel old 🙁
I’m GMing exclusively online at this point, since I couldn’t find a regular/reliable real life group.
I run one campaign on Roll20 and a second one on FantasyGrounds, and the only one that really had any tech issues at this point has been on roll20 due to the website just breaking.
I have to say I really prefer running games digital at this point. I can prep my session better in advance, especially on FG. And it’s just way easier to find 4 people to sit at their computer at the same time, instead of the same room.
And bonus stuff like the dynamic lighting on Roll20, or the high level of automation on FG makes games flow way better.
Can I get a side-by-side comparison on FG vs Roll20? My understanding was that they were pretty similar.
A big problem when designing anything set in the future is trying to figure out what exactly the future holds.
And I think that WIFI being worshipped as a deity is something that I definitely expect to happen within a few decades. Truly, the company that produces Shadowrun must have great oracular abilities.
I think that a cult of hippie-like dudes that just want to “follow the WIFI, man” could be an excellent addition to a pink mohawks style Shadowrun game.
Ever since graduating college, my group has moved online using Roll20 (no advanced features) with a private Discord group for talking (no video).
Occasionally we have issues with someone’s mic, needing to refresh Roll20, or a player getting distracted by irl events/people. But overall these have generally been pretty small issues that are outweighed by the benefits.
Not needing to travel is great when the group has spread out and isn’t always even in the same state during a session. Having large dice rolls and calculations handled by macros makes so many things much easier and faster to run (especially as a GM needing to roll a dozen small attacks a round). Digital character sheets make tracking conditions/ailments/etc. so much easier. Especially considering that I custom make fillable character sheets in google sheets and share them with my group & then have a GM sheet that can auto-import useful reference data from these player sheets.
Plus, despite lacking the face-to-face interaction, there are times when I’ve actually found digital games to be more immersive. Players have loved it when they’re talking to an NPC and suddenly get a pop-up giving a close up look at that NPC’s face. Having handouts that can be accessed at any time help players stay up to date of where they are in the world or what has been going on recently in the campaign. And not to mention maps that can be (mostly) easily prepared in advance with hidden/revealable areas gives the players a good sense of what is around their character when exploring and/or fighting.
Plus, there’s probably the best benefit of online gaming. After a very long session lasting until late at night, no one has to be worried about driving home while practically falling asleep at the wheel.
Nice try, Roll20. I almost fell for your human-like sales pitch. 😛
My physical group doesn’t use a lot of tech. I am pretty much the most tech savvy person in my group and the most I get is Spreadsheets and Rtfs for character sheets and DM Notes. I find that Rtfs load faster than Word docs and still have all the formatting options my notes require. Configure them to load with Windows Wordpad instead of Notepad or Word and it is faster and simpler.
While I have personally done a lot of online gaming in various different mediums, I find that I prefer physical games due to my roleplaying style. Namely, I tend to actually act quite a bit when I am roleplaying, even as the GM. Pantomiming taking drinks, small little tics, and even some important stuff like having a character rub their ring finger when discussing the events surrounding their lost husband’s death. Since the rest of my group isn’t as observant as their character’s skill ratings, I will still call for rolls on occasion. It did make me feel awesome when I was Rping a party and I poured a PC a drink, offered it to them, stood there talking until they had sipped their drink a few times and they suddenly froze. “She’s not drinking…” The PC said in his normal voice, giving the OOC handsign. I smiled. “No, she’s not drinking. Roll Stamina+Resolve. You’ve had 4 drinks.”
And you have a lot more trouble getting little things like that in a Play-by-post or other techy game. Your mileage may vary, of course. I realize it’s a very table specific thing. But it was awesome.
Return To Flying Status? Rainbow Trout Fry Syndrome? Real-Time Financial Services?
I’m right there with you on the acting. It’s a large part of the appeal for me, and it just don’t work so good with a video feed.
Man, I nearly quit playing pathfinder altogether due to tech issues. My brother let me join a roll20 campaign but his laptop was perfect for that sort of thing. While I had to use the family’s shitty home PC that occasionally fails to load up RuneScape. There were many days where I just wanted to quit because of technical issues that I couldn’t solve and my brother had no concern over.
Wasn’t until he got a new laptop that I was allowed to take his older but functional one, but still it was hell in a hand basket for the first two months.
Don’t worry. You shall one day have enough disposable income for your own rig, and then you will thrive upon ramen and bandwidth, growing like mold in the dank confines of your gamer cellar.
In the last few years I have primarily played online games, and many of the stories I have told in these comments have been from online games. Off the top of my head, the Whip-user from the “Named Attacks” comic and the one character I’ve gone on length about the VoP Primeval Warshaper Hengeyokai was also from an online game. There are other noteworthy characters, and I’ve enjoyed most of them.
Tech issues I have run into very few times. Roll20 is notorious for having the worst voice chat system, so that’s one issue I guess, but usually people just use an off-site voice chat system. I’ve used TeamSpeak, Discord, and Skype for it and for each one you’ll run into people with connection issues from time to time but those are manageable.
The worst I’ve encountered through online play are the kinds of things you’ll encounter in physical tabletop games. Things such as bad DMs not understanding that the familiar under the DM’s control should automatically roll Stealth checks when the Wizard commands it to appear inconspicuous, or at the very least Bluff checks. Interpersonal arguments happening due to one person not being comfortable with certain topics, so on and so forth.
I’ve had many great experiences though, all within the last 5 years. Before the economic crisis, I was playing The Sunless Citadel with a Venezuelan GM, and he was amazing at running that module. I’ve played with people from Eastern Europe and Australia, Canada and Argentina, Western Europe and South Korea, though I’m still missing out on playing with an African. These opportunities are amazing, since after the session when you’re relaxing in the afterglow of a good fight, you learn about what’s going on in other people’s neck of the woods. I’m certain that these experiences would be impossible for me without online-play.
I don’t think anyone else had mentioned this yet, and since I have a fairly solid gaming group in meat space it hadn’t occurred to me. The ability to game with a diverse set of people from all across the globe is indeed a cool affordance of the digital. Good call!
Yeah, roll20 has got its problems. As other people have said do not use advanced fog of war, it is way too laggy to be any use. I wouldn’t recommend using much of the site as it needs work, if you want to use video chat or voice I’d go with Discord.
If you want roll20 to shine I’m going to recommend using 5etools’ plugin along with Roll20 Enhancement Suite (which the former can’t be used without the latter anyway). It really makes using roll20 a better experience. That said don’t bring it up on the roll20 forums, it’s something that depending on roll20’s mod team could get you banned.
What does it do?
Wait, Oracle is a halfling? I thought she was just short…
Is there a difference?
For me, it’s not really a matter of choice. I have to play online or I can’t play. Lack of transportation and actual places around where people can go to play limits my options. Yeah, can be lag and other problems with tech, but it’s a lot better than not being able to play at all.
That seems to line up with my personal “online play is an OK substitute for IRL play” position. Seems like a lot of other folks on the thread actually prefer it though. And like you say, depending on situation it can be a lifesaver!
Yup. And you never have to worry about remembering to bring dice.
Personally, I actually fall into the category of preferring online play. Not only for the edge it gives in DMing, with the ability to prep complex maps and have great visual handouts – I also find that it adds ease to roleplay, which the DM must do most of all. I find I can more easily play 10 different NPCs in one session more believably if they are just a voice and a picture -rather than just me at the end of a table, talking. Sure my all my gesticulation is lost, but it’s still better on balance.
But also, and this is very much a me problem, I really am never comfortable playing host to such a large group, in my own home, especially when it comes to those gamers who embrace the neckbeard sterotype. It’s nice not to have to decon my dining area after each session.
Hello, Past Colin. It’s 2020, everything is worse, and basically every tabletop gamer in the world either stopped or has experience with the drawbacks of online play.
Personally, I like play-by-post games (even more than face-to-face in some ways), but hardly anyone else likes playing that way even on D&D forums. Ah well.