Unmute
Shall we start with an unofficial contest? Let’s shall. Ahem:
SCOUR THE ARCHIVES!
As you are no doubt aware, Ranger is something of a silent protagonist. However, this is not her first spoken line in the comic. There’s a bounty of 535 XP and bragging rights to the first adventurer who can find that comic!
Now that the fun and games have been dispensed with, let’s talk about digital media! You almost have to in this day and age. The longer I play in the land of platonic solids, the more the phrase “pen and paper RPG” feels like an anachronism. It may not be ideal, but certain realities of digital gaming are practically inescapable. You’re looking at one of them in today’s comic.
If you’ve ever played an RPG on a VTT, I suspect that you can empathize with Ranger. There’s nothing quite so frustrating as giving this big, impassioned speech, only to have your buddies ignore you.
Well damn. I thought that was some pretty good RP. Nobody cares I guess.
Cut to five minutes later when you realize your mic is off.
Now you’ve already heard my spiel on the woes of the technological tabletop. The lack of eye contact, the so-called “Zoom burnout” of COVID times, and the twin perils of dropped connections and wonky audio settings can make for frustration. But despite my luddite ways, I enjoyed a positive VTT experience recently. It’s one I wanted to share with you guys
The Zone is designed for new weird one-shots in the tradition of Annihilation, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of games, and Lovecraft’s “The Color Out Of Space.” I learned about it thanks to an academic conference (and if you’re morbidly curious you can still watch my panel with the designer). I got the chance to sit down and give it a whirl last week, and let me tall ya: there was enough body horror to make Abercrombie look benign. As a gamer, it’s always nice for me to get out of fantasy land and stretch my legs in new genres. We do that every once in a while here in Handbook-World after all. But the reason The Zone intrigued me was its dedication to the VTT format. From the seamless voting mechanic, to the visible presence of your buddies’ cursors, to the built-in tutorial, it was an experience designed to live on the screen. Rather than attempting to staple the wet-erase experience onto a computer monitor, it actually takes advantage of the move to digital.
And so, for today’s discussion, I’d like to give “VTT best practices” another pass. What is the best adaptation you’ve managed moving from an analog tabletop to a virtual one? Are there any game systems that seem especially suited to that change? Tell us all about your best (and worst) encounters with D&D&Digital down in the comments!
ARE YOU A ROLL20 ADDICT? Are you tired of googling endlessly for the perfect tokens? Then have we got a Patreon tier for you! As a card-carrying Familiar, you’ll receive a weekly downloadable Roll20 Token to use in your own online games, as well as access to all of our previously posted Tokens. It’s like your own personal NPC codex!
Found it! https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/frickin-laser-beams
You know, my first thought was that string of emojis, but I figured you probably weren’t referring to patreon-only content.
Dear sir/ma’am, we’ve never met and I don’t really know anything about you, but I just want you to know that I hate you and I will hunt you down if it’s the last thing I do. Next level I am multiclassing into ranger and picking “AsimovSideburns” as my favored enemy.
You can certainly try, my friend, but I’m already up 535 XP. Better hurry up if you want to catch me!
Huh! I thought that was Inquisitor cussing Magus out! ^_^
Nice catch, Asimovsideburns. How long did it take you to find this page?
I wasted a lot of time trying to just google search specific strips I remembered and thought might be the one before just giving up and scanning the archive page for strips that had Ranger in them. All in all, I think about ten minutes?
Huh. In my first read-through of the comic, however long ago that was, I actually read it in Inquisitor’s voice, having assumed she was the one talking. Finding it slightly hard to switch the mental voices
I’m sorry, but the correct answer is actually:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/strong-silent-type
A comic before the one listed, and her first spoken lines (“…”), as defined by having a speech bubble and other characters reacting to it. Gimme my EXP
https://thumbs.gfycat.com/AdeptFrankIndianringneckparakeet-max-1mb.gif
Harsh.
Well done, Asimov Sideburns! You have earned your 535 XP and, if you choose, may multiclass into Archive Sage.
Fun Fact: According to the “Frickin Laser Beams” script, that bit of dialogue was supposed to go to Inquisitor.
Title: Frickin Laser Beams
Text: Know thy allies’ weaknesses.
Pic: Ranger and Inquisitor are locked in deadly combat with an “ocular tyrant.” The horrible eyeball beast is shooting beams of raw magical energy all over the place. This is a problem for Magus. The catfolk is crouched in the foreground, batting cat-like at one of the beams.
Dialogue:
Inquisitor: Dammit Magus! Help us!
SFX: Bat. Bat. Bat.
Scrollover: “This is almost as bad as that time we fought the yarn elemental!”
Ooh, prestige class…
WTF I completely missed that it was Ranger!!!
Wow, this is… seriously nice. ^_^
“Strong silent type” aside, Ranger looks so happy to be talking and to be heard.
Laurel has been stepping up her background game lately. 🙂
She certainly has, and the way she drew Ranger is excellent as well. ^_^
My compliments to the lady!
Laurel: “I fucked up and drew elbows though.”
She is a harsh self-critic.
I told ya that was going to happen sooner or later!
(Duck various thrown objects on the way out.)
That artwork wouldn’t be out of place in a digital painting. Awesome.
My favourite part about digital gaming is the ease of one-on-one conversations between DM and player. So much easier to just have the DM and player pop of into a private chat, rather than most of the party (or the DM and player, depending on which group’s more willing to move) having to get up and head off to the kitchen whenever a dream sequence occurs
I never went in for too much of the side-conversation biz. Nothing against it. Just a stylistic thing.
I do like the dedicated “banter” channel though. Nice to not clog up the main chat with semi-relevant animated gifs.
So, is Ranger going to keep her ability to speak (albeit being silent IC)? Or is she going to evolve to allow for VTT/online-play related jokes?
E.g. ‘robot voice’ when you have a laggy connection, interruptions from family, background noise, being AFK during important moments or battles, text-only players…
I’ll refer you to the hover over text.
unfortunately my iDevice browser doesn’t support hover over text.
I got you fam:
For those who need translation: “This is not canon”.
I almost read that as „I‘m not a dog“
je n‘est pas k9
I almost read that as „I‘m not a dog“
je n‘est pas k9
What’s your opinion of the game ‘A silent year’, or other minimal prep, online party games like the Jackbox games, Gartic Phone, Town of Salem…?
https://garticphone.com/
I like the “make-up-a-world” games. I actually made one for a class once upon a time:
https://colinsstricklin.wordpress.com/2020/09/24/primal-clay/
But I think these “theater exercise” games can be a very different beast than the TRPGs I love best. Players gain a high degree of agency when they can help to create the world. However, that makes the world feel somehow unreal: it’s “just made up” instead of existing on the table as a world beyond your own authorship. Asking players to take up GM duties can dilute the pleasure of both.
Neither approach is wrong, but I do think there are some real tradeoffs at play.
Those faces are Magus and Inquisitor realizing all the speeches and sounds they never heard. From both Handbooks.
Truly the “I know kung-fu” of Handbook-World.
Well done indeed. I hope that you enjoy those bragging rights of yours.
This was meant to be in reply to AsimovSideburns, not sure why it became an independent post instead
Headcanon: The sideburns’s bragging was too powerful, and blew you out of the thread.
Thank you!
I had a game dissolve on me just before Covid quarantining was a thing, and found the group I am currently in on the mysterious thing we call the Information Superhighway (that is elder speak for the World Wide Web… guess what kids, that is what the www stands for in ye elden addresses) via Reddit and a little snooping around to actually get a game because I really wanted to find a game to play.
Of course this meant it would probably not be an in person game, but I have never been against the VTT experience.
I have been playing with this group now for a year and a half and I think the only thing that can sustain any group is the group itself. If we had not “clicked”, I think the game would have dissolved just like any other and it wouldn’t have mattered if it was online or at a table.
I think the second “trick” was using DnDBeyond as our go to for pretty much everything, with Roll20 as our “table” for maps and token moving, Discord between games, and the advent of Zoom as the new Skype, but better and easier. But most importantly… we face time.
I think actually seeing each other, even with different definition levels in our individual cameras, really helps to convey the important bits of the emotions and the context for our play. Seeing each other week to week, feels better than the empty void of a voice in the distance. It has brought us all closer in a way the table might have if we were able to actually be close together.
It may not be fore everyone of course, but consider that if you were at a table, people would see your face there too, so why not try showing that mug on a camera in the VTT as well.
Weirdly, I encountered my first hard “I don’t play remote” response from a new acquaintance last week. I was shopping for people to try out The Zone, and the immediate reaction was “won’t do VTT.” And since it was from a younger person, I was frankly baffled.
I’m sort of against it for myself, partly because I have more difficulty focusing when I’m not with either my party or my players. I get easily distracted when I can’t completely isolate myself from the rest of the world (barring searching the Intertubes for DnD rules or background art or the like), and my home is not exactly the most conducive to the required focus: My comp is in a room with my talkative brother, he’s constantly having conversations with our OTHER brother, etc. Playing in person also means I don’t have to leave the game temporarily if I need to get food or drink.
Many of my fellow party members (who were also my players once upon a time, when I could muster the energy to Master a Dungeon) are doing an online campaign with a friend on the other side of the world, and it works for them– it just didn’t do so hot for me.
I’m a younger(-ish. Nearly 30) player/DM who won’t play remote.
I run and play games primarily to socialize. Interacting with people through a screen isn’t socializing. I’ve given it a try, and I don’t get the boost of energy that I get from an in-person game, or any other kind of socializing. I just come out of it feeling tired, and dreading the next virtual “meet up”.
…And without the benefits of socialization, all that work preparing and running a game, or even preparing to play in one is just that: Work. Pointless work that I get nothing out of.
In response to last comic’s question “Who are PCs” I guess that confirms that the bounty hunters are PCs. Honestly Cavalier Fighter should join them, I think she’d be a good fit.
see hover text for additional ambiguity
I have a table rule which I need to be a little better about enforcing, but it does get the point across.
In R20 and running voice comms with 7-10 people in the room, there is a lot going on on any given night. If your character actions are not TYPED and entered into the R20 room, they might not count.
Personally, I’d prefer a much stricter R20=IC, Voice=OOC and action/rule clarifications, but I get that sometimes people want to use their silly voices, but I get sometimes people want their comments and such to stand as character actions. Still, with the sized group I have, I have got to have controls present or basically things get missed constantly.
Wait… You actually type in “my character checks for traps” or it doesn’t happen?
I usually tell people to throw a perception if they’re proceeding slowly. If they’re just running though, yep-they need to declare looking for traps. But also, I don’t care for standard trap design. I prefer high frequency, lower consequence to higher consequence, lower frequency.
So there’s lots of traps, and even things that are more just environmental features, but they rarely do heavy damage. One of the fun ones I had was destructible walls that had more enemies behind them. A player got Awesome Blow’d by a giant Golem and crashed through one of those walls. Everyone panic’d because they just aggro’d many new enemies.
When I was a child I used to play TRPGs with various family members over the phone, so it suddenly moving online isn´t anything new for me.
I am normally a theater of the mind kinda person, mostly because I don´t really have the time to prepare backgrounds, but I will say that using Roll20 have made me more interested in using battlemaps. Partly because I can always just prepare some furniture or trees and then litter them onto the battlefield as needed.
Overall through my experiences with digital TRPG have been mixed. Mainly due to players. There are some people who just can´t get into the game properly when they aren´t in the same room, others who gets too easily distracted if they have access to digital media (This also includes phones) and thirds who just can´figure out how the site works.
As a designer, one of the more interesting insights VTTs have given me is the need for player maps vs. GM maps. It annoys the hell out of me when I have to spend time deleting the big fat SECRET DOOR icon from the image I intend to use as my battle map.
Rangér Magritte joeks! Can ‘draw’ a sword named Trahison out of thin air.
Highbrow humor! Gotta use that grad school education somehow!
I haven’t exactly been thrilled in my limited experience going online with VTTs. While they’re much more convenient for drawing maps and switching between locations quickly, populating it with icons that actually look like what you want is cheaper and easier than getting models for IRL, and it’s easier to schedule with friends than in-person. However, it puts even more pressure on the DM/GM to prepare ahead of time and it can be a struggle to learn how to input the various abilities into the game on something like Roll20.
The biggest proponents are also the savviest users.
“If you use voice changers and face rig and add a few dozen macros, it beats the pants off of IRL gaming!”
Meanwhile I’m sitting here like, “How do I erase that dick the barbarian drew on the map?”
Got nothing 🙁
With the plague i haven’t played with my group on a while and for me digital isn’t the same 🙁
Sorry 🙁
Handbook-World welcomes you for the interim. Please enjoy your stay.
Roll20 is the ‘go-to’ VTT for a while, but as of Foundry leaving closed alpha, I’ve found it’s pretty much better in every way. Roll20’s good and has a lot of pre-packaged features but Foundry’s module system means that anyone can create new features really easily, and you can install them quickly. Plus their dynamic lighting system is so good. Instead of just ‘this is a wall.’ Foundry has ‘Wall’, for basic walls, ‘invisible walls’ for windows and the like, doors that players can click on to open, and ethereal walls for ‘players can move through them, but not see through them’ great for hanging curtains.
That and the ability to Pause the VTT is GREAT for my style of GMing so I can pause when the players open a door to give some exposition.
Also, anyone who’s opened roll20’s character sheets knows full well why roll20 takes so long to load.
Foundry’s Pathfinder 1e character sheets are, if I remember right, javascript files.
Roll20’s are 11,000 lines of uncommented, un line-broken C# that is utterly unreadable even to someone familiar with the language. It’s like cracking open the Necronomicon.
Ima wait until my current crop of RPGs end before I explore the next thing. I’ve been hearing a lot of exciting things about Foundry though.
What a suspiciously timed topic. I just had my first “live” (in the sense of time) game in about a decade and first virtual game just last night.
It just wound up being roleplaying and was a bit rocky due to various audio issues (some people couldn’t talk for various reasons or it was difficult to cleanly hear one). So there still wound up being a lot of typing involved. And of course stuff like accidentally talking over each other.
But I had fun. I’ve really missed a lot of that in real time responsiveness and tone based nuance.
Cover your webcam. You never now when THEY are watching.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/anti-party
I’ve no answer to add in regards to the question of best VTT.
I’ve tried VTT. It’s always bad. Maybe others have made it work, but I’ve only ever seen it make games worse, and I would wager that every virtual game that’s ever “worked” would have worked even better if it had been played in person.
As far as I’m concerned, there’s no such thing as a “Best” VTT game. At most, there may be a “least bad” one, but I’ve not found it, nor do I care to search.
I suspect that, in the hands of an uber-user who has all the macros, automated character sheets, voice changers and animations installed, it would be a cool experience. I’m not that guy though.