My in person D&D game ended a little over 6 months before the world went into Quarantine mode. I had gone on a hiatus to recharge my creative energy, and just generally get through the holidays (which in my experience tend to be terrible for gaming, at least once you are out of school).
When we were all suddenly shut in with extra time on our hands, I put out the call on social media for players. The call was answered by a player from the recently ended group, and some High School friends with whom I had kept the barest of contact.
So already this is great, rekindled an ongoing social relationship with folks from whom I had grown apart. the trick now was what to run and how to run it. The what to run is covered in my previous "What am I playing right now" post.
The how, that took some thought (that probably should have happened before I made the offer).
Roll20: We tried to use this as a stand in when one player could not make the drive to the game. It was mixed results most time. To be fair, most of the issues centered around us trying to have a laptop "sit" at the table with people. The video chat was also frequently flaky. Having the on screen dice rolling, and player controllable tokens was fun, but honestly the effort to put that together just never seemed to be worth the pay off.
Other Virtual Table Tops: Lots of them look sexy and have great tools. But also most of them are built around existing rules sets and modules. So if you like to roll your own, seems like you will be doing a lot of work. Also the buy in, for what may be a pick up game, or short lived expereince seems high.
Zoom: Zoom would actually be great, but I was reluctant to use my work license for a D&D game. The main features would have been folks joining via web, and the ability to share specific windows.
Skype: I went with Skype. If you run Windows, Microsoft probably already installed it for you, or it is easy to get. Since we were playing a face to face game, many of the other fancy video conference features were not needed. (They eventually added the ability to share a specific window too, so that helped immensely).
Considerations
Time: While I typically shoot for the 3-4 hour play time in person. I opted for 2 hours here. First, based off the advice and experience given by other online DMs. Also, threading the needle between people's schedule across times zones necessitated a compression of play time. This works well since as a DM I find running over VC much more draining, and since the activity is more focused we probably get close to the same amount of "play" in.
Dice: It would be nice if any of the chat features of these VC clients support of AOL Chat Room style die rollers, but I can see why they don't. Honestly, I was not too worried about dice integrity. I play with friends, and if you are the type to cheat at D&D, you need more help than a dice cam can give. So all the players have thier own dice, or online dice roller and just call out results.
Maps, Tokens, Etc: At first I started describing the dungeon, hall length, twists and turns, but after a few sessions of that, I gave up. With the 2 hour session, spending so much time describing or clarifying the layout was a waste. So I moved to setting up a Photoshop window with the map, using an opaque layer as "fog of war" and erasing that as they progress. I tried to set up a battle mat with tokens that I would move along with the action, but was running into visibility problems. It is hard to account for how folks have their screen set up. In short, most of the game is theater of the mind.
Sound: I recommend everyone get their own dedicated mic and headphones (or at least headphones) to help with audio issues (computer too). None of my players use them, so every so often we need to deal with feedback or bad placement. Especially since 3 of them play at the same couch/table/computer (we make it work).
Camaraderie: There is some chit chat/how you doing when folks first start to connect, but in general once play starts, things stay focused (apart from the occasional pet visit). Some may see this as a good or bad thing. The "turn taking" nature of VC audio also cuts back on side characterization, and can limit the ability to get things clarified. Just the nature of the beast.
All in all I am pretty pleased with the simplicity of the setup and how well it works, allowing us to get to the game.
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