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General Are people playing online via Zoom/Discord?

dto

SOC-6
I'm trying to get back into Traveller after many years, and I'm looking for a campaign. But with the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems like many players are no longer having face-to-face sessions.

Have people had much luck with online sessions via Zoom and Discord (with camera and audio)? I tried another RPG online a few years ago and it was a pain. I'm wondering if videoconference software like Zoom is making online play feasible.

DT
 
The several options are all viable to the right group, and a disaster with the wrong one.

Pretty much this. My regular RPG group is using Skype and occasional screen sharing / image sharing and that works (though we've not done Traveller yet, it worked for the other games we've played over the months). I tried that with my other group which is solely The Fantasy Trip, and via screen sharing did the tactical level thing okay but as 2 of the players are 13 and 10, it did not work out in the long run as they don't play as much theater of the mind and it does not keep their interest in the game.

I've played with Roll20 but not enough to have an opinion on it; I use Steam's TableTop simulator for board games but see how it could readily be used for RPGs as well with a bit of work. And that is as far as I've gotten with virtual gaming despite having a few friends who that is the only way they play.

There may be a few PBP (play by post) games still active on this forum, and while I know there are other on-line games being run, not sure how to find them.

Sorry not much more help than that.
 
My group went virtual in 2018 after several members moved a few hours away for school/work. It also allowed another player to rejoin us after leaving the state several years ago.

We use a combo of Skype, Roll20 and Google Docs. Asides from an occasional technical glitch with Skype or Roll20 and if everyone is willing to adapt to a different playing style and keep the cross talk to a minimum, things work reasonably well.

A big plus for virtual is you don't have to clean/up the play area before or after the game if you were hosting at your place. Another is you have a bigger time window or better availability to play. No worrying about the road conditions or being out too late. No sleep driving (unless you have a Tesla :)

The part I find the hardest is not being in the same room with my buddies. The "togetherness" is just not there. It's like having pizza that has sauce that is missing one ingredient that would turn it from "good" pizza to "F%$K, that's GOOD pizza".

But, that is the new way of things I suppose. Used to be, if you didn't like it, you went home. Now you don't like it, you go find a corner to blubber into.
 
I did several sessions in April and May, but two weekly D&D games crowded out Traveller, unfortunately. We used Roll20 along with Discord. Eventually Zoom pushed out Discord.

One interesting thing about Roll20: the virtual tabletop is great for adventure path games, where you more-or-less know what the players are doing in advance. They're exploring the sewers of Waterdeep, or venturing into the Wormcrawl Fissure, or fighting the dread pirates of Drinax. This gives you a chance to set up the maps and NPC tokens.

A sandbox game, and particularly a wide-area sandbox game like Traveller, is much much trickier to run on Roll20. The players might want to jump to the boring high-pop world you haven't fleshed out instead of the low-pop one full of animal encounters. You can roll with that easily enough in person, but it's a bit harder when you are "expected" to have audio/visuals prepared. In a pinch you can open up a blank hex or grid page on Roll20 and sketch stuff up, but you lose many benefits of the medium.

One solution would be to acquire a bunch of pre-made terrain pieces like "generic starship cargo bay" or "generic TSA hostel" or "warehouse." Just like it's handy to have a bunch of pre-made NPCs or patron encounters. Roll20 has great support for D&D and Pathfinder and fantasy games in general, but far less for sci-fi settings.

Another solution would be to just ignore the Roll20 and just go Theatre of the Mind for everything. I'd miss seeing the dice rolls, but that's ok.
 
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Discord is my weapon of choice

Been running my campaign since early '18(no cameras). It's CT, so not rules heavy.
Did it mainly because my buddy wanted to play, and he lives about 250 miles away.
 
Currently using Discord for voice.
When maps needed, using gTove for maps and dice
When maps not essential, using one of 2 discord bots...
Sebedius (for YZE games)
D1-C3 (for general use, and specific for FFG RPGs)
 
I've been exclusively Play by Post for several years now. You can see some of it here ("atpollards PbP" as a player, "TDW:1416" as DM) and more of it on Unseenservant.us. Having time to formulate a response, and word it well, appeals to me. PbP lets me do more of a story based game, though combat scenes can take a while to resolve.

On the other hand, if the group splits up, PbP makes it easier to handle concurrent actions.
 
Maybe it could be a mix of play by post and every once in awhile sort of round table audio or video discussions?

I happen to have zoom on my computer, seems easy to connect but a lot of features to grasp. Roll20 just seems too much. I briefly looked at the discord website.

So with discord you log into a server and Zoom is peer to peer?
 
For my Monday Night Group we use Discord for audio/video and Roll20 for maps when and such.

For my Wednesday Night Group we use Zoom (several players had trouble with the Bluetooths on Discord) and Google Docs and Jamboard.

While I much prefer in person, overall its been great!
 
While I'm using Discord and gTove, I'm not running Traveller...

Playtesting for Modiphius at the moment for game A
Game B is Vaesen (by Fria Ligan)
Game C is Pugmire.

gTove is a workable and free VTT; it does require a google account.

Discord I like for having a couple of good dice rollers.
Sebedius handles all the Year Zero Engine games.
D1-C3 handles the FFG games: SW, L5R, and Genesys.
GMnitron is specific for Sentinel Comics RPG. It handles a lot of the tracking. Scene Trackers, who's acted, whose turn is ongoing, the various special dice rolls for SCRPG
 
Been playing but not running Star Trek and Aliens, voice on Discord rolls and forms on Roll20.


If I were running Traveller I would probably stick with Discord but not use any prepped Traveller enviornment as my IMTU is really ATU. Just dice and a map/graphic presenter, Roll20 seems somewhat annoying along those lines so I may be looking around for options.
 
I've been virtual for close to 3 years now. We started with Google Hangouts and added Roll20. We tried Discord early on but it didn't work well for us and the app ate my laptop alive.

I've also been doing play by post for years (I'm in atpollard's steampunk Traveller on Unseen Servant).

Frank
 
I've played a few games online, but never as referee. I'm sure as time goes by and the technology improves I'll do more, especially as I can't see myself playing face-to-face much in the future. At the moment, however, I keep feeling that I'm pretending to have fun when I play online.

There are of course a lot of negative connotations for me, as I spent the better part of my last year teaching online (running a landscape architecture degree) which was not fun at all. Now that I'm retired I hope that memory will fade ...
 
Trying to advance into using Discord, I've done a text chat with fellow wargamers at Consimworld. I'd like to test out its ability to screen share.

voice and screen share would be enough for me, just texting would be overwhelming, hard to follow when you have several people texting at once.
 
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