How To Play Tabletop RPGs Online
- Thread starter Rhykker
- Start date
This is quite awesome! I was just talkin with a friend I hadn't seen in years about seeing if we could find a way to play a tabletop game online, and here you go basically creating a beginners guide!
So yeah, the timing is uncanny but highly appreciated.
So yeah, the timing is uncanny but highly appreciated.
Stupid eyepatch... It was supposed to protect me from such spells! Ugh, now I've got to go track that rat down... This'll be irksome.Rhykker said:
Yeah, if we manage to get a few extras so that we can get it rolling, I just might turn the events into a written story, cause why not?
For the music and sound effects, the easiest solution by far is Youtube. The DM just throws up a link in the chat, and people can have some tavern sounds or epic battle music playing in the background if they want. It might be a pain if you're using voice chat and people don't have headphones, but that's something you should really encourage in any case (it's a lot easier to stop yourself from wandering, both mentally and physically). You can have a campaign's worth of background music in a spreadsheet, only a tab and a cut-and-paste away from your game.
Winamp is fine, but you don't want to be messing around with anything more complicated than it needs to be. Too many GMs fall into the trap of trying to set an epic mood and end up wasting time, getting distracted and otherwise detracting from the game, rather than taking the easiest path and focusing on having fun.
Winamp is fine, but you don't want to be messing around with anything more complicated than it needs to be. Too many GMs fall into the trap of trying to set an epic mood and end up wasting time, getting distracted and otherwise detracting from the game, rather than taking the easiest path and focusing on having fun.
This was how I use to play D&D before MMOs were a thing, back in the mid 90's. I keep trying to find them, but it's Play by Email, which is lame.
Roll20 has an absolutely stunning set of features and is being consistently updated. Highly recommend. A free account will suit most users but if you want the extra features and to kick the devs some money, you can pass the hat to your gaming group and chip in.
Also, here's a hack: have a meat-space game? Put it on Roll20, then line a laptop out to the TV in the room and let everyone see the VTT. Have amazing, full-color maps. Never lack for a mini. Never go, "Hey, where's that note I handed you last time." Etc.
Also, here's a hack: have a meat-space game? Put it on Roll20, then line a laptop out to the TV in the room and let everyone see the VTT. Have amazing, full-color maps. Never lack for a mini. Never go, "Hey, where's that note I handed you last time." Etc.
I run a weekly Dark Heresy campaign using MapTools (connected through Hamachi) and Skype. I would just like to warn everyone to watch out: It's entirely too easy to cheat. With a little macro, it's possible to get any result you want with a "random" roll. No outside hacking tools or cracking required. I am not going to post /how/ to cheat in MapTools, but regrettably it's entirely undetectable. MapTools has a lot to offer, but I recommend that you do your rolling elsewhere (such as the DiceLog website mentioned in the article. Just don't make your DiceLog password the same as your email password, since it's not the most secure website ever).
I am about to start one (maybe two) online table top games, so thought i would share some things. Some from my career in IT, others from what I have found.
Caveat: I am setting my games up with friends I already have, so the finding of a game is not an issue for me.
Software to handle the virtual tabletop. After going through all the trials of the paid software, and the fully free software, the best application to manage the games IMO is one called RoliSteam. It has not only the ability to do dice rolling, but also the ability to save chats, do secret rolls, have side conversations, open maps up, be drawn on by either the GM alone, or everyone can draw on it. Players can share pictures of their characters, and it has a built in music feature. If all the players download the music files, place them in the same location as the GM, the GM can play the music instantly on each players desktop. If they don't have the music, nothing is affected.
For voice comms, keep to a server in your country. Hosting one is viable if you are on a massive connection, but if you are playing with people outside your country, it does not matter what you use, latency will be an issue. In the case of TS and Ventrilo, they use similar codecs, and you can play with the settings to lower quality slightly to increase speed. However speed is a misnomer. A latency of 500 or less is half a second or less latency. Within a country I would expect latencies to be closer to the 120mark while playing, and using virtual software, meaning a 10th of a second roughly is the delay, and this is tolerable IMO.
Video streaming adds the level of being able to see others, however it also increases latency, and not everyone will have a webcam. If possible, and you can do it without too much effort or latency in broadcasting, then do it, but a better option might be to just open a tool like Rolisteam, upload a photo of yourself so the others can see, and use voice comms to do the talking.
Links: http://rolisteam.org/
Caveat: I am setting my games up with friends I already have, so the finding of a game is not an issue for me.
Software to handle the virtual tabletop. After going through all the trials of the paid software, and the fully free software, the best application to manage the games IMO is one called RoliSteam. It has not only the ability to do dice rolling, but also the ability to save chats, do secret rolls, have side conversations, open maps up, be drawn on by either the GM alone, or everyone can draw on it. Players can share pictures of their characters, and it has a built in music feature. If all the players download the music files, place them in the same location as the GM, the GM can play the music instantly on each players desktop. If they don't have the music, nothing is affected.
For voice comms, keep to a server in your country. Hosting one is viable if you are on a massive connection, but if you are playing with people outside your country, it does not matter what you use, latency will be an issue. In the case of TS and Ventrilo, they use similar codecs, and you can play with the settings to lower quality slightly to increase speed. However speed is a misnomer. A latency of 500 or less is half a second or less latency. Within a country I would expect latencies to be closer to the 120mark while playing, and using virtual software, meaning a 10th of a second roughly is the delay, and this is tolerable IMO.
Video streaming adds the level of being able to see others, however it also increases latency, and not everyone will have a webcam. If possible, and you can do it without too much effort or latency in broadcasting, then do it, but a better option might be to just open a tool like Rolisteam, upload a photo of yourself so the others can see, and use voice comms to do the talking.
Links: http://rolisteam.org/