Friday, August 9, 2013
Some obstacles to GMing DF Felltower by internet
I'd really like to run my DF game online, so I'm trying to figure out the obstacles in my way. Or at least the things I need to deal with. This isn't meant as a list of excuses, as much as a to-do list.
Schedule. Biggest obstacle first - I work early mornings, and I work a lot of nights. I also work Saturdays. So while I have free time, sometimes a lot, it's not regular and not terribly convenient for other people. So I need to work out when I can run game.
Game Length. My sessions are generally a small number of times a year (we've been playing since 2011, and we've had 31 sessions total) but long. So I'm a bit geared to 7-9 hour sessions. 2-3 is more reasonable for online, but then how do I do "enter the dungeon, leave the dungeon same session" for episodic play? I may need to relegate all non-dungeoneering stuff to email before or after game. That shouldn't be an issue.
House Rules. I use rather a lot of house rules, if only little ones we'd made and keep going with. I also use a limited set of the standard rules, which I'd need to delineate. I'd really need to list them out so people don't find them out at awkward times. Which means I need to assemble them into one place.
Maps. My maps are on tiny gridded home-printed graph paper. So I couldn't easily shove them into Roll20 or something. It would need to be old school - I tell you what you see, you map if you want to. But sometimes I just lay out a room because it's too hard for me to describe or we're just not sure what "it goes 10 feet in and turns right immediately" means to each of us. Does it go straight 20 feet total, the second 10' block has a sharp right? Or the far wall is 10' away? I can't just say "Here is what you see" without prepping my maps for partial reveals, which means scanning.
Minis. I'm very visual with combat, so we use minis a lot. Even when we're playing fast-and-loose combats, we put them down. I need to figure out a substitute. While Roll20 was okay in the games I played, but it's not natively friendly to GURPS's "facing changes with steps automatically" approach. And I'd need to find icons for my monsters.
Practice. I need to practice running a game by Skype or Google Chat or Google+ Hangout or whatever, and find out what's wrong with how I play for that medium.
Anything else I need to work out, technically, to get a game rolling?
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I'd really recommend using MapTools over roll20, just because MapTools has decent support for maps and vision. Creating maps in it (with automatic vision blocking, even) can be very quick as long as you don't get fancy. I used to treat each map as an art project with lovely tiled corridors and shadowed walls and all, but now I just draw black lines on a white background and can create a new map as fast as I could have drawn in on the table.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the scheduling problem, early morning US is late afternoon and evening in Europe. So that can work.
RpTool's TokenTool lets you turn any piece of art into a token. Again, you COULD do hyper-realistic top-down tokens, if you want, and had more time that a nine year old who isn't going to camp this summer. But a picture in a circle lets people know where the orcs are and that's good enough.
4 hour game sessions work on-line. That's how I played the Westmarch campaign for 2 years and its working well for Nate Joy's Jade Regent game now.
It's more complicated, but MapTool has some pretty good GURPS support, including hexmaps, a lot of icons for common monsters, critical hit and miss table, and native support for GURPS resolutions and penalties (including identifying crits). As long as you are willing to type stuff like
ReplyDeleteCadmus strikes at the monster with Shrivener. Deceptive attack (-6/-3), Committed (+2), TA(Axe/Neck)-17. [a(17,-6+2)] and does [3d6+1] damage if successful.
Then you're good. :-)
In truth, all the prelude is fluff. [a(17,-4)] gives a roll vs. 3d6 against a skill of 17 with a -4 penalty. [s(15,-2)] is a skill check against a 15 with -2 penalty. I'm not sure what the differences are, but I'm sure there are some.
Those are Bruno's macros; they're not built into the tool.
DeleteThe difference between [s(18)] and [a(18)] is that [s(18)] is a skill roll, and is uncapped, while [a(18)] is an attack roll, and will automatically convert excess skill above 16 into Deceptive Attack modifiers. It came about because Bruno would roll something like [a(21,4-3+2-1+3)] (for various random situational modifiers) and net a 16, success by 10, and realize she could have still hit with 5 levels of Deceptive Attack and then wanting the macro to autocalculate that stuff.
That said, I can give them to you. Pretty easy.
DeleteGameTable is another very simple virtual table top. I used it a few years ago for a short dungeon campaign and I could draw simple maps as quickly as I could describe them. It has a small library of tokens built in. I didn't have to do any work on GameTable or on my computer, for that matter, outside of our sessions. It is also data-lite so it didn't interfere with Skype during the game (which has happened to our group with Fantasy Grounds).
ReplyDeleteThere are two drawbacks to GameTable. One drawback is that it is Java-based and some people have strong feelings about Java on their computer. The second is that it be a bit tricky to get everyone's firewalls and ports set up to play, particularly for the GM.
I have used Fantasy Grounds as a GM and as a player. As a player, particularly for GURPS, it is great. It automates all the math. As a GM, it requires a lot of out-of-game time, or so I have found.
I have been using Roll20, which works well for electronic maps, but I wouldn't want to be doing a lot of drawing in game. I haven't used MapTools but I have heard good things about it and Mark gives it a ringing endorsement.
Been using Fantasy Grounds for a couple of years now, and it works. Personally, I don't find that it's any extra prep—there are imports/exports for GCA stats and whatnot, and map-type images can be added on-the-fly (take a phone-pic or scan of your hand-drawn stuff). It does do "masking" of the map, and visibility on tokens.
ReplyDeleteThe (usual) GM for my FG group is in Autralia; it's evening for us, morning for him. Works out.
I used to game GURPS online several years back. I used Screen Monkey.
ReplyDeleteThere are a TON of tokens available online if you look for them. I'm also a fan of MapTool, incidentally.
ReplyDeleteWith longer sessions online, I think that having a 10 minute break every couple hours will go a long way toward taking care of the endurance issue. With a face-to-face group, if someone isn't involved in a scene directly, they can slip away to grab drinks or hit the lavatory, but with a Skype or Google+ Hangouts group, stepping away is a bit more awkward. Planning for leg stretching breaks is good for endurance, and I feel it helps with focus while everyone is on.
Thanks for all the advice, guys.
ReplyDeleteI really need to settle on a tool before I start scanning in maps so I can show them, accumulating tokens, etc.
I wouldn't run such long sessions. It's one thing hanging around at my friend's house playing, it's another to Skype for that long. I'd just need to ensure shorter sessions. Which might mean I don't need tokens, etc. as much because I'd certainly just enforce my "fast combat approach - just mapless combat from Basic Set Characters.
I've personally found that Google Hangout video + Roll20 (two-hour sessions) goes a LOT faster, and with more done, than our Skype Chat and MapTool sessions (four-hour sessions). I think this is very much a result of the video component for out-of-character discussion and in-game description. The text stuff is good, and makes for great game logs, but I find it slower and much, much less immersive.
DeleteVideo is good, but I'm fine with voice + chat.
DeleteI think I need to try MapTool and Roll20, and the others mentioned as well. Maybe a few quickie combat sessions just to try it out.
I really liked this post. Ive started running a 0e d&d game via team speak and roll 20. One thing I did was create a Yahoo group page for organization of house rules, character pix, and we have started using it for in "town" roleplaying and character upkeep between adventure sessions. All these comments about maptools make me want to check it out. Im not downloading any maps just bringing up a background and tokens for a fight. With roll20 ive been able to create a sketch of a room in 1-2 minutes and start a combat.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think it's important to do as much "town" stuff offline, with a communal area. My regular group does it by email, but I'm not sure that'll scale so well.
DeleteYou absolutely do not need to roll your dice online. Nearly all my players just roll their own dice on hangouts and it's just as fast as in person. We use an online whiteboard for sketch-up of situational info. It's fast.
ReplyDeleteI highly highly recommend hangouts as a default option of choice.
Yeah, I think you've got a good point there. I'm probably better off just getting rid of tactical combat except in very special circumstances, let people roll real dice and tell me what they rolled, and let people sort out mapping themselves.
DeleteI've been running a (fairly aggressively non-tactical) campaign via IRC plus VoIP -- it's worked pretty well so far. A shared whiteboard of some sort would be nice, but uploading images and posting the URLs has worked.
ReplyDeleteI've heard good things about OpenRPG.