DF Felltower was a purely face-to-face game until March of 2020. We went virtual in response to the pandemic, and played online every session since.
We're well back to the time when we can all get back together in person. It's not going to be an easy drive - it never was for a few of our players who lived out of state. But it'll be better for a couple and harder for everyone else. But still, getting together in person to play would be a lot of fun.
The issue is we now have two more out-of-state people. One of them I think lives in the Great White North. The other lives not far from Frostbite Falls, MN. Maybe. I'm sketchy on their exact locations because I'm not driving to either of them.
What we're trying to figure out is how to do a hybrid session - remote in two-three players, while the rest of us are at the table. If we stay on the VTT but just bring our laptops with us, that's not so much of an issue. Yet it defeats part of the purpose - going back to rolling real dice, pushing real minis around on the table, etc.
Hybrid work conferences are a thing, but they rarely seem to involve battlemats, minis, and dice. Anyone have any experience with doing a partly-remote partly-in-person gaming session?
The group I've play in has remoted in an absent player a couple of times. We've kept to to pointing an iPad at the battle mat and trying to enunciate while talking at the table. It's worked okay, but it's not something I'd want to do on a regular basis.
ReplyDeleteI think the biggest hurdle in my mind would be working out audio so that the remote players can hear the in person players clearly without having feedback from the in person group's mics picking up audio from the others. Maybe with a good omnidirectional mic?
I’ve got some ideas about this, with multi camera setups, but I would like to know how others have done it.
ReplyDeleteWe play a hybrid game every other week, with two half-parties of in person players. Each sets up a laptop pointed at the table and we connect over Zoom. Important that the laptop doesn’t face just a single player, so that the mike works. Then, we each have a tablet or another laptop where we do combat via Owlbear Rodeo, although it’s also possible to set the tablet between two people. So you need an extra computer per table basically. You can also roll dice on Owlbear but we usually roll physical dice since we sit together as half-parties.
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