Red's Read on Online D&D

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Red's Read on Online D&D

Red Thomas fights anti-social tendencies with social distancing by playing Dungeons & Dragons online. ...as in playing the pen-and-paper RPG using online tools, rather than the MMO. How does the online experience compare to the more typical Knerds of the Dinner Table event? Red gives his take in today's article.

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Sovrath

"Growing up in the middle of nowhere as a first-born son in a ranching family, I spent a lot of summer days in the hay fields. "

You just described what one of the circles of my own private hell would look like ...

Thanks for the article!

Red_Thomas

Sovrath said:

"Growing up in the middle of nowhere as a first-born son in a ranching family, I spent a lot of summer days in the hay fields. "



You just described what one of the circles of my own private hell would look like ...



Thanks for the article!

lol It wasn't that bad, honestly. Before I got into D&D and then computer gaming, I spent a lot of time out in the woods. I've shot squirrels and caught fish, and cooked both over an open fire before laying down to gaze at more stars than most folks could imagine. So many people see those pictures of the Milky Way cutting across the night sky and think it's some artist's rendition, but that's what the sky actually looked like when I was a kid.

Plus, getting up balls early in the morning to feed cattle in the winter and spending all day in the hot sun on a tractor bailing hay taught me a work ethic that got me to where I am today. I still get up about 0430 or 0500 every morning and I still have that rancher habit of working on Saturday and Sunday. You can't take a sick day when your cattle need to be fed.

Not really something I would want to do for a living these days, but honestly... I really think it was a blessing looking back on it. lol Of course, I also had a blast in the Army, so it's possible I'm just damaged somehow. =P

Sovrath

Red_Thomas said:

Sovrath said:

"Growing up in the middle of nowhere as a first-born son in a ranching family, I spent a lot of summer days in the hay fields. "



You just described what one of the circles of my own private hell would look like ...



Thanks for the article!

lol It wasn't that bad, honestly. Before I got into D&D and then computer gaming, I spent a lot of time out in the woods. I've shot squirrels and caught fish, and cooked both over an open fire before laying down to gaze at more stars than most folks could imagine. So many people see those pictures of the Milky Way cutting across the night sky and think it's some artist's rendition, but that's what the sky actually looked like when I was a kid.

Plus, getting up balls early in the morning to feed cattle in the winter and spending all day in the hot sun on a tractor bailing hay taught me a work ethic that got me to where I am today. I still get up about 0430 or 0500 every morning and I still have that rancher habit of working on Saturday and Sunday. You can't take a sick day when your cattle need to be fed.

Not really something I would want to do for a living these days, but honestly... I really think it was a blessing looking back on it. lol Of course, I also had a blast in the Army, so it's possible I'm just damaged somehow. =P

... own ... private ... hell ... 

But glad you enjoyed it. And, thanks again for the article.

Slapshot1188

Nice write up. I've gazed longingly at stuff like D&D Beyond for awhile. Most of my friends grew up and left me behind so face to face D&D has not happened in decades.

tool089

Not sure if the author will read this, but maybe someone else will find it useful.

Our setup is dndbeyond, roll20 and discord. Roll20 handles the map, tokens and handouts. Our DM can reveal fog of war as we go, upload custom token for every player and creature, give control to individuals to move their character. It more or less handles all of the combat and movement type visualization (technically it doesn’t limit movement, but there’s a grid and ruler tools to plan out moves as you would have in a real setting). There’s also a section for handouts, the DM passes them to players and they can pull them up as popup windows whenever they want.

There’s a chrome addon that gives the same functionality you are getting from that discord bot. Basically click attacks and it rolls the correct dice and adds things up. You can also link feats and stuff to make it easily visible to the group of there are rule questions.

For discord, I run several discord for game communities and we’ve never had to boost the server. We don’t really drop big files on the server. You could just host them on like google drive and provide descriptive links. I think roll20 covers all the large file issues you would have, though. The only stuff we get from discord are: a voice channel for the game, private messages between players, potential for easy breakouts like the DM can jump to an ‘officer’ and pull an individual if they are communing with a deity that no one else should hear, we have a text channel for general group notes (major events so we remember where we left off, anything we investigate that doesn’t have a prepared handout) and we made a bag of holding channel to keep a running total of the stuff we dump in there (dndbeyond might have this, don’t know if it’s easily shared between all players though).

Samhael

Great article, thanks! My PnP gaming actually is on a break right now. (my old group is playing a Shadowrun theme that doesn't interest me) But they have fumbled through the same types of stumbles and are now entirely playing remotely. I'd be interested in hearing about other tools like DnDBeyond that aren't specific to D&D. Anyways, loved the article and seeing options utilizing the modern technology!

Amathe

I really enjoyed that, as I too played D&D in high school, against the backdrop of my bucolic small town.

Banegrivm

No MMO, no CRPG, no online D&D game, beats sitting at a table with friends playing D&D. There is just no comparison. That aside, I'm not a big fan of D&D Beyond. It just seems like a racket to me. Roll20 is a great alternative. I've never tried Discord with bots though.

sschrupp

Two pieces of software we've used are Fantasy Grounds and Syrinscape.

Fantasy Grounds lets you purchase licensed material (the D&D books, modules, etc) that will include digital maps, digital miniatures/icons/tokens of creatures and players to place on the maps, and then acts as a campaign manager. You can tell your story, provide visuals to your players, has handy links to the proper material, etc. There's a ton you can do with it. We actually use it for our face to face games using a flatscreen TV in the center of the table for the map and stuff, and then one of our out-of-state friends could be a part using the online application along with webcams and voip.

Fantasy Grounds doesn't have the easiest interfaces, but you can do so much with it. The GM can share content they've purchased and then the players can use the free client I believe.

Syrinscape is your ambiance sound tool. It has a ton of great background sounds/noises/music along with individual sound effects you can play. You can customize your own tracks, adjust noise levels of the various sounds, etc. Pretty cool stuff. They also have an online tool so your online friends can hear it all as well. I think you can use a limited set of sounds for free, otherwise you can buy sets, or pay a subscription to access everything.

One other piece of software we've used for our local games is Hue Stories: Tabletop RPG. This lets us create lighting effects using our HUE lights. There's probably other software out there to do something similar, but that's all we could find last we checked. It has some built in "scenes" to change the ambient lighting, flashes colors for a campfire, etc. Kinda neat.

Gorwe

You can get a shit ton of stuff free for DD:O. Get it while you can!

Red_Thomas

tool089 said:

Not sure if the author will read this, but maybe someone else will find it useful.



Our setup is dndbeyond, roll20 and discord. Roll20 handles the map, tokens and handouts. Our DM can reveal fog of war as we go, upload custom token for every player and creature, give control to individuals to move their character. It more or less handles all of the combat and movement type visualization (technically it doesn’t limit movement, but there’s a grid and ruler tools to plan out moves as you would have in a real setting). There’s also a section for handouts, the DM passes them to players and they can pull them up as popup windows whenever they want.



There’s a chrome addon that gives the same functionality you are getting from that discord bot. Basically click attacks and it rolls the correct dice and adds things up. You can also link feats and stuff to make it easily visible to the group of there are rule questions.



For discord, I run several discord for game communities and we’ve never had to boost the server. We don’t really drop big files on the server. You could just host them on like google drive and provide descriptive links. I think roll20 covers all the large file issues you would have, though. The only stuff we get from discord are: a voice channel for the game, private messages between players, potential for easy breakouts like the DM can jump to an ‘officer’ and pull an individual if they are communing with a deity that no one else should hear, we have a text channel for general group notes (major events so we remember where we left off, anything we investigate that doesn’t have a prepared handout) and we made a bag of holding channel to keep a running total of the stuff we dump in there (dndbeyond might have this, don’t know if it’s easily shared between all players though).

The author reads everything. Sometimes a week later, but it will be read! =P

Everything other than the file size was fine. The server didn't need to be boosted, but I did it for convenience. I wanted to upload a high-rez map, ended up linking it instead. That all works fine.

My issue, was in how Discord presented information. Yes, at the end of the day it's my fault for not reading through everything, which is why I didn't demand my money back from them. My issue is that when you try to drop too big a file, it pops up to tell you that the server has to be boosted to remove that limit. Click on the link and you're offered a choice to boost your account, which I did. Then, you can click on the server and boost the server, which I did.... and then found out that I'd need seven other folks to do that too before the file size limit would be removed.

That's why I got ticked. Had it taken me to a page that said, spend $200 and we'll remove the limit, I'd have probably done that. It's just that the whole process is needlessly complex and feels intentionally confusing to me, especially when products like Slack and others are out there doing similar things.

Hatefull

I have been DMing on Fantasy ground and using Discord. Its great fun, I have two separate campaigns running right now.

bcbully

Red_Thomas said:

Sovrath said:

"Growing up in the middle of nowhere as a first-born son in a ranching family, I spent a lot of summer days in the hay fields. "





You just described what one of the circles of my own private hell would look like ...





Thanks for the article!

lol It wasn't that bad, honestly. Before I got into D&D and then computer gaming, I spent a lot of time out in the woods. I've shot squirrels and caught fish, and cooked both over an open fire before laying down to gaze at more stars than most folks could imagine. So many people see those pictures of the Milky Way cutting across the night sky and think it's some artist's rendition, but that's what the sky actually looked like when I was a kid.



Plus, getting up balls early in the morning to feed cattle in the winter and spending all day in the hot sun on a tractor bailing hay taught me a work ethic that got me to where I am today. I still get up about 0430 or 0500 every morning and I still have that rancher habit of working on Saturday and Sunday. You can't take a sick day when your cattle need to be fed.



Not really something I would want to do for a living these days, but honestly... I really think it was a blessing looking back on it. lol Of course, I also had a blast in the Army, so it's possible I'm just damaged somehow. =P

I grew up with a few acres of woods in my backyard. Hills, lakes. Shot a squirrel with a BB gun. AD&D is what we played too.

Great memories. Great article.

Scot

"Of course, for many in that rural part of the country, D&D was a gateway to witchcraft and worship of Old Scratch"

I can remember telling roleplaying friends, "We are alright now, the media has found out that video games exist, roleplaying is not what's wrong with us!" But roleplaying still came in for all sorts of accusations and computer games were of course another hobby of mine. It was not until I was able to say this to friends that they stopped trying to pin every "youth problem" on roleplaying: "We are alright now, the media has discovered the internet, they have something else to blame everything on."

And they still do, though once everyone got onto "the internet" that became a harder fear to sell. So it became the Darknet and is still a bogie man to this day.

I have done some online roleplaying of this sort, but it just makes me miss tabletop even more. There are MMOs you can RP in, though that is declining, maybe one for Red to check out in the future?

kitarad

What a fantastic write up.

Red_Thomas

Scot said:

"Of course, for many in that rural part of the country, D&D was a gateway to witchcraft and worship of Old Scratch"



I can remember telling roleplaying friends, "We are alright now, the media has found out that video games exist, roleplaying is not what's wrong with us!" But roleplaying still came in for all sorts of accusations and computer games were of course another hobby of mine. It was not until I was able to say this to friends that they stopped trying to pin every "youth problem" on roleplaying: "We are alright now, the media has discovered the internet, they have something else to blame everything on."



And they still do, though once everyone got onto "the internet" that became a harder fear to sell. So it became the Darknet and is still a bogie man to this day.



I have done some online roleplaying of this sort, but it just makes me miss tabletop even more. There are MMOs you can RP in, though that is declining, maybe one for Red to check out in the future?

Technically, there are a lot. Even in big MMOs, there is usually a community of players that RP amongst themselves. Though, if you want a more mandated/holistic experience, I think you have to look to the smaller crowds. Fact is, RP is about as common today as it was when we were kids, it's just that there are a lot more people playing games. Thus, the RPGs trend towards being lighter on the RP in the G because of the influx of people who just want to kill stuff and collect loot.

Smaller communities popup on less popular games and I suspect that's where you'll find more of it. I think there are still quite a few RP'ers on the EQ progression servers these days. You'd probably also find them in games like Shroud of the Avatar, Project Gorgon, and Legends of Aria. Smaller games like that aren't as popular and tend not to be as watered down by mainstream players. I've also seen ATLAS, Conan Exiles, and other crafting/survival games like that go heavy RP because you can have your own dedicated server to play on.

I'll keep an eye out and try to focus an article or two on any RP communities I manage to find.

Scot

Red_Thomas said:

Scot said:

"Of course, for many in that rural part of the country, D&D was a gateway to witchcraft and worship of Old Scratch"



I can remember telling roleplaying friends, "We are alright now, the media has found out that video games exist, roleplaying is not what's wrong with us!" But roleplaying still came in for all sorts of accusations and computer games were of course another hobby of mine. It was not until I was able to say this to friends that they stopped trying to pin every "youth problem" on roleplaying: "We are alright now, the media has discovered the internet, they have something else to blame everything on."



And they still do, though once everyone got onto "the internet" that became a harder fear to sell. So it became the Darknet and is still a bogie man to this day.



I have done some online roleplaying of this sort, but it just makes me miss tabletop even more. There are MMOs you can RP in, though that is declining, maybe one for Red to check out in the future?

Technically, there are a lot. Even in big MMOs, there is usually a community of players that RP amongst themselves. Though, if you want a more mandated/holistic experience, I think you have to look to the smaller crowds. Fact is, RP is about as common today as it was when we were kids, it's just that there are a lot more people playing games. Thus, the RPGs trend towards being lighter on the RP in the G because of the influx of people who just want to kill stuff and collect loot.

Smaller communities popup on less popular games and I suspect that's where you'll find more of it. I think there are still quite a few RP'ers on the EQ progression servers these days. You'd probably also find them in games like Shroud of the Avatar, Project Gorgon, and Legends of Aria. Smaller games like that aren't as popular and tend not to be as watered down by mainstream players. I've also seen ATLAS, Conan Exiles, and other crafting/survival games like that go heavy RP because you can have your own dedicated server to play on.

I'll keep an eye out and try to focus an article or two on any RP communities I manage to find.

Let me add The Secret World (maybe legends too) and Lotro to the list of possibilities. Yes you have to do your work to find the small guilds still active, but there are a lot of them out there. Though In some games like BDO I could not find a single RP guild. As you say the roleplayers got swamped by those playing for other reasons. But there is a "we don't care" attitude to the fact MMORPG's are not made for roleplayers anymore. Be it no housing, few spaces where players will not come running by, one gender classes; RP guilds have seen it all and had to deal with and just get on with it.

Viper482

Man the memories, I was one of the Stranger Things kids in the 80's playing D&D at my friend's house. It is amazing that people are still playing today and it has come to this technology. My daughter plays which makes dad proud...she uses some of these things.

cheyane

That was quite educational. Didn't know you could do all that online now.

BTW you're a very cool uncle.

Hatefull

Viper482 said:

Man the memories, I was one of the Stranger Things kids in the 80's playing D&D at my friend's house. It is amazing that people are still playing today and it has come to this technology. My daughter plays which makes dad proud...she uses some of these things.

Thats how I got back into it and started DMing, my daughter brought it up and away we went. Fantasy grounds really makes it easy and fun.

Aethaeryn

Foundry is amazing as a VTT but the closest thing I have gotten to sitting at at table is Table Top Simulator on Steam with Workshop stuff added.

I am just about to start at Star Wars game using it. I have DMed Warhammer Fantasy Role Play on Foundry and D&D on Roll 20. We always use Discord for voice regardless

If D&D Beyond made their own VTT that would be amazing although TTS with the 3D scenery and actually moving your mini around with your 'hand' makes it that much more special