Greetings everyone,

I have been back into D&D for about a year now, after a 30 year break, and I am greatly enjoying it!

I have a general question for those of you that play online:

Our group uses Discord for our online gathering point and the ability to share battle maps, and then everyone brings up DDB on their computer, phone or tablet.
Everything works great, but as we are progressing, we are seeing an increased requirement for coordination and communication.

Now, I know this is one thing that works better for Table Top Play vs Online Play, but with our schedules and distances from each other, getting together weekly is difficult.

To the point...
What do you use to coordinate with each other when it is not your turn?
We don't want to interrupt the person who's turn it is, or talk over them as that is rude.
Depending on what is happening within a fight and what develops, there sometimes needs to be discussions before it is your turn, to coordinate, bounce ideas, state your plan, etc.

We have started using Facebook Messenger Group Chat to coordinate and conduct these discussions so we are not slowing down the game, or interrupting other players' turns.

I know that some online sites, like Roll20, have built-in messaging systems, but we do not utilize those sites.

Just curious how other online players handle this.

Cheers!

So, when I moved to a new state, my games when virtual. We didn't realize there was a bunch of VTT options or what they could do (which was still far less than they can do today), so we essentially use Zoom, and I have multiple screens (which I have for work anyway) that allow me to be "present" in different ways (so I can share maps, or images, or point a camera to a piece of paper with minis on it if we are having a hard time with TotM).

We also have a few text message chains (one for Dms, different ones for different groups and such). With Zoom, we can use the direct message feature or the general chat (and we also use Teams, in some cases, same basic features).

So we handle communication when not in the active turn mostly through that -- and it is a lot of chatting, lol, but also because we are all scattered now, in different homes and such, we sometimes have side conversations and put in place an etiquette of "mute" if you aren't going to type it out.

This allows us to make use the the way that most folks have a computer and a phone, and some have tablets (and I have 2 pcs and five tablets).

IT does sidestep all the VTT's (even DDB) entirely -- we have found they slow play too much because we aren't familiar with them. I don't need to see character sheets, and we have a huge level of trust, so don't normally check rolls and the like (but sometimes we do, with a camera shot sent by text or moving a camera to show the die).

This is all especially important for us because we have a general "rule" that you only have so much time to declare your action, so most folks spend their off turn figuring out what they are going to do so they can say it right away and we can move fast. This keeps combat quick and sharp and less a slog since we often have 9 players in a game session.

Basically, we figured out how to do our own sort of VTT, but only as far as it works for us after playing together for 40 years.

You can create extra channels to chat by text in discord, or the players can PM each other, that's what we do/use to communicate "out of turn".

we use the whisper function in the VTT's that we use.  Our facebook group is simply for scheduling the game and communicate during the week

Quote from Varek_Cellarbrew >>

You can create extra channels to chat by text in discord, or the players can PM each other, that's what we do/use to communicate "out of turn".

 Yeah, we have a "vc-text" channel in our discord server for during-game typing. Though we do still talk a little during turns sometimes, but not so much to coordinate strategy.