Since the area I live in is being effected by the virus, our group has decided to play remotely until things settle down.
I’m DM’ing our group and I make all my maps in Photoshop and project to a monitor encasement I built that sits on our gameplay table. We use figures right on top of the monitor. It’s great!
Since we’re already digital, I was hoping it would be easy to set up gameplay with something like Google Hangouts where everyone can just login. I’m hoping to share my photoshop window to everyone while being able to see everyone’s face.
I know Critical Roll uses Skype and some people really like Roll20. Any suggestion would be appreciated!
The VTTs like Roll20 enable each person to have a token and move it around. Skype would work in that you could have a camera on the map with miniatures (like Critical Roll does when one or two of their players are remote) but this means trouble when it comes to moving the minis. (Sure, Mercer can handle moving one or two minis with verbal directions, but imagine that for a whole party.)
If you're just doing it temporarily, Roll20 is easy enough to use just as a map and communication tool. You probably don't want to go through the headache of building PCs and NPCs in the system, and can just use in person dice and character sheets. Save your photoshop maps as images (mid to low resolution), create tokens, and you'll be good to go.
If you're already used D&D Beyond, there's an amazing extension called Beyond20 that integrated Roll20 and Beyond really well. It allows all of the players to roll right inside Roll20 from their Beyond character sheet, and you can do the same for monsters and NPCs as a DM.
My group plays using Roll20 and Discord. Dropping your photoshopped maps into Roll20 is really easy too. They have a tool that allows you to line a map grid up to their grid with a few clicks. I'd give it a shot. It's free to make an account, and if everyone's got the Beyond20 extension, there's almost no work to get up and playing.
My Saturday group has my fiancee and I, my friend from Michigan and two of her friends from Oregon. We play via Discord, with me posting pictures of the monsters they are fighting, what they see and sections of the maps they are exploring.
We even have an RPBot to handle dice rolling for the two new players from Oregon and it works great.
We tried Roll20's voice-chat stuff and found that feature lacking. Roll20 is great for lots of other stuff which we still use, but we go with Skype for voice chat (with face-timing aspects). I know a group that used Google's Hangouts instead of Skype. (I don't know if they still do.)
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I use Roll20 for my family group since we all live in different cities, but we just use it for the virtual tabletop since, as has been mentioned before, the audio/video's pretty bad. Instead we use Discord for the audio
I will say that Roll20's audio/video has problems, but nowhere near as bad as it was a year or two ago. I have two weekly games that get played on Roll20, and we use the built in audio/video, but have Discord set up just in case we need to switch. A couple things I have found out: 1. It works best if everyone on a PC uses Chrome. 2. Everyone needs to try and be on time. Once everyone is on, a couple clicks of the "reconnect all" function works well to get to see and hear each other.
It can be a slight pain, but I rely on the whisper voice feature, where at the click of a button I can talk directly with one player and they can respond without the others hearing us. Saves time from having to whisper-type things into chat.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I tried Roll20 with my group last night and just used the Roll20 video/audio chat. It worked GREAT! There were very few issues. The only thing I wish we had on Roll20 was a pop out window for just video & audio chat. So I could DM on one screen and communicate on another to save screen space. Other than hat it was pretty smooth.
Thanks for all the great responses! DMDave
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Hi all,
Since the area I live in is being effected by the virus, our group has decided to play remotely until things settle down.
I’m DM’ing our group and I make all my maps in Photoshop and project to a monitor encasement I built that sits on our gameplay table. We use figures right on top of the monitor. It’s great!
Since we’re already digital, I was hoping it would be easy to set up gameplay with something like Google Hangouts where everyone can just login. I’m hoping to share my photoshop window to everyone while being able to see everyone’s face.
I know Critical Roll uses Skype and some people really like Roll20. Any suggestion would be appreciated!
Thanks,
DM Dave
The VTTs like Roll20 enable each person to have a token and move it around. Skype would work in that you could have a camera on the map with miniatures (like Critical Roll does when one or two of their players are remote) but this means trouble when it comes to moving the minis. (Sure, Mercer can handle moving one or two minis with verbal directions, but imagine that for a whole party.)
If you're just doing it temporarily, Roll20 is easy enough to use just as a map and communication tool. You probably don't want to go through the headache of building PCs and NPCs in the system, and can just use in person dice and character sheets. Save your photoshop maps as images (mid to low resolution), create tokens, and you'll be good to go.
If you're already used D&D Beyond, there's an amazing extension called Beyond20 that integrated Roll20 and Beyond really well. It allows all of the players to roll right inside Roll20 from their Beyond character sheet, and you can do the same for monsters and NPCs as a DM.
My group plays using Roll20 and Discord. Dropping your photoshopped maps into Roll20 is really easy too. They have a tool that allows you to line a map grid up to their grid with a few clicks. I'd give it a shot. It's free to make an account, and if everyone's got the Beyond20 extension, there's almost no work to get up and playing.
My Saturday group has my fiancee and I, my friend from Michigan and two of her friends from Oregon. We play via Discord, with me posting pictures of the monsters they are fighting, what they see and sections of the maps they are exploring.
We even have an RPBot to handle dice rolling for the two new players from Oregon and it works great.
We tried Roll20's voice-chat stuff and found that feature lacking. Roll20 is great for lots of other stuff which we still use, but we go with Skype for voice chat (with face-timing aspects). I know a group that used Google's Hangouts instead of Skype. (I don't know if they still do.)
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I use Roll20 for my family group since we all live in different cities, but we just use it for the virtual tabletop since, as has been mentioned before, the audio/video's pretty bad. Instead we use Discord for the audio
I will say that Roll20's audio/video has problems, but nowhere near as bad as it was a year or two ago. I have two weekly games that get played on Roll20, and we use the built in audio/video, but have Discord set up just in case we need to switch. A couple things I have found out: 1. It works best if everyone on a PC uses Chrome. 2. Everyone needs to try and be on time. Once everyone is on, a couple clicks of the "reconnect all" function works well to get to see and hear each other.
It can be a slight pain, but I rely on the whisper voice feature, where at the click of a button I can talk directly with one player and they can respond without the others hearing us. Saves time from having to whisper-type things into chat.
This is great feedback. Thank you all.
I’m going to try Roll20 with Google Hangouts or Skype. Sounds like the most solid pairing.
Thanks again and be safe!
DMDave
Let us know how you like it, and have fun!
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Hi all,
I tried Roll20 with my group last night and just used the Roll20 video/audio chat. It worked GREAT! There were very few issues. The only thing I wish we had on Roll20 was a pop out window for just video & audio chat. So I could DM on one screen and communicate on another to save screen space. Other than hat it was pretty smooth.
Thanks for all the great responses!
DMDave