Technology advice for an online campaign


Advice


Hey All,

I'm thinking of starting an online campaign with my cousin who lives very far away and some other folks. I really want to try to replicate the "face to face" RPG experience that we used to have as much as possible, but I'm not sure how I should go about this technology wise.

So does anyone have some advice on what kind of technologies can aid an online campaign the most? A few things I was thinking of were...

1. Webcams - Has anyone ever tried a game were everyone videoconferenced? Does it help?

2. Battle grids - Is there any kind of PC application that lets you share a battlegrid over the internet for combat?

3. Conference call (Skype) - Does anyone have advice on how to utilize conferencing tech for gaming? Any good ways to stop everyone from talking at the same time?

EDIT:

One more thing I would really like to do is play music on my computer that all my players can hear. Any idea how to do this???


1 - Haven't tried it

2 - You're looking for a VTT, virtual table top: Maptools, OpenRPG, Infrno, FantasyGrounds.

3 - We use Skype for our group of 7. Skype is nice that you can hear when two people talk at the same time. Taking turns talking doesn't seem to be an issue with it as it was with Ventrilo (that was a couple years ago at this point).


DMFTodd wrote:

1 - Haven't tried it

2 - You're looking for a VTT, virtual table top: Maptools, OpenRPG, Infrno, FantasyGrounds.

3 - We use Skype for our group of 7. Skype is nice that you can hear when two people talk at the same time. Taking turns talking doesn't seem to be an issue with it as it was with Ventrilo (that was a couple years ago at this point).

Thanks for the response DMFTodd! Good to hear that Skype works well with 7 people.

Have you ever heard of D20 Pro? It's another VTT (thanks for the term :) ) that I found while googling. It looked pretty good an inexpensive, do you have any experience with it?

Dark Archive

Creslin321 wrote:
DMFTodd wrote:

1 - Haven't tried it

2 - You're looking for a VTT, virtual table top: Maptools, OpenRPG, Infrno, FantasyGrounds.

3 - We use Skype for our group of 7. Skype is nice that you can hear when two people talk at the same time. Taking turns talking doesn't seem to be an issue with it as it was with Ventrilo (that was a couple years ago at this point).

Thanks for the response DMFTodd! Good to hear that Skype works well with 7 people.

Have you ever heard of D20 Pro? It's another VTT (thanks for the term :) ) that I found while googling. It looked pretty good an inexpensive, do you have any experience with it?

I have been using D20Pro for about a year and a half now. I have a group of 6 that uses it for our weekly game.I prefer it over Maptools and Fantasy Grounds II. We also use Ventrilo which i vastly prefer over Skype, you will have to pay for a server but it takes a lot less CPU resources compared to Skype.Look HEREand HERE for some more info on VTT's.


bigkilla wrote:
Creslin321 wrote:
DMFTodd wrote:

1 - Haven't tried it

2 - You're looking for a VTT, virtual table top: Maptools, OpenRPG, Infrno, FantasyGrounds.

3 - We use Skype for our group of 7. Skype is nice that you can hear when two people talk at the same time. Taking turns talking doesn't seem to be an issue with it as it was with Ventrilo (that was a couple years ago at this point).

Thanks for the response DMFTodd! Good to hear that Skype works well with 7 people.

Have you ever heard of D20 Pro? It's another VTT (thanks for the term :) ) that I found while googling. It looked pretty good an inexpensive, do you have any experience with it?

I have been using D20Pro for about a year and a half now. I have a group of 6 that uses it for our weekly game.I prefer it over Maptools and Fantasy Grounds II. We also use Ventrilo which i vastly prefer over Skype, you will have to pay for a server but it takes a lot less CPU resources compared to Skype.Look HEREand HERE for some more info on VTT's.

Thanks bigkilla!

Good to hear that D20 Pro is decent. I'm really oscillating between FG2 and D20Pro at this point...not sure which one to get and I don't want to waste my $ on one and then decide I like the other better.

Anyway, if price was not an object, would you do FG2 instead of D20Pro?

Also, I DL'd the free trial of FG2, but couldn't really find anyway to easily create a battle grid. This is very important for me because I like to do sandbox style adventures where I may need to make a quick battle grid on the fly.

Does anyone know if FG2 has a decent battle grid creation system that will let you quickly spin up a battle grid during an adventure?


In FG you just need any image open. And you can right click to bring up layer and add a grid or hex of whatever scale you want.


We use Fantasy Grounds 2, and it's pretty awesome, especially for Pathfinder. Most of your calculations are automated, and there are premade monsters that you can just drag into encounters. Depending on how you're used to playing, games may take a little more prep work, but it's worth it. The UI is kind of unintuitive at first, but once you get used to it, it's really good.


skrahen wrote:
In FG you just need any image open. And you can right click to bring up layer and add a grid or hex of whatever scale you want.

I see, thanks! So I can just make a map in something like Pyromancer and then import it should be easy.


Brianide wrote:
We use Fantasy Grounds 2, and it's pretty awesome, especially for Pathfinder. Most of your calculations are automated, and there are premade monsters that you can just drag into encounters. Depending on how you're used to playing, games may take a little more prep work, but it's worth it. The UI is kind of unintuitive at first, but once you get used to it, it's really good.

Cool :). I think I'm going to go for FG2 as well after weighing my options. I'm psyched to DL it tonight and give it a whirl.

Lantern Lodge

My group is almost all in person but we have another player two time zones away so we use the internet to play.

We use Skype cause it is free and simple. May not be the best but it's free. Also its nice cause I can use it on my iPad and phone as well.

Now for a VTT we use d20 Pro. But we only use it as a tabletop not for any of the actual game play. We use dice, paper, pencils, etc. like normal tabletop gaming but use d20 Pro as a virtual battlemap to help show where everyone is and movement and such.

Other resources that are useful are:
Google Docs: for notes, character sheets, handouts, and other paperwork.

Google Sites: there are some templates for campaign logs and other material. I find it useful for keeping logs of the game, character info, etc. where everyone can see it at any time (assuming they have the internet).

d20PFSRD: use this site for references to the rules and material. Its nice to just give a link to the page that you are trying to reference rather than trying to explain something to someone you can see.


Creslin321 wrote:

Hey All,

I'm thinking of starting an online campaign with my cousin who lives very far away and some other folks. I really want to try to replicate the "face to face" RPG experience that we used to have as much as possible, but I'm not sure how I should go about this technology wise.

So does anyone have some advice on what kind of technologies can aid an online campaign the most? A few things I was thinking of were...

1. Webcams - Has anyone ever tried a game were everyone videoconferenced? Does it help?

2. Battle grids - Is there any kind of PC application that lets you share a battlegrid over the internet for combat?

3. Conference call (Skype) - Does anyone have advice on how to utilize conferencing tech for gaming? Any good ways to stop everyone from talking at the same time?

4. One more thing I would really like to do is play music on my computer that all my players can hear. Any idea how to do this???

In my game of six players plus a GM, we have one player who lives in a distant city, and two players with young kids who occasionally have stay at home while the kids are asleep, so we had to build our game to allow remote playing. (i.e. we always have one remote player, sometimes have two, and once in a while have three.) The rest of the players are physically present together at my house.

1) Webcams: we have used webcams for two-, three-, or four-way videoconferencing. iChat on Mac OS allows up to three simultaneous users for free, Skype for free only allows two, and Google Plus "Hangouts" allow up to six for free. Downsides: Requires a whole lot of internet bandwidth, (so your non-gaming spouse shouldn't be trying to stream Netflix in the next room). Sometimes the A/V link can get really choppy, which makes communication a little problematic.

2) Shared battlemat: We use MapTool. It's free, it's flexible, and it's multi-platform. The interface is a little weird, and it takes a while to get used to, but it's been working out very well. It has a "d20" rules set that pre-cooks a whole lot of settings for any d20 game, and works fine for Pathfinder RPG.

3) Audio Chat: Between the bandwidth trouble (especially with more than a two-way AV link), and everyone having their attention on the MapTool battle map most of the time, we have switched to using audio chat most of the time. (Usually Skype, sometimes iChat audio, sometimes we'll put an iPhone on speakerphone in the middle of the table if the Internet is extra slow and there's only one remote player.) You can't really stop people from talking over each other-- you just have to work through it. After a few sessions, you'll develop a pattern and it won't be too bad, but here's no getting around having to ask people to repeat themselves pretty often. Another problem is that the audio cuts out on one side every once in a while, and the other party might not realize it.

4) Shared music stream: I haven't done this myself, but I believe that you can set up shared playlists in Spotify. One thing to keep in mind is that if you want to use music with your players and you're using audio chat, no one can play music over speakers (the mics will pick it up and play it back to everyone on a delay, and you'll get cacophony). Gamer-style headsets would be the way to go. Remember that you'll be cutting into the bandwidth for AV with every streaming service you use.

Other online resources we use:

I have a campaign site set up on Obsidian Portal for an adventure log, wiki, and character and item rosters.

We also use Google Docs very extensively. I have asked all Players to keep a current stat block of their character on Google Docs and to share it with me. That way, I always have a copy of the character for reference (for secret skill checks, or to run the character as an NPC if the player is absent).


Hey all,

Thanks again for all the advice. I wanted to give you guys an update on my solution for sharing music in case anyone else wants to do it.

I wound up using Ventrilo to do both the music and the voice. You can do this by running two Ventrilo clients on one machine where one plays the music based on the "Stereo Mixer" (or "What U Hear") channel, and the other is for your voice. I tested it out and it works great! As an added bonus, you don't to run two streaming apps for music and voice, so it should save on bandwidth as well.

Anyway, here is a link for more info if you want to do this for your games:
http://www.ehow.com/how_4965151_stream-music-ventrilo.html

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