As the title says, why do you like to play VTT (Virtual Tabletop) games, and/or why don't you? To broaden the subject lets include any online way of playing like PBP (Play-by-post). Please try to comment only if you've played in-person sessions as well as online.
I have never played a ttrpg online before, and I am really skeptical of the differences. I would like to know what you all think so I can make a decision of whether to try running an online game for my detached group or not.
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I play via VTT because I'm more comfortable playing with people I like online than going with the more local options. If I had a group of local meatspace friends I would probably do that as well.
I have played real-life games in the past, but frankly the people I play with online are more enjoyable, not to mention more numerous. That's just how things worked out for me, not counting the occasional convention I attend.
As for the VTT itself, for me, it should provide a quick way of doing most of the things you have to do to play/run at an actual table so that you don't have to fight with the interface. Which VTT serves that purpose best for each group of players is a matter of taste. Playing with the wrong VTT can turn you off the whole concept of playing via that option. So shop around and pick the one your group in general prefers.
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For me it's all about convenience (I prefer online play).
The advantages of playing in person just don't outweigh the advantages of playing online. I like not having to travel and get dressed up and carry heavy books. I like searchable PDFs and not having to hope that wherever I'm going that people don't mind my laptop (I can't believe that's even ever an issue, honestly).
So while I'll miss out on weekly in-person games fairly often, I avoid missing the cons, because the full on community aspect and the excitement, and the fact they only happen a few times a year makes it well worth it.
If you are fortunate enough to belong to a real-live tabletop group, with players that understand and enjoy the game and are committed to playing regularly-- nothing can top it.
However, as much as people want it, that is often not the reality.
VTT-- is a vast pool of fellow gamers to choose from. People can meet up with others of a similar playstyle, favored genre, and schedule.
I've jumped blindly into VTT recruitment 3 times, and two of them were just outstanding. Fantastic GM, greatly fun fellow players.
Features that I like are:
* Maps with grids and character tokens that move on them.
* Displays of Area of Effect
* Dice rolls are obvious to everyone (no sneaky rollers).
* Macros (pregenerated dice formulas for common activities) are pretty easy to make.
* Who-sees-what effects like Fog of War. (downside tho, they seem to tax the systems and cause crashing sometimes)
* Roll20 is pretty easy for first time users. (click and drag your token, "/r d20+8" to roll dice is all you need to function)
* Initiative window-- displays who's turn it is and sequence.
* We *play* when we get together. It's not 3 hours of catching up on our personal lives... and THEN starting to play.
* Playing with people all over the world, like Australia, Taiwan, and England.
* Anonymity. I do things in real life such as have a medical profession, testify at trials, and volunteer in prisons. I would never be able to give free range to my murderhobo tendencies if I had to worry that my patients or clients might hear about them.
Features I'm not so fond of:
* Overspeaking. Its more difficult than live play to allow everyone their turn. Overexcited or narcissistic players easily overwhelm quieter ones.
* Its a ton of work for GMs to prepare the maps, and NPC tokens. Visually it pays off, but... lots of work.
* Roll20 seems better to me than Maptools. Maptools appears to be a bandwidth hog and cause people to crash. Ditto Skype.
* Not as sociable. Which is both a plus and a minus to me. Although I have "met" some cool folks, there isn't as much of a personal connection.
I'm less interested in playing/running games online that aren't strictly text-based PbP.
The reason is, when I'm running in-person with friends, it's easier to get into character with my NPCs. I usually stand, move around, and such. Doing a g+ or skype call game, I find it too easy for everyone to get distracted, or to get bored staring at a screen instead of playing it out at the table.
With text PbP games, it's a bit more relaxed and doesn't really take up time or focus with slower messageboard games, and gives an oppurtunity to get more descriptive with actions.
I can have fun doing anything, but in person or text PbP are my prefered.
Thanks for all the great responses! Although I am very attached to my live groups, I will most certainly give VTT a try. I'll probably be using Roll20. If anyone has suggestions on a better VTT program in terms of visuals (I'm an artsy guy) just let me know.
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Some of the points Apocalypso made are interesting here, I agree and disagree:
If you are fortunate enough to belong to a real-live tabletop group, with players that understand and enjoy the game and are committed to playing regularly-- nothing can top it.
I belong to both, and I can say that online play doesn't seem to be a factor here. There's times where online play can trump the experience of tabletop play. It's strange that you mention this, because to some extent you seem to agree:
I've jumped blindly into VTT recruitment 3 times, and two of them were just outstanding. Fantastic GM, greatly fun fellow players.
Features that I like are:
...dependent on the VTT. The reasons I can quote being:
* Who-sees-what effects like Fog of War. (downside tho, they seem to tax the systems and cause crashing sometimes)
This is a cool feature of some VTTs because they increase realism, but as we know from tabletops, they can slow the game down as well - it's a double edged sword.
* Roll20 is pretty easy for first time users. (click and drag your token, "/r d20+8" to roll dice is all you need to function)
Roll20 is mentioned here, but while I haven't tried other VTT's, I think they're all pretty similarly easy. CA doesn't let players move their own tokens (the GM does it, the player just tells them where they want to move). For dice, you just use !roll 1d20+8 in the chat room.
Features I'm not so fond of:
* Overspeaking. Its more difficult than live play to allow everyone their turn. Overexcited or narcissistic players easily overwhelm quieter ones.
This is going to forever be a problem with online play, but a good GM or even good players can help to alleviate it by putting the quieter people in the spotlight and the louder people in the backseat.
* Its a ton of work for GMs to prepare the maps, and NPC tokens. Visually it pays off, but... lots of work.
This one is important - it's entirely dependent on the VTT. Roll20 and Maptool seem to take a lot of work (I can't say for sure, I've only heard the stories), but the prep I do on CA is very minimal.
It's 5 minutes of work. Extract the maps from the PDF, resize the grids for each map. Draw blockouts so that players can't see rooms they can't see yet (it's effectively a party fog-of-war).
It's actually the easiest part of prepping it - there's been faction missions to manually cut out and reading up on the scenario's storyline/statblocks.
* Roll20 seems better to me than Maptools. Maptools appears to be a bandwidth hog and cause people to crash. Ditto Skype.
Agreed, though I've never had problems with Skype. I have seen people start snoring though. Does that count?
* Not as sociable. Which is both a plus and a minus to me. Although I have "met" some cool folks, there isn't as much of a personal connection.
Almost all of my games start from a chat room where a bunch of us hang out on IRC. There's a link to the channel on pfrpg.com.au. We schedule games, muster, play in there, and hang out afterwards. Most players stay there 24/7 talking or lurking, some players only like to come in for games and then leave straight afterwards. We remember people who leave and come back to play, and that's cool.
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If anyone has suggestions on a better VTT program in terms of visuals (I'm an artsy guy) just let me know.
CA (Combat Assistant) is designed around simplicity; the most visual it gets is the maps. If you want visual tokens as well, you're probably best off with Roll20.
As far as I'm concerned, there's tradeoffs either way. With the simpler tokens (coloured/lettered), it's easier to distinguish who's who, but you lose the realism. With seeing people as tokens, you can forget who's Jake and who's Elwood. I think hovering over the token gives the detail. Either way, it's nitpicking - they're both good methods.
Paizo is supposed to be working on its own VTT (Gamespace, I think?)
Was there an update at GenCon, anyone know?
A fabulous idea that I heard was being worked in, is that GMs could purchase AP material:
* scaled, gridded maps, and
* NPC and Monster tokens with common macros (like attacks, damage, AC, HP, and saves) already installed. Point and click NPC attacks!
For GMs this would be heaven. Plug and Play Maps and NPCs.
I'm sure my groups would pitch in for the cost to help our GMs.
I tried it one or two times and it was just slow, horrible and unengaging.
Thank gods I have the chanse to play weekly With my friends, so I don't have to resort to playing online.
I enjoy rpg's as a way of staying in touch With my friends. Meet them regualrily and have a few drinks while we play. We also do a lot of "catching up" besides the actual gameplay. So VTT stuff is not for me at all.
Yeah, CA doesn't really look like my thing. Plus I think I'd be using Kyle Olsen's Combat Manager to do all the fancy work...or not, idk. I haven't seen how intuitive Roll20 can be yet. All I'm asking for is something that's super simple, but visually stimulating. All I really need the VTT for is for the map and tokens, as of now.
Here's my take on using a VTT.
Last year when the D&D Next playtest started several of my gaming friends and I, all of whom I'd played with in person at different times, decided to give it a try. One of the guys was the DM and we used rpgtableonline as our VTT. We set the table up like a 4E game and improvised to use powers and skills to reflect the Next rules. Mechanically it seems to work pretty well and the DM was able to present the maps with fog of war and all that. Usually, we'd also have a Goto Meeting setup with video chat. Now my PC is on the older side and having these apps, along with Word and PDF documents, email, etc. up all at once can sometimes really slow things down. After I inherited her older laptop at Christmas I started to divide the load and put the tabletop on one machine and Goto Meeting on the other. Your tools, internet connection and hardware will obviously influence your performance.
How does it compare to playing at the table? For me, I find it can be really fun when things are moving along but it can also be less engaging at times. It's a bit of a necessity for me at the moment as I don't have a regular local game and this lets me play with other folks hundreds of miles away. I personally prefer a real table by far with real dice. As the player with the least amount of available time I've found that we do waste a lot of time dealing with either technical issues or players trickling in much more than I've experienced with live in person gaming. It hasn't helped that we've never played a virtual game where we all know the system and are using tools perfectly matched to that system. Next has been an evolving game and we recently started with some Iron Kingdoms, again with many of us lacking the rules and system knowledge. So encounters are very slow. I've been very happy when within 1.5 to 2 hours we get through a couple of combats or other encounters. Don't get me wrong, still fun to get with your friends and game but I find it less than optimal.
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All I'm asking for is something that's super simple, but visually stimulating. All I really need the VTT for is for the map and tokens, as of now.
I've been running an online game using just a web cam for the past 4 years (so no VTT). While I prefer playing face-to-face, it is a great alternative.
However, I just recently looked into Roll20, and I must say, it's not bad, if, like you said, are wanting something to just display a map and tokens; because that is all Roll20 really does... And an added bonus for me, is that it is entirely web based, so I did not have to worry about anybody having firewall issues when trying to connect to the game.
I think the most important thing a VTT gives me is a way to speed up the paperwork as a GM. If it can reduce table clutter a bit, allow me to track combat stats/turn sequences, and provide near-instant maps then I'm happy. Actually connecting to other players with it is almost an optional extra as far as I'm concerned (although I certainly recognize that for many it's the main point of it)
Full disclosure: I'm actually on the development team for one at the moment, so I'm watching this thread with interest.
I enjoy using Roll20, and is the only way I am able to play any rpg. I much prefer face to face over online.
My gripe with VTT is, being online, people have a higher tendancy to let their attention wander to other things on the internet. Also, they have a higher attrition rate, where people just stop showing up, with or without any kind of notice.
As for pbp, which is very prevalent on this site's Online Games subforum, I absolutely cannot stand it. It is way too slow for my liking, and has an even higher rate of failure than VTT (my experience).
I play in 2 games over roll20. One on Mondays, another on Tuesdays. We use a program called RaidCall for voice chat. It is similar to Ventrilo, but is completely free, and very simple. I prefer that compared to Skype.