We had a guest here from Philly, and what was supposed to be a one-off game looks like it’ll be at least a two or three session run. However, he’s returned to Philly. (We’re in L.A.)
How do you recommend doing this? The DM and the other two players will all still be in the same room, but one of the players will only be able to participate electronically.
Some options we’ve considered:
Have the game take place entirely via text, on an IM program.
Have everyone hook up webcams/microphones and game that way (possibly a problem with the home wireless getting overloaded with 3 people transmitting/receiving at once? Also, we have only 2 computers at home, and 3 players (incl. GM).)
Have the GM hook up webcam/microphone to the player in Philly, and turn the volume up on all so we can interact.
Something we haven’t thought of???
I’d love to hear from folks who have experience with long distance pen & paper gaming…
I like option 3, with maybe that player using an online dice roller that everyone can see.
That way you basically set up a webcam for him, and you just have a laptop on your Gaming area, and communicate with the guy if timezones and such are not a problem.
We had a player on our regular game play from Texas, and then Maryland, for many years using a variety of technologies. We started out with a webcam and voice chat software, eventually migrating to Skype to handle multiple remote players on the frequent occasions that I was in Japan.
Eventually, we adopted RPTools, which we adapted for 4e. It was a much better solution, allowing the dice rolling, map visuals and so on. We often had one local player logged into MapTool as well to help the DM keep token icons in sync with the RL map. The remote player has since moved back (having finished his Ph.D. – we’ve been playing the same game for more than 20 years now), and we have abandoned the computer-aided solutions, but we all agreed that RPTools + Skype made remote players much more a part of the game.
I’m part of a group which has been playing D&D online together for nearly a decade.
We use a fairly low-tech method at the moment: an AOL Instant Messenger chat room (which features a die-rolling utility), and spreadsheets on Google Docs for a battlemat. It works fairly well, if slow (we play primarily RPGA adventures; those are written to take 4 hours in a convention setting, and they usually take us 6-7 hours to play online). We’ll typically play one adventure over the course of two 3-4 hour evening sessions; longer than that is just a long time to be sitting at a computer playing, for some of us.
We’re considering switching over to MapTools and Skype or Ventrilo, but we’re just starting to look at it. It does look like it’d be a faster method.
I’ve heard good things about the FantasyGrounds program, but it’s not cheap.
I also know a number of people who’ve used OpenRPG…it’s shareware, and some people seem to like it quite a bit, but (at least a few years ago, when we looked at it) it was a fairly screwy install, and some in our group never could get it to install properly.
We’ve been playing a Pathfinder campaign via maptool for almost a year. It’s an amazing tool. For voice communication, we simply use 3-way calling. (3 players + DM= 2 interlinked 3-way calls.)
We liked it so much that we’ve also started using it for in-person playing when the kids are around. (toddlers like to eat little lead people, for some reason). We hook a laptop to the TV so everyone can see.