Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[prabe]

If you just don't like the VTT experience, you don't; I'll never claim they're identical. All I'll say is that on the whole I thought the things that I gained were greater than those I lost, and some of the resistance I see sometimes to VTT is based on the feeling the poster seems to have that they were compelled to do a bunch of work that they're really not (again, people expecting them to is a different problem). But if you find the VTT experience itself offputting, you do.

Yeah, my point isn't that VTTs all suck, it's more that there are ways to run games online that don't involve that particular learning curve (if that learning curve is what's keeping you from running games online).

 

[Ryujin]

Part of it is that I know what I'm doing with the physical things, part of it is that I never really enjoyed the VTT parts of the games I was in where we used VTTs. I use a chopstick as a pointer, dice as tokens, squares cut from a beer case as plus-size bases ...

It was a big change from my days with the large 1" squares graph paper on an easel and drawing the map with a Sharpie, until getting into combat.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I see a trend around here and it really sucks.

Historically, it fades after a few weeks, once they realize the larger community disagrees with their views. It's a lot more fun to stay in their dark digital basements, telling themselves that everyone out there secretly agrees with them, rather than discovering that, nope, we find your views abhorrent, just like the last time you all angrily emerged into the sunlight.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Yeah, my point isn't that VTTs all suck, it's more that there are ways to run games online that don't involve that particular learning curve (if that learning curve is what's keeping you from running games online).

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Some of the most fun I had was when I had to FaceTime into a session. Think I was ill and worried about making others sick.

My friend uses a tv and projects a map onto it while it lies in a recessed table. We put minis on that.

Anyway, it worked and was fun for me as a player anyway.

As an aside, I am not really into VTTs generally. It reduces my fun in roleplay for some reason and I struggle to use the system.

In the rare occasions we play remote, I use a paper character sheet or the app on my phone and my real dice.

Probably not a good for for the DM who wants it all VTT…but a hybrid of remote without VTT has worked for me as a player.

 

[prabe]

Some of the most fun I had was when I had to FaceTime into a session. Think I was ill and worried about making others sick.

My friend uses a tv and projects a map onto it while it lies in a recessed table. We put minis on that.

Anyway, it worked and was fun for me as a player anyway.

As an aside, I am not really into VTTs generally. It reduces my fun in roleplay for some reason and I struggle to use the system.

In the rare occasions we play remote, I use a paper character sheet or the app on my phone and my real dice.

Probably not a good for for the DM who wants it all VTT…but a hybrid of remote without VTT has worked for me as a player.

In the games I run, the players are responsible for managing their character sheets, and I don't care at all how they do it; they're also responsible for generating whatever random results the game calls for, and again I don't care at all how they do it.

(I do share titles on Beyond, for the players that might not have a given book, but that's not a request for them to use Beyond.)

 

[Ryujin]

Some of the most fun I had was when I had to FaceTime into a session. Think I was ill and worried about making others sick.

My friend uses a tv and projects a map onto it while it lies in a recessed table. We put minis on that.

Anyway, it worked and was fun for me as a player anyway.

As an aside, I am not really into VTTs generally. It reduces my fun in roleplay for some reason and I struggle to use the system.

In the rare occasions we play remote, I use a paper character sheet or the app on my phone and my real dice.

Probably not a good for for the DM who wants it all VTT…but a hybrid of remote without VTT has worked for me as a player.

My group had one player who almost never showed up, citing that he had to stay home for various reasons on our usual day. I asked if he would be able to play if I put together a remote rig so that he could Skype into the game so that he could attend, virtually, and see what was going on via Maptool. He said yes. I put together a computer with the monitor sitting at a space at the table and with a webcam, so he could feel like he was there. I got a cheap conference phone setup that could connect to the computer as both speaker and mic. Everything was good to go. This was almost 15 years ago now, so it was no easy feat.

He never played again. Haven't heard from him in more than a couple of emails since.

One of the other players did end up using it, a few times, when he couldn't attend in person.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, my point isn't that VTTs all suck, it's more that there are ways to run games online that don't involve that particular learning curve (if that learning curve is what's keeping you from running games online).

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Well, yeah, the Discord-and-camera method is at least functional, and you don't even need the camera for people who are comfortable playing full TotM.

 

[Thomas Shey]

In the rare occasions we play remote, I use a paper character sheet or the app on my phone and my real dice.

Probably not a good for for the DM who wants it all VTT…but a hybrid of remote without VTT has worked for me as a player.

This was, in practice, what we did for years. There's a kind of all-or-nothing view of remote play I can't help but find odd, and is probably a side effect of the success of Roll20 and the like.

 

[CleverNickName]

When I disengage, I disengage, y'all. It took me until just now to even notice that the thread got closed.

 

[RealAlHazred]

My group had one player who almost never showed up, citing that he had to stay home for various reasons on our usual day. I asked if he would be able to play if I put together a remote rig so that he could Skype into the game so that he could attend, virtually, and see what was going on via Maptool. He said yes. I put together a computer with the monitor sitting at a space at the table and with a webcam, so he could feel like he was there. I got a cheap conference phone setup that could connect to the computer as both speaker and mic. Everything was good to go. This was almost 15 years ago now, so it was no easy feat.

He never played again. Haven't heard from him in more than a couple of emails since.

One of the other players did end up using it, a few times, when he couldn't attend in person.

Gave me a flashback to when Aaron Williams added the character Shawn to the Full Frontal Nerdity comic.