D&D General Shocked how hard it is to get new players now-a-days

[Gorck]

It might be very geographically dependent. At game stores in Boston there seem to be tons of groups running games and it looks like it would be easy to find players if you can run things at the store. Outside the city I think it’s less the case. Most of the people I play with have shifted to online, which I imagine is one of the big changes affecting how easy it is to recruit live players

Tell me about it! I’m up in the Merrimack Valley and the closest game I can find online is down in Somerville, which is outside of my desired commute range. If only I could find another gaming group up here, I would finally be able to play again (instead of DMing for a bunch of 12 year olds).

 

[Bedrockgames]

Tell me about it! I’m up in the Merrimack Valley and the closest game I can find online is down in Somerville, which is outside of my desired commute range. If only I could find another gaming group up here, I would finally be able to play again (instead of DMing for a bunch of 12 year olds).

Lol Somerville is a hike from Merrimack Valley. I am a lot closer and it still feels like a hike for me when I need to get into Somerville

 

[Vaalingrade]

There are lot of people still masking and avoiding public interaction. I think that will continue for those folks.

Yeah, I haven't been sick since the pandemic began.

Not like COVID was the only airborne disease or that it's gone away on any meaningful level. I'm ESPECIALLY going to be masked up any place where children are, which includes game stores.

 

[Lanefan]

The folks I play with enjoy the virtual dice animations in Roll20. While they're occasionally incorrect or unclear, for the most part they do give a nice experience of seeing the dice results together. The excitement of all watching a critical save or attack, or group initiative roll in my old school games.

The roll20 dice animations disagree with the result shown in the chat so often that we had to houserule that what shows in the chat always takes precedence. Which was fine with me, as it meant I could turn off the often-annoying dice animations.

 

[Theory of Games]

Once upon a time nobody had a telephone. Now 99.9% of us carry a phone everywhere. Times change. WotC is determined to turn D&D into a video game and in 2-3 years it will be so. No more f2f D&D unless it's older eds. Online as better IMO but I get how some people still enjoy f2f. I have friends & family that still have flip-phones and DVDs As long as they're happy, right?

 

[Oofta]

Once upon a time nobody had a telephone. Now 99.9% of us carry a phone everywhere. Times change. WotC is determined to turn D&D into a video game and in 2-3 years it will be so. No more f2f D&D unless it's older eds.

Yeah, that's not going to happen.

Online as better IMO but I get how some people still enjoy f2f.

Maybe for you, but for a lot of people getting together in person is a big part of the reason we play. It's a break from our always-online world.

 

[Cergorach]

While that may also be true, roll =20 is known for creating extremely high cpu loadon larger maps & maps with lots of fancy bells and whistles like dynamic lighting. Browsers are not really capable of using the GPU & other tricks like occlusion(?) to the same degree that other vtts are. Workarounds like loading parts of the map in active chunks are kinda possible, but then you have what are effectively zone borders throughout your dungeon. VTTs that run in a 3d engine like unity or whatever like the one I use (arkenforge) can handle much higher map specs and solid in person gaming with minis.

It also depends which VTT you're using in the browser, Foundry VTT works fine in the browser with dynamic lighting, (spell) effects, etc. If you want you can even run it as a 3d engine with the right Foundry Module... A modern browser (Chrome/Edge/Firefox/Safari) can use hardware acceleration.

That said, my 2020 CPU with iGPU (4800u) gets hot when I'm playing/working in Foundry VTT. And most systems should be able to handle 16kx16k pixel maps (in Foundry). I'm actually making a dungeon with 80x80 (squares) sections (100px/square) with scene transition areas between them. Even if I could do a 160x160 maps (@100px/square), as Dungeondraft only supports 128x128 maps, I wouldn't be able to fit the whole map onto it anyway...

Arkenforge also seems to have that hard limit for images (16k).

Some players might not just have potatoes, they might also not have updated systems running... So keeping as much as possible withing reasonable limits is a good thing...

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm actually making a dungeon with 80x80 (squares) sections (100px/square) with scene transition areas between them. Even if I could do a 160x160 maps (@100px/square), as Dungeondraft only supports 128x128 maps, I wouldn't be able to fit the whole map onto it anyway...

Arkenforge also seems to have that hard limit for images (16k).

Some players might not just have potatoes, they might also not have updated systems running... So keeping as much as possible withing reasonable limits is a good thing...

I snipped the rest of your post because I either agreed or lack enough familiarity to say much either way.. but this part made me giggle since it seems like you are listing those as notable and it reminded me of how easily arkenfforge handles absolutely ginormous maps. More than once I've built multiple large dungeons in a single map file because I expected possible split party or whatever

 

[Hussar]

Wow. You guys have some rocket fast internets.

I limit images to under 1 Mb. As soon as images get bigger than that, with Fantasy Grounds anyway, I find that I start having lag issues. Now, to get around that, I can stitch together several smaller images - so, effectively my map size is unlimited so long as I slice it up into small enough chunks. Bit of a PITA, but, I have used some HONKING large images for some adventures.

Granted, the fact that I'm in Japan and all my players are in the States or Canada might have a lot to do with that. And I can go over 1 Mb, but, I find that that seems to be the rough limit before things start getting laggy.

Then again, my computer was bought in 2018 and it wasn't exactly top of the line then, so, yeah... Waiting until next year when Windows 10 goes kaput and I'll get myself a new machine.

I'd use my new laptop but, it's such a PITA hooking up extra monitors and I'd hate to try to run Fantasy Grounds on this 15 inch screen. Yikes.

 

[GrimCo]

In my country, average mobile internet speed is 117 Mbps and fixed internet is 79 Mbps, but averages are lower cause we have decent amount of islands and rural mountain areas where fixed internet is bad (20Mbits limit). At home, i currently rock 1.4 Gbit/s fiber optic for just 36,31e/month. My whole group has at least 1 Gbit/s fiber optic at home, plus unlimited mobile data with 5G speed, and since we are all engineers,we have high end new machines ( i have top spec Dell Precission 7680 for home office). So tech side isn't a problem. It's just that, for us at least, playing online just doesn't have appeal. D&D is activity that gives us brake from staring at screen and gives us opportunity to hang out. Playing D&D online is like having beer with friend over Zoom. It okay, better than nothing, but it's just not the same.