New way to play?

[Duck One]

I am thinking of starting an ALFA-based campaign group that meet weekly online, and am looking for folks to start to meet and discuss it. The goals of this group:

• Develop a medium other than NWN as a means of gaming together
• Have fun playing

I’ve been playing in an online group and the modern tools available are quite compelling. The more I learn, the more I see the potential of it. Here’s what I’ve been thinking for this exploratory group. I’ll run a short campaign with 5 or 6 players, and we’ll discuss how well we think the medium is working as an alternative to NWN. Here’s what I’ve worked out as a starting point:

• 5th Edition: this rule-set is a great leap forward. It simplifies the game without compromising the versatility and depth. Things are resolved quicker without spending great deal of time research rules / modifiers / etc. It allows you focus less on rule books and stick to the core essence of the immersion you all love.
• Discord / Zoom / Teams : There are a number of online real-time conferencing tools that allow groups to come together much like we’d do around tables back in the day. You can share screens, have avatars, refer to maps, etc., to increase the immersion experience. But beyond that, you can do things on the computer that we couldn’t do around those tables. The bard can literally play music, you can use voice altering software to sound more like a half-orc, private chat rooms can easily segregate the DM and a sub-group to limit meta information, etc.
• D&D Beyond: This tool is great for character creation and management, and as a resource to understand the rules. It allows for adding in add-ons, home-brew rules, etc., and makes the whole process of rolling up a character and leveling it up very simple, while allowing a great deal of customization and detail.
• The Forge: This tool is fantastic for a real-time game management. It allows all the participants to visualize the space including features like:
o Custom maps
o Lighting
o Fog of war
o Importing of characters from D&D Beyond
o Real-time management of combat
- Initiative
- Die rolling with applicable modifiers
- Movement
- Line of site

I’ve been playing in a setup similar to this, and I find it to be more immersive than NWN, and much less problematic, and definitely much less work. If there is a group of ALFAns with an open mind who’d like to try to experiment with this, please let me know.

[paazin]

I've been using roll 20 for years and have found it great -- would definitely recommend assorted online forms like these.

[Analogkid]

I would be up for it, an odds are I could wrangle another player or two

[Rick7475]

I subscribe to Beyond DnD and play on Roll D20 all the time. I love 5e, and these are great tools.

I play with a group (including former Alphans) currently and it works out great.

I think this is a great idea. The only issues, as always, is time zones and when to get a group together over such a wide area.

[Duck One]

So the group I am testing this with is a group of friends I used to play with way back in the day before ALFA. Most of them haven't picked up dice in decades. We're in 4 different locations now. We'll be learning 5th edition and these tools as we go, so likely to be some rough patches as we work out some kinks. But they're good guys looking to have fun, and therefore it'll work out I think. We're going to stream it so some of our other friends and family can have a good laugh at our expense. I'm putting the link here so you all can get a sense of what may be possible with this kind of setup. The live session is Saturday at 3:00 Eastern, but you can hit the replay anytime after that.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/3aUxb-f3xyQ[/youtube]

you can also hit the Twitch channel for the live stream: https://www.twitch.tv/art_of_getting_lost

[Wild Wombat]

Hiya Duck (yeah, I check about once a year, it seems).

Wondering how this went. I wish that I had seen this in a more timely fashion, I would have raised my hand to volunteer as a guinea pig for your group.

I've been playing every two to three weeks with a very small group of friends on Roll20 since *May of 2020. Three of us have been playing off and on since the late eighties. It's been a lot of fun, so I am sure that your sessions were a great success.

Keep waddling on,

WW

*Yeah. May of 2020. I wonder what spurred us to give it a try.

[Knighted]

For anyone who's interested in playing with ALFA folks, FYI the 'unofficial' NWN: Enhanced Edition servers have decent player populations (though Moonshaes is quiet at the moment as we're just about to release a big update). Daggerford is about to go from beta to live and be hooked up to Moonshaes, too

OK I'll leave you to your actual discussion now *scuttles off*

[Duck One]

Hiya Duck (yeah, I check about once a year, it seems).

Wondering how this went. I wish that I had seen this in a more timely fashion, I would have raised my hand to volunteer as a guinea pig for your group.

I've been playing every two to three weeks with a very small group of friends on Roll20 since *May of 2020. Three of us have been playing off and on since the late eighties. It's been a lot of fun, so I am sure that your sessions were a great success.

Keep waddling on,

WW

*Yeah. May of 2020. I wonder what spurred us to give it a try.

We're on session #32 as of right now, so over 100 hours of gaming. We're having pretty good success with the following set of tools:

Forge: the primary gaming interface. It has a portal to D&D Beyond to import characters and standard monsters from resources I've bought licenses to. It follows 5th edition pretty faithfully, but there are some kinks and thankfully you can work around them with occasional manual adjustments. I really like the lighting, line-of-sight, and measurement tools which make it pretty obvious what is in about to be seen. It looks good, but that is a function of how much attention you put into it designing your encounters. I have also created travel maps.

D&D Beyond: We keep the character masters here and track progress with it. I rely on the players to keep their sheets up to date.

Discord: Real time audio and visual to the players, plus I can stream an extra window of flair (a graphic of the item found, a picture of the ruin they're exploring, etc.)

DungeonDraft: for those who want to create encounter maps with great detail. I highly recommend getting Forgotten Adventures add-ins for great placeables.

The game moves a bit slowly compared to something like NWN, but it is extremely customizable and infinitely more flexible. Virtually anything is possible with this setup. I also like the simplicity utility of 5th edition. Much less frustrating.

[Duck One]

So I’ve spent the past year playing with my old friends adapting to playing online. We’re using Forge Virtual Tabletop for the main interface, Discord for video conferencing, and D&D Beyond for character generation and storage. It’s a bit like the old tabletop experience, but with pop up graphics, ambient sounds, and a virtual miniatures set for encounters. We stream the games, so you can get a taste of what it’s like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYgkDJlSLS0

I’d like to try to bring that here and take it up another level. I want to put together an ALFA group of story tellers. My thesis is that we have experienced role players who can make the game entertaining. Here is my proposal in broad strokes:
Players: a group of 4-5 players who can be fairly consistent in participating in a weekly session.

• DMs: Myself plus perhaps one additional DM who helps me manage presenting the game.
  
  5th edition rules
  
  Set in the Silver Marches (no time of troubles / wild magic)
  
  We play once a week on a consistent schedule (i.e. Wednesdays 9-12 eastern)
  
  We stream it

Here’s what I want to do a bit differently than you see in that video: I want the players to be part of the story telling. When it comes to them taking actions, I instead of:

“initiative 18, the ranger is next”
“He moves left a bit and he shoot his bow at the nearest kobold”
*die roll*
“Miss”

We get a more descriptive presentation:

*text prompt that the ranger is up*
“Still a bit stunned at the kobold ambush, Darius gathers himself and leaps into action. With his bow in hand, he quickly reaches over his shoulder and pulls an arrow from the quiver. He sees a point off to the left which offers a better view of his target and dashes to it, drawing his bow back and loosing an arrow towards the nearest kobold”
*die roll*
*text prompt that it is a miss*
“The kobold sees the ranger moving and the oncoming arrow, giving him enough time to react to the shot as it glances harmlessly off his shoulder. A look of disdain is shot back towards Darius.”

The goal is to make the experience a bit more immersive and colorful. But perhaps more importantly it is to give the players some ownership of the story telling process. If that sounds like a fun way to spend a night each week, then join the voice chat room on Wednesday at 9 eastern and we can discuss it.