Greetings

[jperry13]

I am making a return to table top roelplaying for the first time in over 20 years. I used to play with my brother as we were growing up and as we are both in the military, the likelihood of us being in the same place at the same time is very remote so I figured that we would give Fantasy Grounds 2 a try to see if we can recapture the magic of playing D&D together again.

As a side note, has anyone had any luck in running hybrid games in which there are local players as well as remote players?

Cheers,
JP

[Dakadin]

I've successfully run games with remote and local PCs. Five of the PCs were local and 1 or 2 were remote. The local players used headphones and we had a conference microphone to cut down on the feedback. It worked really well for the few times we had to do it.

[jperry13]

I've successfully run games with remote and local PCs. Five of the PCs were local and 1 or 2 were remote. The local players used headphones so and a conference microphone to cut down on the feedback. It worked really well for the few times we had to do it.

Thanks Dakadin! That gives me hope. I will go ahead and invest in a conference mic as well.

~JP

[Dakadin]

It was definitely worth it for my games since using push to talk with each player having a mic tended to leave the remote players out of the normal banter that happens with the face to face people. With the conference mic they were able to participate without actually being in the room.

[Tiqon]

First of all, welcome!

Second. I was right where you are right now, just a year ago ;). Have played since the early 80'ies and got more and more away from RPG because of the adult life and old game friends living to far apart. I found FG2 and now I'm playing again! With some of the players from back then even!

We always play hybrid as my wife plays too and we sit right beside each other, I'm the GM but she can keep her eyes of my screen ;).

We only uses headsets both of us, it work... ok. It is a bit strange that I can hear her both in the headset and right beside me from time to time (if she gets loud, which is almost never, shes a quite girl ;)), but we manage. Maybe I should invest in a mic like yours Dakadin.

[Dakadin]

That reminds of something that we always did to prevent the echo when using headsets with mics. Mute the people in the same room with you since you can hear them anyways. :)

[Tiqon]

Heh! Good idea, unfortunately you cannot turn off one person in Google hangout. I guess we should consider using the Team speak server. Speaking of the conference mic, what do you use? I ask because I looked at what you can get and either it was too cheap (no hopes it will work ok) or it was waaaaay beyond my budget....

[jperry13]

Heh! Good idea, unfortunately you cannot turn off one person in Google hangout. I guess we should consider using the Team speak server. Speaking of the conference mic, what do you use? I ask because I looked at what you can get and either it was too cheap (no hopes it will work ok) or it was waaaaay beyond my budget....

Tiqon,
You can actually mute one person in Hangout. Unfortunately in your case you are using a single account for two people... Can't really do that. I have thought of bring up an extra monitor for my laptop and running two instances of FG2, one for me as the GM and one for my local players. I would just have to take the direct action for them and they would have to keep paper copies of their characters. But what do I know, I have never used FG in a live setting yet, so I'm not sure how the game dynamics would play out. ;)

~JP

[Tiqon]

Tiqon,
You can actually mute one person in Hangout. Unfortunately in your case you are using a single account for two people... Can't really do that. I have thought of bring up an extra monitor for my laptop and running two instances of FG2, one for me as the GM and one for my local players. I would just have to take the direct action for them and they would have to keep paper copies of their characters. But what do I know, I have never used FG in a live setting yet, so I'm not sure how the game dynamics would play out. ;)

~JP

You can? Hmm, its been a while I must confess :S. Actually we do not use just one account, we have one each, that we connect to a hangout with. I'll have to play around with this some more then :). Thanks!

[Tiqon]

OH! btw lots of people do what you mention about a second monitor (you might want to consider using a second monitor anyway, as you screen WILL be cluttered. From what I read here in the forum most GM's actually do. I know I could not live without mine. Also did you know you can start a new instance of FG2 on the same pc? One as a host (GM) and one more connecting to the host.

[Trenloe]

OH! btw lots of people do what you mention about a second monitor (you might want to consider using a second monitor anyway, as you screen WILL be cluttered. From what I read here in the forum most GM's actually do.
We sure do - see some example screen shots from FG Con 2 earlier this year: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?18861-Convention-screenshots