Communicationg with your group outside of game sessions

[Gooberosity]

I am wondering what other campaign groups are using (if at all) in order to communicate with their members outside of Fantasy Grounds? (I am thinking outside of just regular email.) For example, this would be to converse about the session, give feedback, talk about the next game, figure out how they're going to kill the BBEG, or whatever. I was thinking about something like Slack.com or a google hangout, but thought I'd check here to see if anyone had a suggestion.

[Trenloe]

I usually setup a campaign on Obsidian Portal (https://www.obsidianportal.com/) and use this for storing campaign and character info, adventure logs, area maps and NPC portraits, next session date/time (and availability voting), forums for discussions, etc..

[JohnD]

Just email. Occasionally Messenger to a specific person.

[LindseyFan]

I have been using personal and FG emails. As I am growing in campaigns though, I am really leaning towards wanting to try obsidian portal... I don't know what the learning curve is like though.. Anyone give an idea? My poor little head has been subjected to so many new things these last few months. All worth it, but some of us have limits. :)

[Myrdin Potter]

I just use email.

[LordEntrails]

I've only used email. Though I've considered Obsidian Portal and RealmWorks, but have never needed that level. Also have considered just setting up a One Note everyone can access. But, still not a need in my groups.

[damned]

I usually just use email but if you are world building or doing a lot of play between sessions something liek obsidian portl or your own wiki is good.

[flashingturtle]

we have a facebook group and it works really well.

[Gooberosity]

I am thinking Obsidian Portal is probably overkill for this group, so email will likely be it.

[GarthGiantbane]

We made a group here on FG (Forum->Commumity->Group) - it seems to work well enough. Like having your own mini forum.

[Callum]

I use a free forum website.

[mhorgunn]

We have a FB group. Though ours is a little different situation as It also serves as gathering spot for friends/past gamers and as a memorial to our DM that passed. It works well. Those in the game can keep in contact and the others can live vicariously through us. I usually give a synopsis but this week one of the players beat me to it. It was interesting to see his view of what happened.

[Ken L]

skype group chat.

[Gwydion]

I use a combination of text chat in discord (since the history saves) and realmworks. Personally, for one-shots reamlworks is probably overkill for me, but since I'm running POTA, it is invaluable keeping straight where the party has been, who they have met, what clues the have discovered, etc....

[Trenloe]

I will also usually make a private campaign in the FG game calendar and post the time/date of the upcoming sessions. This will convert to the local time zone for each user (set in the user profile), which helps a lot of people spread across time zones. It also means there's quite a nice summary of upcoming games when you go to the main manage campaigns page - giving you an idea of upcoming games you are involved in and at what time those sessions are. https://www.fantasygrounds.com/calendar/

[Gooberosity]

I didn't realize there was even a "Group" system here in the FG forum. I'll check that out as well.

[Honken]

Me and my crew use Skype group chat. We have tried making Facebook Groups, G+ Groups, but it is always one or two guys that arn't active in that other medium. My other game group use a steam group for scheduling the session.

/H

[st4lk3r87]

I use a Facebook Group and I create an even with a recap every week.

[Gruber]

Discord group chat. And make a few sub channels:

OOH (general)
In-character (for play by post between sessions, adds flavor)
Scheduling

We agree on No meta gaming (we would not agree on how to kill the guy or what to do because it kills RP)


*discord is also cross-platform so we can use those moments when on lunch breaks, bus-stops, toilets etc :)

[Robyn1xp]

Throwing in my vote here for Discord.

My weekly group uses Discord. We have been using it for a long time (before getting into D&D and FG together) so we had separate text channels for chit-chatting, talking about the MMOs we were playing, TV shows, etc. Now that D&D is in our repertoire for last few months we've added a text channel where we discuss and relay information. Its great because you can "tag" people to ping their attention, pin messages, search the chat history, and assign members of the Discord to groups (we used @Adventurer) and tag all the members of that group for putting out messages to the whole group all at once.

Here's a screenshot describing some of those things:
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On top of all of that, Discord is on PC, android, ios, etc. So we can check messages/chat even when not at our computers. I have to mute notifications when working, but that's the same as any other social media things these days.

Discord is so awesome. :)

[ChazC]

Private Facebook group. Works really well - after every session I put up a session recap & every reply has to be RP. As we only game once a week it helps keep the game going in downtime.