Mix of local and online players?

[Khel]

Hi - I'm looking at FG as a way to re-connect with my gaming group, as I now live far away and really want to continute playing with them. The rest of the group all gets together IRL to play, and I'd likely be the only one joining remotely.

My GM and I have both messed with the demo, both think it looks awesome, and he thinks that FG could add some cool visual flash to the game for everyone playing on his end, and he's interested in trying it out. What I'm wondering about is the mechanics of this set-up. If we've got me playing online, and the rest of the group playing in one room on the other side of the country, how would this work in FG?

We'd plan to use a voice chat system (probably skype, but recommendations are welcome) to address the fact that not everyone has a keyboard in front of them. But how to do dice rolling? How to handle entering info on character sheets? Has anyone tried this mixed approach before? Are there other snags I'm not anticipating because I don't know FG enough?

Only thought I've had so far is to have maybe another player logged on on the group's end, to help with some of this scribe duty - but I know some of the players will want to roll their own dice. Maybe a wireless mouse they hand around?

Anyone care to end my rampant speculation with some concrete answers?

[Cantstanzya]

We are currently playing this way. DM is in Alabama, 4 PCs at a building in Florida using one persons PC logged into FG (we plan on using a projector in the future if we get more players). The people at the building are using Ventrillo and have one microphone for everyone (it is sensitive enough to pick up everyones voice). Then piped through a stereo system a laptop using ventrillo plays only the voice from the DM in Alabama. It is like the DM is in the room with us. It works fairly well with us, but the DM does get some echo because his voice over the speaker is picked up by the microphone that everyone else uses. One thing we haven't tried yet but have talked about it is to pump the laptop into a FM transmitter (you can pick one up for around $30.00) and then have the players at the building use MP3 players with FM receivers to hear the DM, that way the DM doesn't get any feedback. Since we only have on computer at the building we just roll regular dice and tell the DM what we rolled. As far as the character sheet goes we just use paper ones and update FG when we connect from home. We sometimes play all from our home PCs, but it is good for everyone to get together everyone else in awhile (Except for the DM in Alabama, that would be a hell of a commute... but has been known to do it).

[Snikle]

Wow that is amazing, would never have thought about that.

I think the wireless mouse to pass around to all the players would work great!

[Scarab]

My group has a DM (me) and four players. One of the other players has a Teamspeak server running. This way the bandwidth for the game comes my way, and the chat bandwidth goes in a different direction. This works great because two of my players can't type worth a damn.

Cantstanzya, is there any way we can get pics of this setup? Sounds cool!

[Khel]

Thanks very much! I'm amazed what a flexible tool/toy FG is. Sounds like it shouldn't be hard to get this set up to work for us. I'll suggest the wireless mouse to the DM on the other end, and if it works I'll let you know.

Also good to know the chat client can run on another server. I had been thinking that would work, but it's good to have confirmation from real-life experience.

Cantstanzya (awesome name, btw) - is there a reason you run the speakers through a stereo rather than a set of desktop PC speakers?

Thanks again for the help.

[Cantstanzya]

Cantstanzya (awesome name, btw) - is there a reason you run the speakers through a stereo rather than a set of desktop PC speakers?
The reason being is that if you run it through the desktop speakers where the mic is you would get feedback from that PC. The stereo was already setup so we decided to use it. It's like it is God speaking to us.