What are you top tips for running and playing games online?

[HywelPhillips]

Hi Everyone,

I imagine quite a few of us started running games online because of the pandemic. After almost 40 years running games in person, I've really taken to running and, unusually for me, playing games online.

Many of the skills and techniques are common between online and offline play, but playing remotely brings its own opportunities and challenges.

I wondered what tips you have for getting the most out of online play?


Cheers, Hywel

[HywelPhillips]

I'll start with a few:

1) You can make compelling adventures with high production value quickly by stitching together third-party resources. Previously, I'd rely on a quick sketch on a bit of spare paper and the "group dynamic" at the table to convey things like mood and setting. It's much harder to generate by voice/video chat (which is why we want/need VTTs in the first place). I sometimes used to grab a map or an auto-generated dungeon for tabletop play, but for VTT stuff it really helps to stitch together a bunch of them and start dragging and dropping to make encounters etc.

2) Showing stuff to players is much more integrated to the VTT experience than the tabletop experience. Everyone can get an optimal view of the map rather than having to lean over and peer past the dice boxes and coke bottles. So IMO the payoff of a beautifully rendered map-as-painting-of-the-scene vs. an old-school blue floorplan is significantly higher for online play.

3) Ditto, go to town on your handouts. For tabletop play it is surely nice to have a fake-aged handwritten note to pass around the table, but in the absence of the group immersion online, it REALLY helps to have that as a handout rather than reading it aloud. Doing it just as a story item to hand out is already a big step up, particularly if you are using a nice skin for FG- it's one of my complaints about Roll20 that it's hard to make it feel like you're immersed in the handouts unless you produce then as graphics. Letting people look back at the handouts without GM intervention is great, multiple people can be reading the dozens of clues in a Masks of Nyarlathotep game simultaneously.

4) OMG Googling for images and showing them as scene setters :) I used to use audiovisual stuff a lot more in my younger days for tabletop play, I often had a slide projector and screen set up, and took loads of my own photos specifically for RPG use. That's come roaring back, but one can now supplement one's own photos with the infinity of google search. You can find apposite scene-setters for almost anything and anyone with very little effort. Use it!

5) My GM prep is based on Return of the Lazy DM by Sly Flourish. That all still works online, but I would add a critical step. Make yourself a note or story before each session and drag-and-drop all the links to relevant NPCs, maps, story elements, etc. that you think you are going to need. Not only does that put the links at your fingertips, but it gives you a scratch pad place during the session to note down new NPC names, stuff you didn't expect, etc.. I also find preparing that page helps me load everything into my brain before the session.

What are your top tips?

[spoofer]

Make your players manage their voice quality. Have them use headsets (cheap ones work just fine) and make them use push to talk. One crappy sound setup can ruin the game session for everyone.

[HywelPhillips]

Absolutely, spoofer. Push-to-talk definitely improves the game.

What voice/video conferencing do people prefer? Most of the pay-to-play games I'm in use Discord. I like the way you can set it up with channels for things like in-character between game chat, and out-of-character stuff separately.

I'd add that as a top tip - especially with FG, give the players a place to congregate and confer and hang out outside of game night. Not all will want to participate, but the games I'm in where people are doing that it feels much more like the games are the high points but you also get to chat around the camp-fire, which is lovely.

[damned]

If you set your game time for 8.30pm on Wednesday. Play the game at 8.30pm on Wednesday even if only 2 players can make it. Everyone is so busy these days and those two players (and you) have cleared time and committed to it so give them game. Even if its a side adventure, a one shot, something different. The other players will hopefully also commit more whole heartedly when they know that everyone else has done so already.

[LordEntrails]

#2 is so true. Wish I had been able to comprehend it that way. With the 'recent' return of WotC products to OSR style maps, I really don't think they saw this aspect and how Dyson's maps would be received by the virtual gamers. Having started in '70s I get the nostalgia, but full color maps can be so much more that any emotional reminiscing is not worth it.

Two other posts that you might want to check out (not the same perspective or info, but related) are;
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?36014-GM-Advice
https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?24644-Advanced-Fantasy-Grounds-Usage-5E-Ruleset-Edition

[Trenloe]

Whole heartedly agree with making good show 'em props. I also use a lot of background music/ambience to set the scene through the communication app. If done right, this adds such a great dimension to the game. I do this for face-to-face games too.

[HywelPhillips]

I've found another top tip, very simple but:

7) Keep going around the table and asking everyone in turn what they do, or inviting them to give their character's contribution to the conversation. "Joe, what does Pixi think about that?". Maybe keep the initiative order going out of combat to remind you.

In my experience, some players have more lag than others. Not just physical connection/computer lag bit also how long they wait to make sure no-one is talking before they start to talk. This happens in tabletop play but it is much harder for the GM to pick up on from body language etc. playing virtually.

You can't catch someone's eye to non-verbally invite them to speak in the same way online.

Get into a routine to make sure everyone is able to participate at the level they want to. Don't force them - some people do prefer to hang back and listen and that's OK. But I've had a couple of games where my "default wait time" was almost exactly the same as another player's and we often collided, starting to talk at the same time many times through the evening. I tried to fix it myself by counting to ten before starting to talk in addition to what I felt was my default wait time, but then I sometimes found things had moved on before I'd had a chance to contribute.

The GM keeping the round-the-table dynamic going out of combat really helped stop that happening.

I'm sure there are more social tips to do with the lack of body language and eye contact online - that's the main one I've found so far. What are your experiences?

[srbongo]

Mine is definitely one that is harder to achieve much of the time, but if possible, pays off in extreme ways for online groups:

8) Keep going. Players will drop out, stuff will happen, but if you keep even one player (as damned said) and keep playing and recruiting, your game will go for years. At this point in my games, it's been so long that people feel comfortable taking a week off for RL reasons, they know they game will be there for them when they return. Many people get frustrated at player turnout and give up - don't.

[Nylanfs]

Biggest tip "Don't Panic", It's good enough for the Guide, it's good enough for me. :)

[HywelPhillips]

New top tip from me, just started doing this and it is a big help.

For FGU, make yourself a map module.

Collect together your maps with line-of-sight information so that you can import them into any campaign you subsequently run. I started doing this because I'd want to use the same map for different games in different systems and didn't want to have to re-enter LOS info each time.

Do this:
1) Make a new campaign with nothing in it (no modules or extensions, using whatever ruleset). This will be the place you ALWAYS do your map imports.
2) In the Images and Maps tab, make a new category. I use "Hywel's Battlemaps".
3) Import the maps you want. Enter the LOS information here, set the grid, etc.
4) Export the module with "/export". Choose a suitable name for the module ("Hywel's Battlemaps") and export only the images and maps info.
5) Find the .mod file in your SmiteWorks modules directory.
6) Rename to .zip
7) Unzip it
8) Edit the definition.xml file, changing Ruleset to Any.
9) Rezip the module directory
10) Rename back to .mod

Now you have a universal module that you can load from any one of your campaigns containing all your battlemaps with LOS data. When you load your other campaigns, your map module should be there ready for you to load in.

When you do so, you will want to populate the maps with encounters, pins, etc. specific to that campaign. I like do that by dragging and dropping the map from the module "master" copy back onto the Images and Maps window, which gives you a map copy local to that campaign. Then you can add all your system specific stuff to that copy of it and can always go back to the pristine module version if you need to (e.g. to run a new encounter in the same place).

You have to repeat steps 3-10 to add a new map to your map module which is a little bit of a fiddle, but far easier than loading up a map you know you entered LOS for for a Savage Worlds one-off when you want to re-use it for your regular 5e campaign. The time consuming bit is entering LOS for maps you've made externally, and this lets you reuse them without that time-consuming step.

It was probably obvious how and why to do this for old hands, but it wasn't for me. So hopefully this will help.

Cheers, Hywel

[BubaDragon]

If you set your game time for 8.30pm on Wednesday. Play the game at 8.30pm on Wednesday even if only 2 players can make it. Everyone is so busy these days and those two players (and you) have cleared time and committed to it so give them game. Even if its a side adventure, a one shot, something different. The other players will hopefully also commit more whole heartedly when they know that everyone else has done so already.

What he said...

[HywelPhillips]

9) Have an intermission/comfort break. Great tip playing a SWADE game from Savage Doswelk today - put up an intermission map and plonk the character tokens on it, with an "I'm AWAY section" and an "I'm BACK" section. Avoids endlessly polling via Discord voice chat.

[HywelPhillips]

10) When running a roleplaying-heavy social setting like a party, use an evocative pretty picture as a backdrop with an invisible grid set to large pixel count (eg 200 pixels). Then drop tokens on for the party and the NPCs so they can "see the faces" of the people they are talking to, and you can move people around if the conversation breaks up into smaller sub-groups.

[HywelPhillips]

Now on to a problem I've noticed.

In real life, one of my favourite things is planning/chat sessions where the party spend a long time freeform talking.

Has anyone good a good way of facilitating this as the GM for online play? Video/voice conferencing absolutely SUCKS for this in my experience. Either everyone talks over each other, or everyone stays silent for an uncomfortably long time, then all start talking at the same time.

I've tried keeping the initiative count going to go around the table inviting people to speak. This does help a bit, but it feels much more like a boring and hostile council meeting than the friendly discussion and banter around the campfire with free exchange of ideas.

If the players are keen and have time, I think doing it offline asynchronously via Discord chat or email might work (that's what's we're doing in one campaign I'm playing).

But I wonder if it might actually be more free-wheeling and fun to do it without voice via chat?

Has anyone got a better way of doing it?

[Honken]

I have to iterate on the sound quality of the OP. I was in a game where we had 2 players, native British English speakers (I am not native English), they used Teamspeak from a phone, and I am not sure if they used a headset, but there was a lot of "room" noise. So i had a hard time to follow what they were saying.

I cannot fathom the groups that have 6 or more players. In my mind, 3 players is the best setup for online play, though i like to have 4 players.

And i would like to add a point

11. Make sure, that if you add a new player, make the character outside of the game session so that you don't spend the first hour of the session making characters.

/H

[Ryuson]

As someone new to online gaming and FG, I'd add a few lessons. First, find an experienced GM and/or group with FG. It makes the transition much easier (fortunately, they were very patient with answering my questions).

Second (and this is related to trying to GM on FG for the first time), already published content is your friend. For example, 5e is well supported, so I bought a few items on sale. Now, the pressure is off from creating all this content and automating it (though technically it's not required - just makes things easier). The focusing is learning the interface and bells and whistles of FG. MUCH easier.

Third, do a trial run with a player. So, I've played for a few months. I looked at videos and read stuff. I thought I was "ready". I even made up two encounters with maps. I know pretty much everything, right?

Wrong. It's little stuff that you don't realize you need to do and would probably come up - in this case, it was how to add a NPC (which I had created as a PC) on the map?

Fortunately, this was a test run and both of us had the proper mind set. There were a couple of things we had to stop and look up on the internet. But we had fun and plan on running another test before the main group.

[spoofer]

Now on to a problem I've noticed.

In real life, one of my favourite things is planning/chat sessions where the party spend a long time freeform talking.

Has anyone good a good way of facilitating this as the GM for online play? Video/voice conferencing absolutely SUCKS for this in my experience. Either everyone talks over each other, or everyone stays silent for an uncomfortably long time, then all start talking at the same time.

I've tried keeping the initiative count going to go around the table inviting people to speak. This does help a bit, but it feels much more like a boring and hostile council meeting than the friendly discussion and banter around the campfire with free exchange of ideas.

If the players are keen and have time, I think doing it offline asynchronously via Discord chat or email might work (that's what's we're doing in one campaign I'm playing).

But I wonder if it might actually be more free-wheeling and fun to do it without voice via chat?

Has anyone got a better way of doing it?

Sometimes I ask players to roll initiative. I go once through the combat tracker round, and everyone speaks on their turn only. Then once the round is over, I open up the floor to anyone who still has more to say.

[Mytherus]

Honestly my group is pretty straightforward with what to say. We just talk over voice if people step on each others mic we simply self manage with “I didn’t hear you say that again “ type of thing.