How Do You Use FG (Voice or Chat)?

Google+ has Hangout. I tried it yesterday for gaming and was blown away by it. Around the same time, I take the dive to try out Fantasy Grounds and see a whole lot of potential here as well. My first thought is combine them some way, but then it occurs to me that this may be a time when two great tastes DON'T necessarily go great together.

So I figured I should ask the FG community: How do you use Fantasy Grounds? Do you use it alone with chat, combine it with voice/video, or forgo the chat entirely, and most importantly, why? This is not versus thread; I'm just trying to weigh my options and I'm interested how more experienced FG gamers go about it.

I have two small groups of 2-3 people and we use Skype for voice exclusively. Text is used for hidden messages either through FG or Skype.

We use ventrilo for our games, and the chat for whispers.

Cheers,
JPG

I have always used the FG text chat. I usually run games with only a few players and that format seems to be adequate.

Text chat for the in-game stuff, may use voice chat for OOC, questions, etc. I personally don't like to use voice chat during the game. It feels a bit like playing over a phone which takes away the atmosphere of the game from me.

For the people who do use voice, have you considered full video? My brief experience with Hangout was that it recreated the tabletop experience very well. I could certainly see using that for most communications while having FG minimized, then turning to it how we may turn to the table (like referencing a tactical map or for dice rolls) then minimizing again. I ask because this is one of the uses I'm considering. Is there something I'm overlooking? My primary concern is bandwidth, but I really have no idea.

I imagine using purely FG chat could really enhance the immersive experience. Does voice -- even for ooc stuff -- detract from that? I'm very eager to give this a try, although perhaps most skeptical due to pacing. The group needs to know the expectations going in. This is probably best suited for less tactical games with not as much meta-game mechanics.

Ultimately, I suppose the thing to do is to try it out. I'm just trying to identify any pitfalls. I previously tried Battlegrounds (an older version) and it wasn't a good experience. I prepped everything, tried it locally, and everything seemed fine, but during the actual game, it was rife with technical issues. I understand there is a newer version now.

My original attempt at remote tabletop gaming was about 6-7 years ago. I was using another tabletop software at the time, and I tried both Yahoo and Skype video chat.

I ended up switching to voice chat after running into bandwidth issues running both Yahoo and Skype video chat. From my basic research at the time, my understanding was that having a 5 people all interconnecting over video chat was essentially killing bandwidth (4x upstream for your face, 4x downstream for each of their faces). I looked into a server-based video conference solution at the time, but they were all business-class and very expensive.

Now, we move forward in time. The bandwidth available to most homes is somewhat better, and the video applications are a little smarter. In addition to Google+ Hangouts being a centralized server video conference, I thought I remembered reading that they had special algorithms to focus the stream on whomever was talking and reduce frame rate on those not talking/moving. I was also thinking about trying a Google+ Hangout for my game, but we just when on break for my game until end of the summer.

Cheers,
JPG

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GM_BZK

I imagine using purely FG chat could really enhance the immersive experience. Does voice -- even for ooc stuff -- detract from that?

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We use Skype for OOC discussions etc. The sessions tend to be periods of quiet text roleplaying followed by OOC discussion. I think without voice for OOC stuff the game would really bog down. Having played years of play-by-post games, the speed of FG and chat is refreshing. I would guess that voice only would be that much faster, but faster can also make things more difficult for the GM.

On video:
I haven't considered full video due to some connection problems between me and one of my players. Also it would be another part of my screen that I couldn't use for FG (on a 17 inch now as my 22 inch broke..)

In the future it might be worth looking into, but not something we have even mentioned in our groups at the moment.

My games always use voice for OOC, rules discussions, long explanations/descriptions, and screwing around. We use chat for in-char, whispers, describing most actions, and so forth. I have a Ventrilo server, so my games always use that.