Running FG from hotel

[ProfDogg]

I'm going to be running tomorrow night's game from a hotel. Anybody got any advice on what to expect and if there's any tricks that anybody knows to make it run smooth? Thinking about buying a Wi-Fi booster and seeing if I can figure out a way to jury-rig it to the hotel's internet. Anybody ever do that before?

[Gwydion]

I've run from a hotel once. All dependent on how good the wifi is. I even played using my hotspot puck once and it was ok. Big thing is port forwarding. I'm assuming you already have that figured out? You won't be able to access the router at the hotel, so the only way you will be able to host is using one of the port-forwarding alternatives (e.g. Hamachi, Zero-Tier, PureVPN, etc..).

Other than that, there weren't any real "gotchas" for me. If internet is spotty, keep in mind voice quality on the VOIP won't be great either. It is definitely doable, though with decent internet!

[Trenloe]

Gwydion is right in everything he says.

Plus... test your setup way before the actual game is ready to start!

[ProfDogg]

Definitely! I'm planning on arriving about 3 hours early. Soon as I can get checked in, I'm going to dive into the software.

[Skillkoil]

I would suggest getting with one of your players before the session and having them connect and see how it performs with them. That will give you a chance to troubleshoot any issues before the entire group connects.

[LordEntrails]

I used to do it regularly.

Depending on the hotel, pay attention when you log into their network. Some of them allow you to click an option to enable a Private IP. If that's available, select it and then you will usually have port forward enabled (via UPnP?).

BUT, plan on a VPN solution, I used to use Hamachi. But I got all my players setup before I started at the hotels. We would then just use it when needed.

[Valyar]

I regularly host games from hotels and the challenge is only one: good bandwidth. Once I was in a hotel that had internet so bad that I used by 4G and internet sharing from the phone.

The simple solutions are always the best. For me this is tunneling the FG traffic via port redirection over SSH through cloud server in Azure.

[Bidmaron]

The simple solutions are always the best. For me this is tunneling the FG traffic via port redirection over SSH through cloud server in Azure.

That doesn't sound very simple. What do you mean?

[Myrdin Potter]

I have used PureVPN (with the dedicated IO option) for years to run games from a hotel. Just did it this week from Toronto. It is the quickest and simplest to use. There are other free options that take a little more work but are doable.

You almost for sure will need to use some form of VPN or alternative networking solution.

[ProfDogg]

I could not get PureVPN to forward the port. Should it have worked if I had used a dedicated IO as well?