I'm not a fan of VTTs, and I feel behind the times.

[Dr Jack]

I've noticed this too and thought it was just me being old. For some reason, a two hour Roll20 session is just draining to me. It's not a bad exhaustion like work necessarily, but more like a workout. It might be that there's more pressure on you even as a player to "keep the game together" and make sure it runs smoothly in a VTT format, whereas in person it's really all on the GM and you just hang back and enjoy the ride.

I think it's just more tiring to do stuff online. The slight audio delays, loss of quality, etc. make it harder to listen to each other and do the normal co-ordination that we take for granted in conversation and since RPGs are mostly a conversation between people that makes it a bit more tiring.

The convenience of gaming from your home, and not having to worry about being on camera (we always play audio only), makes it highly valuable. Yes setting up a game as a GM can be a pain (the right 2D map can sometimes be a pain to find, and I like to occasionally use bells and whistles like sound effects and music). But that can be fun as well.

Running it audio only probably also makes it more tiring because you're cutting out a load more of the cues you rely on in conversation?

 

[Yeti Spaghetti]

Running it audio only probably also makes it more tiring because you're cutting out a load more of the cues you rely on in conversation?

Makes sense. And one of our players seems to always have a bad connection on Discord, which makes listening a pain.

But I think it's just a general sense of "good anxiety" that often comes with an online session that can make it draining. There's more a feeling of wanting it to work and a mental investment that makes you tired, but generally satisfied, after a game.

 

[Rated Aargh]

What is this "fact" based on? Are there statistics that prove that the overwhelming majority of middle-aged men are miserable? Is this a widespread problem ... or are we talking specifically about middle-aged TTRPG gamers?

Chronic loneliness is a huge problem among the older population, with the WHO even referring to it as a "pressing health threat."

 

[lategamer]

What is this "fact" based on? Are there statistics that prove that the overwhelming majority of middle-aged men are miserable? Is this a widespread problem ... or are we talking specifically about middle-aged TTRPG gamers?

I guess the suicide rates of middle aged men?

(Actually just … men).

 

[robb]

and not having to worry about being on camera (we always play audio only)

I find this approach weird. One of the key blockages of online gaming for me is the limited bandwidth of the digital voice channel compared to shouting over each other + multiple side conversations at a table. Having a video channel fixes this to an extent as you can make silly faces or gestures while someone is talking without actually stealing their bandwidth and slowing the game down. That is to say nothing of the non-visual communication clues for the people interacting over the voice channel.

I only play with my friends though so I can appreciate a more anonymous experience with strangers on the internet might have some benefits (as well as the above downsides).

 

[lategamer]

Having a video channel fixes this to an extent as you can make silly faces or gestures while someone is talking without actually stealing their bandwidth and slowing the game down. That is to say nothing of the non-visual communication clues for the people interacting over the voice channel.

I have mixed feelings about 'camera on' for two reasons.

Firstly, I am on Teams for most of the day. And camera fatique is a thing.

The second one is that a voice channel takes up a tiny amount. Discord Audio goes between 128kpbs to 384kbps. Video requires around 600 Kbps up and down for 480p, 1.2Mbps for 720p and 3-4Mbps for 1080p. Now, multiply that by the GM+3 players (actualy slightly less as our little avatars probably get down-sampled). It's still a large multiple.

I remember counting all of this up with two young teenagers on the network slurping Youtube and Netflix....

 

[Turkey Lurkie]

You know I've heard it reported a number of times but it could be just biased reporting. I'll see if I can find anything that has hard data.

"Reported"? With the amount of unsourced garbage spewed by the "media" makes relying on it as fact a very iffy indeed.

 

[Fenris-77]

"Reported"? With the amount of unsourced garbage spewed by the "media" makes relying on it as fact a very iffy indeed.

Critical thinking skills are the difference there, the garbage doesn't stand up to any scrutiny. You seem to want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

 

[Sharrow]

I think it's just more tiring to do stuff online. The slight audio delays, loss of quality, etc. make it harder to listen to each other and do the normal co-ordination that we take for granted in conversation and since RPGs are mostly a conversation between people that makes it a bit more tiring.

Background noise is worse, too. In person you can ignore noise to some extent, but online it's coming from the same point as the speaker's voice, so it's far harder to work through. The same goes for people talking over each other, for that matter.

 

[ffilz]

My take on VTT:

I got started with live online gaming because with a baby in the house, my wife didn't want me leaving the house to go game, and inviting gamers over was a non-starter (and that actually before kids, the rudeness of gamers just turned my wife off).

So biggest point in favor of online gaming is simply being able to game at all.

Given online gaming, why VTT over just an audio call (or maybe video call)? Or even add in some ability to share and manipulate a map?

I use Roll20 + Google Meet + Google Docs + Google Sheets

What I get with all of that:

- Recruiting players - this is actually huge. I have only ever had two local players for online gaming, and only one of them had I played face to face, but he found his way to my game via Roll20 not any other mechanism. I have recruited some players via forums and Facebook and a couple friend of friend, but most of the players who have joined my games found my game listings on Roll20. And this is non-D&D games. There's a size of audience benefit there that makes playing obscure games possible. I am running my first successful Cold Iron campaign since 1989 in part because of players who found my listing on Roll20. I had tried a few times in the 2000s via local recruiting but those games never lasted more than a few sessions.

- Map manipulation with fog of war. Roll20 fog of war (as opposed to dynamic lighting) is easy to use and doesn't require prep time. Maps require some prep time to scale so I can use the grid. I should do more of that in prep time, but it's probably been no worse than fumbling around with erasable markers and props on a real table top. This is important because I am a maps and tokens or maps and minis guy. I've tried theater of the mind and I don't prefer it. I like tactical combat systems. Burning Wheel was hard to really grasp and gave me nightmares if there ever was a combat that wasn't a 1 on 1.

- Worthy if separate mention for maps - I have used maps up to 200m or so wide/tall with 1m hexes. I could never dream of having that much area available outside VTT. It makes me feel like a VTT map would be useful even for in person gaming. Related, I have turned dungeon and town maps (that weren't 1" = 5' scale) into battle maps very easily. That is a huge boon.

- Ease of use of tokens. I make heavy use of the Roll20 freebies, but I can also upload tokens.

- Dice roller. We still use physical dice sometimes, but the dice roller is nice too. And everyone can see the dice roller rolls...
- Dynamic character sheets (Google Sheets). Having the sheet auto-calculate lots of things is really cool. There was some setup time, but the benefit in game is huge. With Google Sheets, the character sheets can be shared and aren't locked into a proprietary platform.

- Online sharing of house rules (RuneQuest) or the game itself (Cold Iron) via Google Docs beats printing enough copies to make the flow at the table reasonable and every minor fix is immediately available to the players.

- I ONLY have 2 hours available for play, and as mentioned can't host. Online gaming lets me actually game in that 2 hour slot.

We only use video briefly at the start of the session, video bandwidth causes problems, plus most of the time we're looking at the map or character sheets.

So for me, Roll20 is a total win. I don't feel the need to buy lots of VTT adventures and such (though I am using a VTT ready Snake Pipe Hollow map and tokens to good effect). Drop the map manipulation and the recruitment and other tools would be fine but online play is all that I can do these days.

 

[TristramEvans]

Are there statistics that prove that the overwhelming majority of middle-aged men are miserable?

 

[robb]

The second one is that a voice channel takes up a tiny amount.

OK you have to have the network infrastructure but you are measuring the network bandwidth, I am talking about the human communication bandwidth available in a crappy single voice channel compared to being around a table. At a table you can have multiple conversations in parallel. That cannot happen over a voice channel. Everyone has to stop/start to a greater or lesser extent.

If the network cannot handle it, of course I turn the video off.

 

[sharps54]

OK you have to have the network infrastructure but you are measuring the network bandwidth, I am talking about the human communication bandwidth available in a crappy single voice channel compared to being around a table. At a table you can have multiple conversations in parallel. That cannot happen over a voice channel. Everyone has to stop/start to a greater or lesser extent.

If the network cannot handle it, of course I turn the video off.

What I’ve found is that those side conversations still happen through chat

 

[robb]

What I’ve found is that those side conversations still happen through chat

I agree that can happen. A video channel gives you the ability to comment (through gesture/expression) on the main conversation too. That enriches the possible experience for me and increases banter without slowing the game, thus increasing enjoyment.

 

[Lofgeornost]

I think I'm going to look into Miro. It seems solid. There's potential with Moodle too but I'll have to faff a bit to see if I'm right on that score.

Moodle... (shudders, thinking about the hours it can take to input a quiz).

 

[xanther]

…What is this "fact" based on? Are there statistics that prove that the overwhelming majority of middle-aged men are miserable? Is this a widespread problem ... or are we talking specifically about middle-aged TTRPG gamers?…

The headline you’ll read will use the word miserable but the studies (of which there are several and have no reason to doubt) are really more about social connections and friends. Basically, as a group, and in general, men have fewer friends and social connections at 50 than 25 (for the men that are 50) completely not a shocker. How they feel about it is all self reported, basically yah they wish they had more. IIRC there is a socio-economic component but you’re also not going to get a lot of the very rich or very poor in these studies. Lastly, not surprising, divorce is a big one, with change of economic circumstances and loss of friends.
As to TTRPG gamers, bet we do better, the very nature of our hobby leads to connection.

 

[Fenris-77]

Moodle... (shudders, thinking about the hours it can take to input a quiz).

I don't need to quiz anyone, I just want to fiddle with the sharing features and see what's what. I think it's pretty pants as an online learning platform, although my wife has done some stellar shit with it. I shouldn't talk, I'm still using bare bones D2L.

 

[Lofgeornost]

I don't need to quiz anyone, I just want to fiddle with the sharing features and see what's what. I think it's pretty pants as an online learning platform, although my wife has done some stellar shit with it. I shouldn't talk, I'm still using bare bones D2L.

Yeah, I didn't mean that you would literally quiz anyone. It's just been my experience that Moodle makes it very hard to accomplish rather simple things; the quiz function turns this up to 11, since you have to fill in god-knows-how-many fields to input 1 simple true-false question. But if you can make use of it for free, go for it--I wouldn't pay for it.

 

[Rated Aargh]

Moodle... (shudders, thinking about the hours it can take to input a quiz).

My wife works in higher ed and sometimes mentions the horrors of Moodle as an LMS.

 

[Fenris-77]

We should start using it as a curse word. Then the Barbarian just starts to rage, it was a fuckin' moodle.

 

[Lofgeornost]

Moodle as VTT (though if Fenris-77 can make it work, more power to him!):

 

[lategamer]

. At a table you can have multiple conversations in parallel. That cannot happen over a voice channel. Everyone has to stop/start to a greater or lesser extent.

Absolutement. Digital is terrible for that - though it is easier to slip people secret note and segregate a split party. It's not the same. We have a Friday night group that's all about the social and even then over video it's hard to communicate even with the decades of familiarity we share.

That said....where I am. It's online or it's nothing.

 

[Bunch]

I have to say I find Video remote discussion far better than in person. I spend too much time in rooms with multiple people talking across each other and its a pain. You miss too much of each conversation. Online as soon as someone talks over another person the room tends to go silent as someone figures out whos got the mic. They go, next person goes, etc. The inability to have two simultaneous conversations seems to really help in my experience. you don't have to wrangle the cats as much

 

[Bourbonjack]

I just use the VTT to roll dice, track character sheets, and doodle maps.

I do even less - rolling dice and acting as a virtual Battle Mat.

I don’t prefer VTT over physically being at a table, but VTT is the only option that lets me actively game.

 

[TheSaint]

I just won't do VTT. I've looked at it, because I realize that doing virtual games would let me do a lot more gaming, considering there is virtually no gaming community at all local to where I live. But I just hate doing anything online like that. The last three or four years of my professional life I worked from home, and I hated it. I liked being at home, I liked managing networks and systems from home. But the whole online meetings, Zoom video calls and chat, dealing with everyone over the phone, I just couldn't stand it. That's not how I communicate. So, not surprised at all that online/virtual gaming has no appeal for me. If I'm going to play I need dead-tree books on a real table with a Chessex megamat. YMMV.

 

[robb]

Yeah, I didn't mean that you would literally quiz anyone. It's just been my experience that Moodle makes it very hard to accomplish rather simple things; the quiz function turns this up to 11, since you have to fill in god-knows-how-many fields to input 1 simple true-false question. But if you can make use of it for free, go for it--I wouldn't pay for it.

Having recently moved to Brightspace as a VLE I am yearning for dear old Moodle!
I find the key to entering quizzes quickly is to do them in a text or spreadsheet format and then upload instead of using the web interface for any of these tools.

 

[Turkey Lurkie]

Critical thinking skills are the difference there, the garbage doesn't stand up to any scrutiny. You seem to want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Right, a garbage media statement like the one forwarded don't stand up to any scrutiny or logic. That's why I slammed it. Garbage

 

[bleys21]

One thing I've always wanted out of a voice chat system would be the ability to provide location to everyone speaking. Like how they can do directional noise in video games when you are wearing decent surround headphones. If everyone doesn't sound like they were coming from all directions it would be easier to parse.

I think you've hit it there. I hadn't even thought about the problem that way, but with headphones (or a simple speaker array) all the voices come from the same place, and can't exist at the same time; louder sounds in the same frequency eliminate everything else. Pretty much like MP3-style compression. If someone could get basically a surround sound style meeting audio system, where sounds could come from different places *at the same time*, that would be the closest that online gaming could get to the being-at-the-table gaming.

 

[EmperorNorton]

I think you've hit it there. I hadn't even thought about the problem that way, but with headphones (or a simple speaker array) all the voices come from the same place, and can't exist at the same time; louder sounds in the same frequency eliminate everything else. Pretty much like MP3-style compression. If someone could get basically a surround sound style meeting audio system, where sounds could come from different places *at the same time*, that would be the closest that online gaming could get to the being-at-the-table gaming.

I remember it was actually possible with some custom plugins and a lot of work with one of the older voice chat programs that no one uses anymore, but I can't remember which one it was. Like Ventrillo or Teamspeak I think?

I thought about setting it up for my games but the hassle of convincing other people to install it when we all had discord was too high.

 

[bleys21]

I remember it was actually possible with some custom plugins and a lot of work with one of the older voice chat programs that no one uses anymore, but I can't remember which one it was. Like Ventrillo or Teamspeak I think?

I thought about setting it up for my games but the hassle of convincing other people to install it when we all had discord was too high.

Maybe it was Teamspeak? I don't remember either. Its kind of a small problem that doesn't apparently affect very many people, so trying to solve it does present issues both software and hardware-wise.

I have kind of assumed its related to my ability (or flaw?) of being able to hear the difference between lossless and any compressed audio. Yeah, I'm one of those weirdos... lol.

 

[Rob Necronomicon]

I'm not a fan of VTT. I just find it over engineered for my play style. I want my online games to mirror my face to face games as closely as possible.

That said, I never liked using minis or maps at the table. I always wanted to play in TotM.

 

[lategamer]

That said, I never liked using minis or maps at the table. I always wanted to play in TotM.

A hastily scrawled map on graph paper does me rightly. And a whiteboard app, my TOTM, replaces the entire desktop. With images of character sheets, NPCs, hasty encounters.

 

[Rated Aargh]

There's already been some discussion on this point, but I think the role of webcams is worth expanding on.

Speaking only for myself, I hate being on camera, but I can see the value in what some have said about having an image to obtain non-verbal cues and enhance communication. Some GMs require camera use, but I tend to avoid their games.

As a side note, I appreciate people saying they want directional audio, but that would be a nightmare because I'm deaf in one ear. It's bad enough that I can't hear people on my right side. It'd be worse if I had to keep asking the person on my virtual right to keep repeating themselves.

 

[AsenRG]

There's already been some discussion on this point, but I think the role of webcams is worth expanding on.

Speaking only for myself, I hate being on camera, but I can see the value in what some have said about having an image to obtain non-verbal cues and enhance communication. Some GMs require camera use, but I tend to avoid their games.

As a side note, I appreciate people saying they want directional audio, but that would be a nightmare because I'm deaf in one ear. It's bad enough that I can't hear people on my right side. It'd be worse if I had to keep asking the person on my virtual right to keep repeating themselves.

I don't use camera, either. Which means that I'm running or playing those games from my bed, including when sick (as long as I can talk). I'd be much more leery of doing that if I had to show people my bedroom.

Hey, I don't risk getting anyone else sick this way, so...

 

[Billy Bones]

I don't use camera, either. Which means that I'm running or playing those games from my bed, including when sick (as long as I can talk). I'd be much more leery of doing that if I had to show people my bedroom.

Hey, I don't risk getting anyone else sick this way, so...

I swear you were were going to say you don't have your camera on so you can game with your D12 and your two D4s out.

 

[Lofgeornost]

Having recently moved to Brightspace as a VLE I am yearning for dear old Moodle!
I find the key to entering quizzes quickly is to do them in a text or spreadsheet format and then upload instead of using the web interface for any of these tools.

I don't know Brightspace, but generally moving from one LMS to another is a real PITA, as they all have their quirks.

I've not had much luck with uploading questions directly to Moodle; the version available to me has two main 'vanilla' options (along with various proprietary ones, like Blackboard). One is Aiken format, which works fine for multiple-choice, but only them. The other is GIFT format, a special format dreamed up by a sadist somewhere, which allows you to upload various types of questions as text files (but this must be UTF-8 Text). T/F questions in this format look like this (examples from the guide to using GIFT format):

// question: 0 name: TrueStatement using {T} style
::TrueStatement about Grant::Grant was buried in a tomb in New York City.{T}

// question: 0 name: FalseStatement using {FALSE} style
::FalseStatement about sun::The sun rises in the West.{FALSE}

This is laborious, and picky enough (use the wrong punctuation and you can screw up every question afterwards) that I despair of using it. Sometimes I will write questions as a Word document, which is easier to proof-read, and just cut-and-paste into the interface. The real rub from my perspective isn't the text entry, it's the multiple other boxes one has to check, or fields to fill out, for one question.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread...

 

[AsenRG]

I swear you were were going to say you don't have your camera on so you can game with your D12 and your two D4s out.

Of course no, I would never say that!

 

[Billy Bones]

Of course no, I would never say that!

Oi, I was quite generous with D12 I thought, I could have said D6 on a good day.

 

[xanther]

For me being able to see peoples faces makes a big difference, not that I look at them all or even most the time, but it feels like we are gaming together, and not just chatting. Expression of joy, surprise, etc. are part of the social feedback for me. Also there is the visual cues so don't speak over others.

I don't find the camera all that bad, after all it's pretty much head and shoulders. Sure I'm one who looks worse on camera than in real life, but so what.
Also can always turn it off, block it, blur background what have you.

Then again have only done online so far with friends and friends of friends who have gamed with in person.

Now what I really want is an AI / deep fake me for meetings at work. Forget deep fake porn, give me deep fake worker who can nod their head and laugh on cue in meetings coupled with a mouse mover. Then I'll just program it to run D&D, and set it to work as a paid GM

 

[Acmegamer]

There's already been some discussion on this point, but I think the role of webcams is worth expanding on.

Speaking only for myself, I hate being on camera, but I can see the value in what some have said about having an image to obtain non-verbal cues and enhance communication. Some GMs require camera use, but I tend to avoid their games.

As a side note, I appreciate people saying they want directional audio, but that would be a nightmare because I'm deaf in one ear. It's bad enough that I can't hear people on my right side. It'd be worse if I had to keep asking the person on my virtual right to keep repeating themselves.

I truly dislike the whole on camera and VTT deal. That said, by not having your face there as you talk, a certain amount of body language is missing. I think that's why I prefer in person gaming, there is a lot going on that you miss out when your dealing with Zoom or worse just voice or even more lacking just text. (I say this as someone whose played text based games for over thirty years).

Edit: Man is that a badly written post. I'll leave it and go make some coffee, I think you all can figure out what I'm talking about in regards to the shortcomings of each medium. lol Coffeeeeeeee! Must get it.