D&D General What Do You Miss Most About Face-to-Face D&D?

[robus]

Beer. (We play at a brewery.)

I think I have to start doing that whenever we start up again.

 

[Greenfield]

I miss the ability to side-chat.

My group meets via Discord. Despite what's said about it, that you can have a group dice-roller, that only works in the text-chat, not in video.

One problem is, if any of us tries to make a side comment to another player, it booms through the whole group.

We have two players who share an apartment. One is legally blind and the other is partially deaf. The partially def guy sits near the screen so he can see the action (I have my camera trained on the battle mat more than on me, and I move the figs as directed.). When these two talk "amongst themselves", the hard-of-hearing guy's voice walks over everyone else. He's right by the microphone.

Other side chatter, which was half the fun of the get-together, just has to stop. We know that we can't, out of consideration to others.

Small notes: I've observed that lines drawn on the battle mat are really hard to see on camera. I suggest you get a handful of pencils or dowel rods that you can paint black. Something to lay down.

I have some stonecast walls of an appropriate scale that I use. That, a bag of lichen and a few trees for outdoor scenery, and I can paint most scenes.

As an observation: The camera view can only cover a stretch of battlefield of maye 2 ft by 3 ft. That limits game scale too. I could pull the camera back, but then we lose the detail.

Ah well.

 

[Richards]

It looks like my players are missing out on some of the social aspects of our (now on hold) gaming sessions as well. My doorbell rang this afternoon while I was downstairs in the basement, and in the scant time it took me to go upstairs and open the front door the door-ringer had fled. But there was a Post-It Note on the glass of my outer door, with an arrow pointing down and the legend above it, "DC 5 Spot check." Sure enough, there on my front stoop was a plastic bag, inside of which (wrapped in aluminum foil) was a batch of my player Vicki's delicious homemade brownies, which she habitually would bring to our Saturday gaming sessions.

I called Dan and Vicki on their cell phone and caught them while still driving home from my house. Apparently Dan had pulled up next to my driveway in his truck, Vicki got out and deployed the brownie package, then rang the doorbell and fled back to their truck. By the time I had opened the door and succeeded on my Spot check, they were long gone.

Ironically, knowing we were all feeling the sting of not playing, I had been downstairs on my computer converting my Story Hour posts from our first 3.5 campaign (where Vicki first learned to play D&D) into a consolidated Word document, to email to her to give her something to read to help tide her over until we can start playing again.

Johnathan

 

[Azzy]

More than anything, I just miss being in the physical presence of my friends.

 

[Raith5]

I am in part of the world that has been in lock down since March and I have played more D&D during this time for decades. I think it works fine on VTT. I do miss rolling physical dice but the rest of the experience is there.

 

[Wasteland Knight]

I am in part of the world that has been in lock down since March and I have played more D&D during this time for decades. I think it works fine on VTT. I do miss rolling physical dice but the rest of the experience is there.

I’m in the same club. It’s unfortunate it took a worldwide pandemic to free up enough time for me and D&D to coexist, but this is the reality.

 

[Gilladian]

I miss the flexibility of dming in person. Online VTT ties me to my prepped material too tightly. Also, when a bit of tech goes wrong, like a token malfunctioning, I get flustered. I hate that. And one player HATES online, so he drops out a lot more. Also miss the socializing.