What Does the RPG Hobby Need Now?
- Thread starter SlyFlourish
- Start date
kronovan
Adventurer
Yep, that's the way most of the VTT campaigns I play in are run and about half of those I host. There are players that just aren't comfortable with videoconferencing, whether that be not wanting to spend the money on and learn a webcam, or not wanting to share their face. And possibly sharing their playing space, depending upon how they position their webcam.
kronovan
Adventurer
That makes zero sense to me - could you elaborate?
dragoner
KosmicRPG.com
All one saw on the screen were people's foreheads.
kronovan
Adventurer
Oh OK. We have different uderstandings of what VTT is. To me it's just the software app that hosts the game session. With all the VTTs I've used (MapTool, Roll20, Fantasy Ground, Foundry), the only player-related images displayed are their portraits and their tokens. None of those VTT even support voice chat (at least when I used them), and you have to enable it with a 3rd party app; i.e. Discord, Teamspeak, etc... The video conferencing comes via a 3rd party app too.
If video conferencing was in use and all anyone could see were foreheads, that's unfortunate the host didn't take the time to ensure players had their webcams positioned correctly. I cover/ensure that in a zero sesson. And yes, that can be a challenge for the host if players are using those the webcams built into a laptop.
IMO though, it comes down to communication tech and whether the players have an interest in it and a desire to be savvy with it. It's not really a factor of, or reflection upon, the experience you can have in a VTT hosted game session that's also using video conferencing. I mean, if all you can see is a forehead in an online game session, how does that level of competence with the tech help you when want to connnect friends & family with a video capable app like Zoom?
R_J_K75
Legend
Over the years when we did use a VTT, with discord, maybe Roll20 had video but no voice function iirc, but regardless most of the time when we used it for remote play there was usually some technical issue that ate up a good amount of playtime to resolve. Which needless to say got to be rather annoying the more it occurred, and it usually came down to 1 or 2 players not having the correct settings turned on.
Another thing I think we need is a easily accessible repository/museum of peoples' homebrew worlds, maps, adventures, characters, etc. I am thinking mainly of all the hand drawn stuff from our youths, because I'm old, but also the Pbsidian Portal stuff and Tahoo Groups stuff etc.
Jd Smith1
Hero
Unless your group has really wonky wi-fi service, that's a thing of the past. We've been using Roll20 + Discord audio for over six years, and the most we've ever had, and it is extremely rare, is someone having to restart on of the systems, and that's an issue of a couple minutes, and never stopped the game.
aramis erak
Legend
bovine excrement.
It doesn't hit top 5 sellers with three corebooks and top five lines for whole system for several years running without popularity.
It's sudden death was due to it being handed off to edge by Asmodee when the MF's therein fired all the RPG staff at FFG and handed the IP to Edge.
Edge seems unwilling to engage with the SW IP (and probably doesn't have access to the newest stuff).
And, given how they handled the Adventures in Rokugan 5E derivative, It's honestly looking like a good thing they're not doing more. No respect for the setting. And when called on it, they said it wasn't for doing L5R type stories. It makes me think anything they'd try would be squashed at LFL/Disney.
Plus, moving it from FFG meant issues with dice availability...
As far as online play, there are several discord bots which can handle it. D1-C3 is the one I used. It also does Genesys (just different graphics out), and L5R5. I don't recall if it does WFRP3.
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