Advice on on-line gaming for a complete novice

[Jd Smith1]

One more thing: I am limited to 100gig of high-speed Net per month. How is online gaming in terms of data consumption?

 

[Mallus]

It varies a lot and depends on what platform you're using and which specific tools, ie audio? video?

If you're using Roll20 without audio and video, the data usage is the mainly size of your campaign assets (maps, music, etc.). After that it's a glorified chat app. So roughly 100 MB per gaming session. Probably less(?). If you've got audio & video on, figure more like 100 MB/hour or more. Roll20 AV is low quality in tiny windows.

However, if your using videoconferencing software like Zoom you'll burn around 1GB/per hour for 720p video.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You do need to watch the size of map and asset data sometimes. Though they're excellent maps, Heroic Maps earlier work was designed for printing, so its large and if you just upload it into a VTT without resizing it can cause some bandwidth issues for some people.

(They do a VTT specific version of their maps now).

 

[zach weaver1]

I use FG Unity, along with Discord. I'm the GM, so I spent the $150 or whatever for the DM version of FG. Also I've spent a few hundred on books, so there are costs to consider with any VTT you decide to use. If you're wanting to fully utilize a VTT like FG or Roll20 or Foundry, you're going to want to get the books, or you're gonna be spending WAY too much time trying to write your own modules to convert the books you own. But if you're just a player, then you don't have to spend anything, it's all on the DM's account and players can just download the free client.

Edit (using images increases data usage): As for your limit of 100 gigs a month, an hour Zoom meeting uses about 1 GB of data. So a 4 hour gaming session would use up roughly 4 GB of your monthly data.

 

[Imaculata]

For playing 5e, Roll 20 is fantastic. It allows players to simply click on parts of their charactersheet to immediately roll dice, and with another click, descriptions of spells and special abilities can easily be dropped into chat.

For DM's, Roll 20 makes it easy to manage line of sight, and toggle visibility of game elements on a hidden layer. It offers an asset library where you can upload all your maps, tokens, images, sounds and music.

For Call of Cthulhu, Roll20s handout feature makes it easy to show an inventory of plot items to your players. I've also used this feature to show puzzles.

For D&D 3.5, Roll20 can be a bit of a hassle as a player. The charactersheets are buggy, and due to the math involved, dice rolling is slow. It is either a lot of typing, or a lot of pop ups that you need to click.

 

[Cadence]

In the one I play in, we've been using Avrae through Discord linked up with DnD Beyond to manage the characters, Zoom for communicating, and the DM has just had the maps using some art program he's shared through zoom.

 

[Jd Smith1]

I have been invited to, and will start shortly, a group in D&D Beyond as a player. Although I said I was against theater of the mind, I think that this will give me some lower-end experience that will prove useful, and the group is very high-caliber people.

Looking over the VTT options (which resulted in my decision to start slower with the lower tech approach), I have ruled out Fantasy Grounds because it is very limited on the systems it supports (although otherwise, I was very impressed).

Foundry is very impressive in terms of system support, but a major issue I have with it is that I cannot seem to find a venue in which to seek out players.

Roll20 seems a little tougher to use (as compared to MapTools, which I customarily use FtF), but it supports Zweihander, and appears to have an active platform for gamers looking for games.

 

[turnip_farmer]

I use FG Unity, along with Discord. I'm the GM, so I spent the $150 or whatever for the DM version of FG. Also I've spent a few hundred on books, so there are costs to consider with any VTT you decide to use. If you're wanting to fully utilize a VTT like FG or Roll20 or Foundry, you're going to want to get the books, or you're gonna be spending WAY too much time trying to write your own modules to convert the books you own. But if you're just a player, then you don't have to spend anything, it's all on the DM's account and players can just download the free client.

To give a contrary opinion, I don't think you need any of the books as a DM in Roll20. It sounds like you're talking about running published modules, but if you're not there isn't so much you need from the books.

For DnD I did buy the PHB so that the players could use the automatic character generation options (and didn't need to manually add spells that aren't in the SRD), but that's all. Copying a monster from the Monster Manual or something only takes a minute once you're used to the format, and everything that's not from a published source you'd need to add manually regardless.

I do have a paid account so that I can design my own character sheets and play with the APIs, but none of that is necessary, especially if you're using a popular game system that's already supported and you don't have a billion house rules that require you to redraw the character sheets. You can easily run a game on Roll20 for free.

 

[Jd Smith1]

OK, first session playing on-line, Roll20 & Discord. Amazing; working with two monitors, very easy, fast, had a great time. Good group.

Will look for a wireless headset, though.

 

[TerraDave]

I think you are there, congratulations...but I will add for others that might look at the thread.

*The built in audio chat in Roll20 does actually work. I have used it successfully for a few sessions now.

*Roll20 and the other VTTs allow you to buy modules and other supplements. Totally not needed, but if you are pressed for time this can be very handy. One of the big 5e ones will have all sorts of stuff that you can use from it.

*Finding players through Roll20...lets say its a casual vibe. Reddit remains probably the best place to find players, but that can also be very interesting.