How does internet gameing differ from tabletop?

[afrorooster]

I was wondering today what the major diffrences between playing D&D online and at a tabletop were, besides the obvious of not actually seeing the players and such.
I myself have never played online, so I was wondering if I should start.
Tha main things i want to know are:
How does combat change? Is it more descriptive because your typeing, instead of say being able to use diffrent tones of voice and such?
Is general roleplaying better?
Is it as much fun?

Just curious.....

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

More people playing in their underwear.

The only significant difference otherwise, that I've found, is that it tends to go slower for some reason.

 

[Crothian]

inteernet gaming in my experince stays on topic more and does roleplay more. Table top though I feel people can role play better as it is easier to role play off of each other. And the nergy of a table top game is there when you are having a good session and everyone is into it. Internet games don't really have energy like that.

 

[megamania]

I find the PbPs to be VERY slow which is against my DMing style. But as Vermont is a meka of gamers it is a required thing at times.

Table top gaming is faster both in leveling and the such and there is more as C said- energy /synergy happening.

Don't be afraid to try one however.

 

[Kurotowa]

Upsides: Emoting and IC acting is easier, it's easier to run multiple scenes at once, you have a wide player selection.

Downsides: Play is slower (even with realtime IRC or MUD play) and putting through large blobs of description is slower yet (dungeon exploration can take ages), you can't pass around objects (ie no maps), and you sometimes have to deal with a player's connect cutting out mid-game.

I've have a lot on online play and IME D&D is not the best game for it. Online play is best for conversation and intrigue, and worst for dungeon crawls and complex combat. If you have a game or campaign more focused on the PCs and less on the world it can be very good. To answer your questions; combat is a right pain because calling out every action takes a very long time, once you're acclimated it's easy to add mood and tone of voice to your actions (easier than RL play), and as always the roleplaying and fun factors depend on the group and not the medium.

 

[Steel_Wind]

With Fanatasy Grounds and Skype - differences are....

Well - less face to face gab. A few less jokes. No shared pizza.

Play is actually faster using FG and Skype. The reasons why?

1 - Combat tracker using FG is very fast
2- Map reveal using FG is VERY fast

I would not want to try it without a voice chat system though.

 

[Bagpuss]

I found even using http://www.fantasygrounds.com/ actual play was slower (no voice chat in my case), but I tended to get through the same amount of dungeon in a 4 hour session, since, as I only knew the people through the game, there was much less friendly banter and off topic conversations, once the game began.

I think it was actually more descriptive for me, since I made more of an effort in describing characters actions, using the emotes and the like, than I do in table top play.

I've stopped playing FG recently only because of other time commitments, but I found it really good at organising game sessions. It's recently been patched so now you can even zoom in and out of shared maps, and has a lot of new features.

It's a different experience from face-to-face play in someways better since it tends to be more focused, people tend to stay in character more. But for me gaming is as much about the jokes and social meeting with friends, which you don't get so much of with a online game.

 

[Henry]

...it tends to go slower for some reason.

Typing versus speaking - dead giveaway.

Other differences:

DM's can take their time being more descriptive in their expositions, because we can often read faster than we speak.

Secret info between DM and PC can stay more secretive without visible note-passing.

Subtle jokes and context clues are lost without being able to see the speaker.

Visions of characters can be more vivid, without being able to see the speaker.

Sense of cameraderie can be lost as focus is placed more on gaming than on social interaction.

If someone goes "Away from Keyboard," there's no way to know for definite if they're coming back, and can get distracted easier.

In all, I dislike it in preference to face-to-face gaming.

 

[CronoDekar]

Arg, most of the way through the post and my browser crashes on me. Let's try this again.

I've played exclusively on IRC, so I can answer this question! Combat goes as quick as people are into the battle, as the speed is dependent on each player paying attention to the action and responding when it's their turn. Descriptions in combat tend to be short, as the time to type it out is time when the combat is going slower. We tended to use homemade ASCII maps, since we could never find a good satisfactory and affordable map program. The biggest awkwardness was the conversations, since people type at the same time without knowing what or if anybody else is talking. This can result in some awkward conversations and redundancies, but it's actually not too hard to work with. As far as descriptions go, it's good to have the DM have pretyped ones to keep the action going. Most players give good, but not overly time-consuming descriptions with emotes. Not sure how much I can say roleplaying would be better or more fun, to be honest.

As far as definitely good things goes, for one, I like having a good dicebot around; you just plug in what you want and you get the results right there. No counting up 10 d6 dice, no "bad dice", and no falling off the table. It's a lot easier for the DM to hide stuff, and if a DM wants to send one of the players a private message, the other players don't necessarily know that it happened. OOC chat can also happen during the game in another channel and not interfere with campaign as it goes on (as long as the players don't get too involved in OOC chat anyway). Then there's logging, which lets you keep track of everything that happened down in precisely what order, so if anyone forgets they can just go back through and read it through. Char sheets can be kept track of in a simple, easily updatable file format (I always just used txt files). And of course, it's possible to play when one of your player friends lives in Florida, one in Kansas, one in Washington state, one in Texas, one in Pennsylvannia, and one in England (these were the people I most regularly played with).

 

[Hussar]

I've been using OpenRPG for a couple of years now, so I can give a fairly educated answer to this question. Combat can be faster, but only if your players are on the ball. It's utterly bewildering to me to watch a player sit for a couple of minutes on his turn then type, "I attack". I go bezerk. I've instituted a shot clock in my game and it works very well. 40 seconds is all you get for your turn, so you better have your action already typed before your turn comes up. Now that I've trained my players, they have combat macros already set and I can get through combats of 15 PC's and NPC's plus a dozen opponents in under 40 minutes. I know I couldn't do that in tabletop. It has taken a while to beat people into line though.

Graphically, because Open has a mini map window, I post images that I beg/borrow/steal from the internet, meaning that my maps are generally professional quality (thank you WOTC map of the week) and my background pics are pretty good too. With a bit of work, you can even get a soundtrack for your game as well as you can post links to streaming media which your players can listen to. I haven't gone with the voice chat option, but I could see that coming up in the near future.

Is it better than tabletop? Nope. Different, yes, but not better. It takes a bit of getting used to, but, if you put in the effort to prep sessions, it can be pretty impressive. I think about half my prep time now is spent trolling various art sites looking for that perfect fiendish vampiric illithid pic.