Ry
Explorer
...and it was _fantastic_. The game was a ball; only 2 players, using Roger Wilco for the audio communication, ScreenMonkey for the mapping, and Trillian for extra tidbits of info (just to link to an online image).
In fact, I was very surprised it went so well; I was expecting technical hurdles and a sense of strangeness, or that it just wouldn't be as fun. But I found players were even more attentive than normal, and while they couldn't see me gesturing, they were just soaking up my descriptions and dialogue.
There was one downside that we noticed right away: When one player wanders off from the group, and gets a bit of DM attention, the other player was a little more in limbo than in person. I think more players + a chat window will probably handle that one just fine (so if me and one player are dominating a the audiochannel, the others can text chat).
Also, it's a very demanding DMing environment; since my pauses were bigger issues than in face-to-face gaming, I had to be on top of my information every second. When I had to look up spell descriptions it felt like things had frozen horribly.
But even this has upsides: The demanding environment really brought out the best in my DMing style. I really rise to the challenge. I focused more on my voice acting, and that went over very well, and neither I nor the players were distracted by anything - the whole focus was on the game (except for a phone call I received about halfway through). We played for about 5 hours straight, then they headed for bed, and I for EN World.
For the future, I need to do some experimenting to get ScreenMonkey to act exactly how I want; large, high-color depth images are not ideal. We also might look for alternatives to Roger Wilco, in case there's something that deals with the time delay better. But neither of these things were big problems; certainly they feel less important than lacking elbow room or having a poor grasp of a new rules-set (both of which we've experienced before).
This is a huge development for my campaigns; I recently moved to another city than my old group, who I DMed for over the course of the last 7 years. Two of those players were in last night, and given how it went, I can only assume there will soon be more.
The only major rules difference to accomodate the format was the removal of Attacks of Opportunity, which I hate anyway. That _also_ made things nice and smooth - gave a bit of a free-wheeling 2nd ed feel, which I personally loved.
Anyway, thought I'd report on a great night of gaming (I think these EN World forums are sucking me in).
In fact, I was very surprised it went so well; I was expecting technical hurdles and a sense of strangeness, or that it just wouldn't be as fun. But I found players were even more attentive than normal, and while they couldn't see me gesturing, they were just soaking up my descriptions and dialogue.
There was one downside that we noticed right away: When one player wanders off from the group, and gets a bit of DM attention, the other player was a little more in limbo than in person. I think more players + a chat window will probably handle that one just fine (so if me and one player are dominating a the audiochannel, the others can text chat).
Also, it's a very demanding DMing environment; since my pauses were bigger issues than in face-to-face gaming, I had to be on top of my information every second. When I had to look up spell descriptions it felt like things had frozen horribly.
But even this has upsides: The demanding environment really brought out the best in my DMing style. I really rise to the challenge. I focused more on my voice acting, and that went over very well, and neither I nor the players were distracted by anything - the whole focus was on the game (except for a phone call I received about halfway through). We played for about 5 hours straight, then they headed for bed, and I for EN World.
For the future, I need to do some experimenting to get ScreenMonkey to act exactly how I want; large, high-color depth images are not ideal. We also might look for alternatives to Roger Wilco, in case there's something that deals with the time delay better. But neither of these things were big problems; certainly they feel less important than lacking elbow room or having a poor grasp of a new rules-set (both of which we've experienced before).
This is a huge development for my campaigns; I recently moved to another city than my old group, who I DMed for over the course of the last 7 years. Two of those players were in last night, and given how it went, I can only assume there will soon be more.
The only major rules difference to accomodate the format was the removal of Attacks of Opportunity, which I hate anyway. That _also_ made things nice and smooth - gave a bit of a free-wheeling 2nd ed feel, which I personally loved.
Anyway, thought I'd report on a great night of gaming (I think these EN World forums are sucking me in).
Congrats rycanada! 
