Long distance gaming

[mearlus]

I was hoping to get some feedback on what others are doing in situations similiar to what is occuring in one of our games.

One of our players recently got a job about 1500 miles away and is moving. This player would really like to continue to play in the campaign so we're looking at options to make this work.

Obviously the ideal situation would be to have some nice streaming video of both him and our game board with audio that prevents feedback. The hurtle we're working on is keeping it as cheap as possible.

I've seen some web cameras that are able to be remotely remote controlled but aren't that cheap and the one(s) that I have seen that are reasonable (~100$) require some subscription service in order to remote control it without remotely connecting to the local PC. So i'm thinking maybe multiple cheap webcams. One stationary w/ a birds eye view of the grid and one that we maybe manually point to the DM and whoever else is the focus at any moment.

I've seen a few places that you can stream video to in a 'tv station' fashion like Ustream.com but I'm not keen on that idea yet.

So figuring out the best within reasonable price range video is one problem. The second problem is audio.

I'm debating between VoIP (I have access to an asterisk box so it would be a private voip), Teamspeak or Ventrilo which both we can do on a private server. The remote player could easily just have a headset just as with playing online games. The problem is having a device/mic/speaker setup at the game site that can pick up everyone through speaker phone type setup but still not give feedback when the remote guy talks. That's really leaning me towards using VoIP with a speaker phone that can handle those issues. However they generally aren't that cheap.

So in the end my question's are:

Anyone else having similiar situations?

Is there some better solutions already out there to facilitate this?

What have been your experiences with gaming in this fashion, has it worked out?

Thanks for any input!

 

[Ender_rpm]

I have done this in the past, using a mic enabled webcam, suspended over the board. Lag wasn't a problem, but remembering to ask the long distance player what he was doing, keeping his interest (oohh, shiny), and the general sense of disconectedness, rather than the very real technical hurdles convinced us that it wasn't worth it. And the technical hurdles (lag, low resolution, bad lighting, feedback) were many. Of course, we were trying to do it on th echeap (webcam was free form ISP, Yahoo chat video function, etc), so with soem money thrown at it, it may help the problem some. We also tried Fantasy Grounds, but that was too much hassle. In th e mean time, a coupel more of us moved away (including myself) so Now we get together every 2-3 months when business brings us to town or what not. Good luck!!

 

[6pakofdwarves]

We do it with my friend who moved to Prague. He wears a headseat and has a laptop with a camera, so we get his talking head. We then just use a $25 webcam a cheap mircophone and skype. Works great for us. We have a little stand made from a wire hanger that we set the camera on during combat so he can see the mat. No lag, cheap, and being able to see his big ol' head on the monitor keeps us from forgetting him.

 

[FalcWP]

We tried it for a semester when I was the only one not at college. It generally went poorly. We had a webcam set up that, in theory, gave me a view of the table. In reality, I constantly had to ask, "Now, what is that green blob? And I'm where? How much distance is between me and the orc?". Eventually, we ignored the webcam - on my turn, I'd get a quick summary of what was alive and where it was, and have someone move me to attack something.

Lag was a minor issue, as was feedback. 'cept for the time that one player grabbed the mic to prevent me from hearing something (bastard wanted to convince me that a ring of the ram was a ring of force shield... *grumble*)... that was painful.

Now, the group is all spread out, and we use Fantasy Grounds and Skype to play. That works well. But having just one player trying to join in to a 'real' group... not so much.

 

[mcrow]

I used a cell phone on speaker (on weekends, unlimited minutes) before and that worked well. We don't use minis much so that part isn't an issue.

 

[mearlus]

We do it with my friend who moved to Prague. He wears a headseat and has a laptop with a camera, so we get his talking head. We then just use a $25 webcam a cheap mircophone and skype. Works great for us. We have a little stand made from a wire hanger that we set the camera on during combat so he can see the mat. No lag, cheap, and being able to see his big ol' head on the monitor keeps us from forgetting him.

That was one of the things most of the players were saying, put a monitor on a chair/stand next to the table so we could see him. I believe there were some other amusing comments about it too

Maybe that's what we should do, start cheap and see how the hardware pans out. I know webcams have come down in prices over the years as quality has gone up.

I've been thinking that allowing him to remote control the camera really is not a necessity. Especially for the cost.

Thanks for all the input!

 

[Razz]

I was hoping to get some feedback on what others are doing in situations similiar to what is occuring in one of our games.

One of our players recently got a job about 1500 miles away and is moving. This player would really like to continue to play in the campaign so we're looking at options to make this work.

Obviously the ideal situation would be to have some nice streaming video of both him and our game board with audio that prevents feedback. The hurtle we're working on is keeping it as cheap as possible.

I've seen some web cameras that are able to be remotely remote controlled but aren't that cheap and the one(s) that I have seen that are reasonable (~100$) require some subscription service in order to remote control it without remotely connecting to the local PC. So i'm thinking maybe multiple cheap webcams. One stationary w/ a birds eye view of the grid and one that we maybe manually point to the DM and whoever else is the focus at any moment.

I've seen a few places that you can stream video to in a 'tv station' fashion like Ustream.com but I'm not keen on that idea yet.

So figuring out the best within reasonable price range video is one problem. The second problem is audio.

I'm debating between VoIP (I have access to an asterisk box so it would be a private voip), Teamspeak or Ventrilo which both we can do on a private server. The remote player could easily just have a headset just as with playing online games. The problem is having a device/mic/speaker setup at the game site that can pick up everyone through speaker phone type setup but still not give feedback when the remote guy talks. That's really leaning me towards using VoIP with a speaker phone that can handle those issues. However they generally aren't that cheap.

So in the end my question's are:

Anyone else having similiar situations?

Is there some better solutions already out there to facilitate this?

What have been your experiences with gaming in this fashion, has it worked out?

Thanks for any input!

I can help you make it free!

Well, you're looking for a web cam thing. Can't help there. But all of my friends are in NY, FL, and MO and I use the Internet to set up gaming sessions with them. Here's how I do it:

---Purchased "Campaign Cartographer Pro 2" along with "Dungeon Designer" and "City Designer".

---Downloaded a software called OPEN RPG at www.openrpg.com. Had my players download and install it too.

---Downloaded Teamspeak and purchased a headset and had my players purchase their headsets and install Teamspeak.

---Possess a scanner, to scan material from D&D books your players like to look over

---I pay $3/month to have 500 MB of storage to upload material with on Geocities.

I use OPEN RPG to set up a room in one of the servers and password protect it. My players enter and there's all sorts of cool features. You can play music for everyone in the room to hear, roll real-time digital dice, upload maps and battlemaps as the combat progresses, send private messages, it has a built in initiative system program and a bunch more. I use CC2 Pro to make my maps, upload them on Geocities after being saved as a .jpg, and use the URL of the uploaded picture to load the map into the room instantly. I usually change it every turn or every round, depending on the situation. I grid my battlemaps with numbers on the left side and letters on top.

It has its drawbacks, nothing beats rolling dice IRL. But private messages make things very useful and suspenseful and it's fun when the players can't see the other players character sheets. I've had a player who played a Ninja fool the others for so long before he finally told them his secret. I've had other players shock the group when they busted out an ability unknown to the rest. Pretty exciting. And the ability to play music on the OPEN RPG just came out recently and makes it even more fun

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

A group I was in did this for a player a while back. There was a computer with webcam on each end; the larger group had a microphone while the single player used a headset.

Software wise, we got best results with MSN chat, which has a video streaming capability. Before that, we'd been using a combination of Google and Yahoo sort of mashed together, but MSN worked a lot better. All 3 of these were fairly new when this was being done a year ago, so it's possible that Google and Yahoo have improved (while it's unlikely that MS has kept up. )

I don't know how this would work with multiple video streams, as we only had the one camera. If you get a portable camera on a USB or something, it might be easiest just to move it near the board for combat scenes and move it to face the group at other times.

Also, make sure you put the microphone in the center of the table. In our early set up, we had it next to the computer where the player would've been, and they often lost parts of the conversation from people that weren't directly facing the mic.

 

[naturaltwenty]

I run a week night game with my regular face-to-face group using ScreenMonkey - www.nbos.com . Even though we live within 25 miles of each other week night gaming is tough (in my situation) if I have to haul all my stuff with me. The solution - ScreenMonkey and Skype ( www.skype.com ) .

Virtual tabletop - check
Diceroller - check

No travel, no books, no lugging minis, etc.

Granted I do online gaming like this alot so there is a plethora of other tools that I've purchased like:

Dunjinni - www.dunjinni.com
RPTools - (Token Tool specifically ) http://www.rptools.net/doku.php
www.paizo.com - all Dungeon Magazine maps are available via pdf since years ago
www.wizards.com - Map a Week is another great source

During the weekends I get together with my face-to-face group as well but that's logistically harder to do with kids in baseball, volleyball, etc.

I can honestly say I game more than I have in years using these tools.

Later

 

[Mistwell]

In one of our games, a player moved away.

The DM had already been experimenting with Klooge Werks to display maps with accuracy by projecting it on a screen.

Then, when the player moved, he just activated the logon features, and we added a microphone to the computer to use Skype to speak for free from long distance.

It's pretty good. I still personally prefer the actual table with mat and figures, but the Klooge game is working pretty good. We can see exact distance for ranges and area of spells and such with ease, and the light feature actually shows us the area we can see, the area that is shaded, and the area that is black (which we cannot see into). And you load your own scanned in maps to the system, so you get high details for your maps easily (though the DM has to use a quick tool to block out room numbers and traps and secret doors, but most big published modules already have a version of the map like that out there somewhere).

Anyway, it works out. The long distance player can hear us, and speak back. He can see where we move our PCs, and where the NPCs are, and what the room looks like. And the long distance player can move his own character from the comfort of his home, and take actions with his PC, and we see all of them.