D&D General Looking for Skype alternatives

[Shiroiken]

Our group used Skype for years, but then switched over to Discord. I wasn't thrilled with the change, but eventually got used to it. If you use Roll20, I know there's a voice feature option, but we've never used it.

 

[Greenfield]

To be honest, it's been so long since we walked away from Discord, I don't even remember the exact reasons.

I remember hearing about how simple and intuitive it was, and discovering that it was neither. We originally adopted it because it had a dice-roller feature, but then discovered that you could only use it in chat mode, not on a video-conference call. Kind of shot itself in the foot there.

Skype, on the other hand, really was simple. (I have a few players who are really, seriously tech-impaired.) Simple is best.

 

[hourglass.mage]

To be honest, it's been so long since we walked away from Discord, I don't even remember the exact reasons.

I remember hearing about how simple and intuitive it was, and discovering that it was neither. We originally adopted it because it had a dice-roller feature, but then discovered that you could only use it in chat mode, not on a video-conference call. Kind of shot itself in the foot there.

Skype, on the other hand, really was simple. (I have a few players who are really, seriously tech-impaired.) Simple is best.

Yeah, discord has channels. But it really is setup to handle exactly what you are interested in. I’m sure there are lots of 5min videos that’ll show exactly how to use it for your purpose. Theoretically that would help the less technical members. Good luck in your pursuits whichever way you go!

 

[Cadence]

For the screen share and video/voice in general I like Google Meet. One game I'm in uses Zoom - it uses Discord for sharing documents, posting NPC pictures for posterity, and other things. Have used the die roller integration in Discord before not now thow, and I think we tried doing video conferencing through it, but if so we didn't like it for reasons unremembered.

 

[Belen]

Google Meet. If one person has M365 then you could use Microsoft Teams which lets you create a permanent chat channel too.

I would look at the new version. Of TeamSpeak too.

 

[payn]

Teams...

 

[Belen]

Teams...

I use it everyday for work. It is far more useful than other programs including its ability to file share, chat channel etc.

I never tried it for gaming. I use Discord but detest how it can strain the PC. I have gigabyte speeds and two people in the same house cannot use video at same time without turning a 10ms into a 500ms ping.

 

[payn]

I use it everyday for work. It is far more useful than other programs including its ability to file share, chat channel etc.

I never tried it for gaming. I use Discord but detest how it can strain the PC. I have gigabyte speeds and two people in the same house cannot use video at same time without turning a 10ms into a 500ms ping.

Thats.... not my experience with discord... Teams runs poorly for me (not that poorly tho), often cuts in and out, and this is my personal bias, but a vendor I work with that I loathe insists on using it.

 

[humble minion]

If you use Roll20, I know there's a voice feature option, but we've never used it.

I’ve played a roll20 game but we found the voice feature to be basically nonfunctional. Continual dropouts, and absolute refusal to work for all players at once. We ended up switching it off and running the game on roll20 but the voice over a Facebook messenger call.

 

[jian]

Yeah, we’re in the same place. Skype was really good and simple to use. Teams is prone to random snafus (random echo, losing video/audio, headsets stop working, etc) and we all hate it from work. Discord just seems really low bandwidth and unreliable for video calls and it’s not easy to use. Zoom works well but it’s $20 a month for the host (otherwise it’s 45 minutes max).

Google Meet is OK (1 hour max and only $10 a month). I think we’ll probably go with that.