One remote player.

[herrozerro]

Hello all!

I have just accepted a request from a player to try to join a game, but the thing is he'll be the only remote player. Has anyone else done anything like this? Tips or tricks?

I'm thinking about using roll20.net, as it has some great built-in video capability and integration with Google hangouts. I am thinking about setting up a laptop to give a good overview of the room and possibly thinking about moving my maps in general to the TV so we are all on the same page.

 

[Ketherian]

Hi herrozerro.

I'm in a game with a local who became a remote player. He connects to the game using skype. We use a computer with a camera positioned so he sees the GM and at least a portion of the table. The GM isn't into doing maps (never mind maps online), and occasionally we text the remote player to do private conversations. It's certainly not the best method, and I'm very curious to hear what others suggest; but it does the job.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Hi herrozerro.

I'm in a game with a local who became a remote player. He connects to the game using skype. We use a computer with a camera positioned so he sees the GM and at least a portion of the table. The GM isn't into doing maps (never mind maps online), and occasionally we text the remote player to do private conversations. It's certainly not the best method, and I'm very curious to hear what others suggest; but it does the job.

This is almost exactly what I'm doing with one of my friends and players. He's one of my best friends, and moved to Colorado (I live in California). But, he connects via Skype, and we play like that. He rolls on his side (I trust him), and I don't use maps / a grid, so it's easy enough for us. It feels a lot more like he's there than we thought it would at first.

Though, sometimes there are connection problems, and one of my players (and good friend to both of us) hates that, and would rather play without the occasional "what was that?" So, there's definitely someone in my group who doesn't like it. The third player definitely likes it, and definitely wants to keep our remote player.

Anyways, maybe others have better solutions? That'd help you and might help me, too. As always, play what you like

 

[herrozerro]

Well, reporting back.

It was a success, so much so that I am getting another remote player to join!

Well first of all, one of my regulars actually was not feeling the best so I suggested that he try it remotely as well. And we had issues almost right away. Because free Skype doesn't support multi video conferences we tried a service called oovoo, that worked for the regular, but not for the ney guy due to Linux.

We then tried a Google hangout and that worked, but only the video was consistent, so we ended up using Google hangouts for video and a sky conference call for audio.

I was running savage worlds so the game is already geared well towards a less grid intensive game. And it seemed to work well with trying out more TotM combat. I think next time I'm going to work combat/exploration with a map with loosely defined zones.

Well tl;dr it was a success and I hope to continue with them!

 

[Janx]

For maps, I recommend using Roll20. Since it hooks into Google Hangouts, it'll leverage what you already got working.

My reasoning is that it is pretty quick to sketch out the combat area (like you would with a battlemat), and it's already on your local screen for the local players, and the remote player gets to see it automagically.

Much easier than trying to aim a web cam at your actual battlemat, or send him a pre-made image.


You might look into FreeConference.com for a multi-line phone conference, should that be needed. Roll20 can use Google or has its own. Might be worth doing some testing to see which works better.

 

[Mark CMG]

Last Saturday, we used Skype from Lake Geneva Games to have our buddy join us from British Columbia -

https://www.facebook.com/mark.cmg/media_set?set=a.10201558989159334.1073741864.1315595608&type=3

He got the chance to virtually sit next to Ernie Gygax!