One Year of VTT Play

[Marc_C]

The pandemic forced me to use VTT to GM role-playing games. It took a few games to adapt to the new format but once we found our digital legs I have to report that we played more sessions than during the previous one year period using the face-to-face format.

I GMed 4 sessions of D&D 5e, 10 sessions of Fantasy AGE, 5 sessions of Modern AGE, 1 session of The Expanse. As a player I participated in 4 sessions of the Dark Eye, 2 sessions of L5R (ffg) and 4 sessions of 40K Wrath & Glory. For a total of 30 rpgs sessions.

I recently started a second group which means I'll be GMing every Friday. Instead of every two weeks.

Did you play more RPG sessions during the first year of the pandemic?

 

[Morrus]

They certainly get cancelled less often when people don't have to leave their homes!

 

[Marc_C]

They certainly get cancelled less often when people don't have to leave their homes!

QFT, more so in Canada when we get snow storms.

 

[tommybahama]

VTT has been great. I've played more D&D but still can't find groups for games outside of D&D like WFRP that are in my time zone.

If you are a GM you can turn your hobby into a side gig making $30 an hour. Not a bad way to make some scratch.

 

[TheSword]

We were able to go from a weekend (double game) every 6 weeks or so to a weekly game. I was also able to set up a second weekly game so definitely more gaming played.

One of our monthly players, and DM can’t do online though so looking forward to getting monthly back once restrictions lift in May.

I’ll definitely keep at least one of the weekly games though. It’s just so easy. 3 hours of concentrated gaming. We get so much done!

 

[el-remmen]

When the lockdown first began my group (which had only played two face to face sessions at that point) moved to remote play (not VTT, but a two-camera battlemat set up) played more often than normal (every two weeks instead of every 3 to 5 weeks) but after a couple of months, as thing returned to a semblance of normal (or the requirements of living required people to go out more despite the surges) we moved back to every 3 to 5 weeks. Now that we are all vaccinated we are having our first face to face session since February of 2020 on May 1st.

Once I got pretty used to this new method I started up a second group with friends all over the place (currently, we have a player in the pacific time zone and another in central european time zone, with two in ET, so we have to start play at 1 pm ET, so that is 10 am in LA and 7pm in Milan) and we play that on every 3 to 5 week too.

 

[Umbran]

Did you play more RPG sessions during the first year of the pandemic?

Well, I was mostly GMing before Covid-19 hit, and my game has been on hiatus for a year, so I have been playing more.

They certainly get cancelled less often when people don't have to leave their homes!

That's not seemed to materialize for me, especially in the latter half of the year. Stress and general fatigue have been a big deal, and a lot of folks working from home started suffering "Zoom fatigue" and didn't want to be in online meetings for entertainment as well as for work. Migraines and being "on call" for work have also led to cancellations.

At this point, I have four different groups that I play online with. Three of them aim for a session every other week, and one aims for every week. I think I am averaging one session a week of actual play.

 

[el-remmen]

a lot of folks working from home started suffering "Zoom fatigue" and didn't want to be in online meetings for entertainment as well as for work.

I ran into a little of that (had two folks drop out of my secondary game due to this). Other times, we have found it helps for everyone to turn off their personal cameras and just have the battlemat camera be the only one on and everything else is just audio. We don't do this every session or all of the session but based on how we're feeling and/or if there is any lag due to overuse of bandwidth for video.

 

[Umbran]

I ran into a little of that (had two folks drop out of my secondary game due to this). Other times, we have found it helps for everyone to turn off their personal cameras and just have the battlemat camera be the only one on and everything else is just audio.

Two of the games are audio only already. This doesn't seem to make a significant difference in whether folks are up for playing.

 

[Sithlord]

My hobby shops never stopped the games where I live. But we are nowhere near an urban center of even close to modest size. Our local government just told everyone to be careful if they are around the elderly. And we did have a player zoom in to play because he lived with elderly family members. I found that odd because he still had to go to work everyday with lots of people. But we respected what he was going through.