Resuming Face-to-Face Gaming

[el-remmen]

I applaud you for trying to include the player not coming. I'll leave it at that.

Huh? I think you have me confused with someone else. Everyone can make it!

 

[Nytmare]

 

[Umbran]

Weather has gotten good enough here that for one game I play in (just 3 players and a GM) we are going to try to play outdoors in person tomorrow.

 

[Nytmare]

Maybe that will help for however long it takes for your friend to realized he is probably being overcautious.

Sorry if this opens up a can of worms, but the world needs more overcautious people right now. Getting vaccinated makes you less likely to catch and transmit, it doesn't make you immune. Hanging out with other vaccinated people is safer, not safe.

My virtual play hasn't involved battlemaps for over a decade, but when it did, I had two cameras set up, one wide shot that showed the people at the table, and one that showed a birds eye view of only the battlemap. The player could bounce between those two views as they wanted. This was pre VTT, but I cobbled together a player's eyes only web page that had our character sheet and power cards on it, along with a synced duplicate of the map I fed to my at-table player monitor that the remote player could move pieces around on to match the video feed. It wasn't perfect but it worked. Malik's Virtual Character Sheet

As others have said, the audio lag is probably the most annoying thing, we ended up resorting to one person at a time and hand raises so that we weren't always talking over the remote player. The suggestion that the remote player show up ahead of time to iron out any/all of the bugs that are going to pop up is by far the best advice I could give.

 

[el-remmen]

Yes, we've been playing that way for over a year (two cameras, battlemat, I am not down with VTTs). Now we're following CDC guidelines and feel fine about it.

 

[GMMichael]

My entire gaming group is now vaccinated, and by the time our next regularly scheduled game comes up, will be fully immunized.

Vaccinated people are still coming up positive. (Mentioning that in case you're the cautious type.)

. So we just got him on google chat video or whatever and pointed the laptop camera at the mat.

Aw! When I had a remote player, I pointed the camera at all of our smiling faces. Those are important these days. The main thing that I did was make occasional checks to see if the remote player was unable to contribute. Think of the remote p!ayer as a really shy in-person player (quiet, easy to overlook). Everyone gets spotlight (if they want it)!

 

[Umbran]

Vaccinated people are still coming up positive. (Mentioning that in case you're the cautious type.)

Generally because they were exposed to the disease before they reached full efficacy.

But, yes - the vaccines are not strictly 100% effective at keeping you from getting covid. This is why current advice suggests small groups of fully vaccinated people are appropriate, not "go out to bars and concerts like you did before."

 

[ART!]

There doesn't seem to be enough data yet to know how likely vaccinated people are to transmit the virus.

 

[JediSoth]

I'm just going by current CDC guidelines:

• You can gather indoors with fully vaccinated people without wearing a mask or staying 6 feet apart.

I'm fairly confident we've all been very good about following the guidelines so far, masking in public, etc. We're not going to bars, we're not going to restaurants, we've all barely left our houses except to get groceries for over a year now. Two of my players are retired and don't work. Two of them have been working from home (three, counting me), and only one player actually has to go to another location to work and he doesn't have close contact with many people most of the day (he does some sort of computer inventory system management work in a warehouse). As far as risky behavior goes, I think us getting together for a game every other week now that we're all fully immunized is pretty low risk.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

My entire gaming group is now vaccinated, and by the time our next regularly scheduled game comes up, will be fully immunized. According to CDC guidelines, it's safe for us to resume gaming in person at my house, even if one couple brings their school-aged child (who doesn't game with us and usually watches cartoons in an adjacent room, except for popping in for snacks and to bring me Lego robots he wants me to attack the PCs with). One of my players is adamant about not resuming face-to-face yet because of their elderly father's risk factors (though, he is also fully immunized at this point).

Rather than try to convince them it's safe apart from providing the CDC guidelines, we're considering suggesting that they join remotely. So, we'll have 4 players around the table, plus me, and 1 remote player.

Has anyone played with this sort of set up? What challenges did you have? What solutions did you use? Any advice/suggestions?

Its kind of how my group has been for over a year as I don't think two of the members have left their house in that time. So since last March we have 5 at the table, with two remote. Its...not ideal IME. Of course we run a more casual game so the players are cracking jokes about what is happening that round, having drinks, and talking among themselves a lot which makes it difficult for the remote players to hear what is going on or feel like they are "part of the group". At first I tried to cut down on the table talk but that honestly wasn't a productive approach as they enjoy that part of the game as much as the game itself.

It gets annoying when you keep having to repeat yourself to a player who is remote since his connection is acting up, can't hear over the Fighter and Cleric players laughing about what happened last round, or you have a player after that fact claim they didn't hear something and wouldn't have done action X... And I understand however at a certain point I stopped making the two remote players the focus of the game and just ran the game as I would normally. If they miss something that is unfortunate but the idea of a quiet table with everyone 100% focused on what is going on isn't realistic.

I run a mini heavy game so having to keep doing "No, move me there..no not there, not there, not there..." Or have to troubleshoot someone's tech issues is a drag.

So to be totally honest all that makes me not enjoy running my game as much. The two players I think have got their second shots but based on how they have been I expect them to talk about variants and how they better hole up for a few more months. Its possible after this current arc of the campaign ends, hopefully Wed, I'll put my game on hiatus until we are all onsite and maybe run something on off nights for those who don't mind showing up or just playing skirmish mini games.