But D&D is traditionally played in groups, outside of most of the players homes.
The play by computer is a new and fast growing part. I dint think it’ll ever go away, and might eclipse in person gaming, but I still think there will be a boom when in person gaming picks up steam again.
Play by computer is hardly new... I'll come back to that in a moment.
What happened in 2020 is built upon a confluence of things from several years prior...
- VTT's, finally became both reliable and easily installed.
- Online streaming play and recorded play made the process visible to newbs, in a manner that, before, was only available by finding a group.
- D&D 5 is the most readily accessible D&D edition.¹ Especially with "Free" as an entry point option.
- VTT's had permission to label their D&D flavor packages as such. Only a couple, but that's enough to improve newb accessibility dramatically.
- High Speed ³ Internet became very common Modern "high speed" (1Gbps or better) is not too common, but many have 100 Mbps or more, often 500MBps
- The Pandemic making remote play desirable to many more extant gamers
- Many driven from other systems to the default of D&D due to lack of support for their favorites
- Many newbs see streams, and now have a clue, and can find D&D support on VTTs.
- Pre-pandemic AL play has made D&D a growing community already; it has spawned many groups. Those groups now had to self isolate, and many turned to online play modes
- VOIP is readily available, and has been for years...
- Skype is one of the easier to set up, It has dedicated clients for Win, Mac, Linux/Posix/Unix, iPhone, Android, Chrome, and a few lesser known OSs
- Discord's not too hard. Again, Mac, Win, Linux/Posix/Unix iPhone, Android, and importantly, HTML5 web-page
- Ventrillo and Teamspeak are solid but not as easy, I know they do Windows...
- Zoom is widely used for work... WIndows, Mac, Linux, Web
- Facebook's VOIP is also easy, Windows, Mac, Linux/Posix, Andoid, iPhone, ChromeOS.
- In all of these, the phone support allows using the desktop for VTT, and phone for connection.
- There are a wide variety of VTTs.
- Features vary widely
- Prices range from $0 (GTove, maptools) to over $100/yr.
- Features vary widely.
- Operating modes are variable -
- some are server connects clients to handoff to Peer-to-peer in play
- Some are client login to central server
- Some allow straight peer to peer (text a coded token which resolves to a p2p IP address and port.
- a few are website interfaces (GTove, for example) with a dynamic HTML5 content model and a non-HTML backend. Players just have to be given the link and it connects up
- Some have built in VOIP; some don't.
It's the combination of all of these.
On to some more detailed thoughts...
I first encountered RPGing online in 1988... people playing via posts to local BBSs, some colleges having ethernet to the dorms having folks playing via TN3270 connections to an ANSI graphics VTT server. (I wish I could find it again. It ran on a PC, which, in spring 1989, I didn't have, being an Apple II user at the time, and doing papers on a mac at the LRC.) A number were around in the 00's, making good use of the rise of high speed (>10 Mbps - megabits) connections via ISDN, DSL and Cablemodem, and in florida, ENoP ²...
VTT's go back half the history of RPGs at this point.
It's fair to say that the VTTs are finally at a point where they're newb-accessible, and hit that just in time for the pandemic to make them desirable.
And streamed gameplay video is relatively new - ISTR it starting in or before 2012. I didn't care for it much then, and am not a big fan now... but the SG1 game with David Blue (Eli, SGU), David Hewlett (McKay, All three), Julie McNiven (Ginn, SGU), and three other part-timers from the show was a lot of fun to watch. I'd love to see that group play again. (Dial the Gate video podcast on YouTube.) I'll also say I'd welcome any of them at my public games.
Streamed gameplay by groups of actors has a bunch of different approaches... I don't care for the more scripted forms. But the teach the system to a mixed party of newbs and skilled players used by Free League/Fria Ligan and by Wyvern Gaming is much more useful, and to me, more fun.
¹: I'm not saying best. What I'm saying is that the rules are amongst the easiest to get and easiest to understand - two different kinds of accessible, and it's the best in both
under the D&D brand label.
²: Ethernet over Power, Ethernet over AC... modulate the 60Hz 110v with a 10 to 50 Mbps signal over. The only place I've ever seen evidence of installation was in Florida. Was mentioned in Datamation in 1996.
³: High Speed being pretty much anything past 10 Mbps (megabit per second) Cable, DSL, and ISDN modems.