Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood...

[GothmogIV]

I spent some time this week thinking hard about how to run and play games online. Due to adulthood, my crew and I play on a VTT (Roll20 generally, Foundry from time to time). We play twice a week, usually, and take turns GMing different systems. I am lucky to have a stable, long term group where the biggest argument is about who gets to game master next: everyone wants to do it!

Playing on VTT is better than not playing, but I have to admit I find the prep...tedious. Because we tend to play systems that are less well supported than 5e, and because I personally prefer Roll20 to Foundry (I find the later too fiddly) if I want to play a game like Castles&Crusades, or Old School Essentials, or Dungeon Crawl Classics, it's a lot of work on my end, and it's work doing things I don't enjoy. Populating character sheets. Creating tokens. Creating handouts. Populating maps. Adding (minimal) features like fog of war and varying layers. Blah blah. Not the part of gaming I like, but a necessary evil to play what I want to run.

So this week, I took a long look at the (free version) of Quest Portal. Holy moley is it ever amazing. It does all the things I don't want to do in a fraction of the time it takes me to do it. It is AI driven 100%, but companies have licensed their rules and supplements and compendiums so it's all legally integrated together. I can write a few commands, and the AI will create perfect things nearly instantly. I'm not super tech-savvy (or really interested in tech) but man, this thing is sweet. I thought...am I an old man yelling at a cloud about AI? Should I just make my life easier and use this astonishing tool? If Necrotic Gnome chooses to license their books to Quest Portal, why shouldn't I use it?

But then I thought, well...why are we using a VTT at all? We can just use Google Meets to see each other, use Owlbear Rodeo for dice rolling and the occasional bare-bones battle map, and paper character sheets. That's how we played for decades, and it was the pandemic that drove us online. Why add more tech--especially AI--when we could just simplify play the way we always have. Theater of the mind, mostly, but some visuals for big, set-piece fights, maybe pictures of maps and NPCs, whatever. Easy. No stress.

I am torn about this, I really am.

 

[Theory of Games]

Do the stress-free thing

 

[Morrus]

But then I thought, well...why are we using a VTT at all? We can just use Google Meets to see each other, use Owlbear Rodeo for dice rolling and the occasional bare-bones battle map, and paper character sheets.

Owlbear Rodeo is, famously, a VTT.

 

[GothmogIV]

Yes, Oh Buddha of Surliness, I am aware. It is a very simple VTT, unlike Roll20 or the deeply complex Foundry. It's bare bones, which is--perhaps--preferable to a more complicated platform.

 

[overgeeked]

Use theater of the mind and email, text, or otherwise send the handouts directly to the players. We’ve played via Zoom and it worked just as well. No hours of loading things into a clunky system. Either trust the players to roll honestly or use something basic like Discord or Owlbear. Saves hours of pointless headaches.

I’d opt for not playing at all rather than using “AI”.

 

[Deset Gled]

I think the biggest problem is thinking about it as "two roads". VTTs are a spectrum.

On the one side, you have what is almost indistinguishable from a video game where players built their virtual characters the same way you would build a Skyrim character, and automated gameplay tools that make your VTT feel as much like an RPG as Slay the Spire feels like a game of euchre. On the other side, you have what are essentially just document organizers store character sheets and virtual graph paper to draw on. A minimalist VTT is little more than a shared Google drive, a Zoom meeting with a virtual white board, and a dice roller.

For about the past year, I ran Roll20 much closer to how you describe:

But then I thought, well...why are we using a VTT at all? We can just use Google Meets to see each other, use Owlbear Rodeo for dice rolling and the occasional bare-bones battle map, and paper character sheets. That's how we played for decades, and it was the pandemic that drove us online.

I use a split of "theatre of the mind" and maps (that I like to pretend it's 50/50 but I'm sure my players will correct me). Roll20 is still a great tool for when maps are preferred, as well as keeping documentation like characters sheets and a play log.

In the past month, another player took over as DM and moved us to Foundry, where he has maps that autmatically handle things like line-of-sight, different vision types, damage, HP, an all attacks and spells. I was overwhelmed when I first used it. I honestly really appreciate the automation for being as good as it is, but I don't think I could every run a game being that tied down.

I have to admit, I temped to go back into D&D Beyond just to see what it's like now. I tried it once ~5 years ago. I can only imagine how much has changed.

 

[The Firebird]

I've not used quest portal but so many of these problems (making nice maps, tokens, sheets, dynamic lighting, fog, etc.) are AI shaped that it doesn't surprise me someone is making it happen. I expect in the coming years D&D beyond will do so as well.

The big question is whether you, or any of your players, have ethical objections to AI--and then, the scope of those objections--art for commercial use? Art in general? Art and text? Art and text and code? Only you all can answer those.

And then, are you happy with the quality? I imagine fog of war and maps and data entry are solid, while art is passable but still AI looking. If it is primarily helping you visualize what's in your head, rather than replacing it with generic fantasy, then it may be a win.

 

[GMMichael]

So this week, I took a long look at the (free version) of Quest Portal. Holy moley is it ever amazing. It does all the things I don't want to do in a fraction of the time it takes me to do it. It is AI driven 100%, but companies have licensed their rules and supplements and compendiums so it's all legally integrated together. I can write a few commands, and the AI will create perfect things nearly instantly. I'm not super tech-savvy (or really interested in tech) but man, this thing is sweet. I thought...am I an old man yelling at a cloud about AI? Should I just make my life easier and use this astonishing tool? If Necrotic Gnome chooses to license their books to Quest Portal, why shouldn't I use it?

First they fired the pages
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a page.

Then they fired the printers
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a printer.

Then they fired the programmers
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a programmer.

Then they came for me
and my AI game assistant said
Go ahead. Take him.

But then I thought, well...why are we using a VTT at all? We can just use Google Meets to see each other, use Owlbear Rodeo for dice rolling and the occasional bare-bones battle map, and paper character sheets. That's how we played for decades, and it was the pandemic that drove us online. Why add more tech--especially AI--when we could just simplify play the way we always have. Theater of the mind, mostly, but some visuals for big, set-piece fights, maybe pictures of maps and NPCs, whatever. Easy. No stress.

I play a super-easy game, because I also hate prep. If preparing your game isn't fun, it doesn't mean you need AI; it means you need a new game.

 

[GothmogIV]

I think the VTT we've been using creates an expectation of bells and whistles: lighting, spell effects, etc. The second the party moves to a gridded map, everyone knows there is 'going' to be combat. There doesn't have to be combat, but combat is expected. And rather than describing things--pure imagination--there is an image or a picture that everyone can see. So the VTT is shaping the actual game. It's changed how we play.

As far as AI, I do not like it, but I accept that it's there. I am not profiting from the images made by Questportal: I am not selling things, or presenting things as mine to make money. Necrotic Gnome (for example) licensed their material to Quest Portal, so they've given permission for it to be used. So have a of other companies.

But something about it feels icky.

 

[Nytmare]

When the pandemic pushed us to online play, I recognized almost immediately that VTT play was an ersatz simulacrum of the pieces of the game I was least interested in.

My response was to try to retrofit Torchbearer (at least for myself as the GM) into a STRICTLY short form fiction game and to abandon my decades of artistic training and refuse to provide even a sketch of a map or a doodle of a character's face.

Even though my friends' games didn't follow suit, it did make a lot of them abandon Roll20 in pursuit of simpler tools. A really popular one was Gamescape: GameScape