video confrencing our game

[Ahrimon]

So, one of our players is moving away on short notice and wants to finish the campaign and we're looking for a solution. I'm the DM and moving away in a few months (May) so we're not looking for an elaborate or long term solution. There was talk of using facetime or skype. Does anyone have any experience using either of these to game with? How did it work? DM's, did you trust your remote player to roll their own dice or did you use an online app for it?

Any tips/tricks/suggestions would be very welcome.

Thanks

 

[Umbran]

I know a number of people who use skype and say it is very good for the purpose.

I am currently playing in a game that meets (irregularly) in Google Hangouts, which also seems to do a decent job of it, though one must be careful how many computers in the same place are using it, or you get bandwidth issues.

We do generally allow people to roll their own dice. If we didn't trust them enough to play fair, we'd not go through the effort of setting up conferencing with them to play. YMMV, of course. Our case of having *everyone* online is a bit different than having only one person in telepresence. I would imagine you'll need to take some care placing your camera and mike and screen. Also note that speaking with someone remotely takes a little getting used to, it is rather easier to talk over them, or expect the remote person to hear one conversation out of many. Speak one at a time, and give a little leeway for transmission lag in response and you should be okay.

 

[jcayer]

We use Google Hangouts just about every session. It works great and is free. You can get a cheap web cam for less than $10 on Amazon.

 

[Ahrimon]

We're gong to try the laptop/skype route first. Try and work out the bugs before he moves away.