VTT/online-play Etiquette and Horror Stories

[Thomas Shey]

Pretty similar for me. I had one player drop without notice in a con game, and in our regular games, sometimes people forget to mute themselves while snacking something on the side (thankfully that's rather rare), but otherwise no specific online-play troubles.

I had to mention to one player that if he was going to have side conversations with another (his wife) could he please mute? Ironically, the problem with one other player is he's really good about that, but not always so good at turning mute back off when he's done.

 

[Thomas Shey]

One of the hardest ones to deal with is talking over each other. It happens - it will always happen to a certain degree because its hard to keep people from chiming in simultaneously without being excessively restrictive. You just have to accept it, stop people when you can, and ask people to repeat things when they couldn't be heard.

Yeah, this is one of the few areas I think online play actually makes worse than the equivalent face-to-face, but I really do wish we could develop better speech discipline without getting draconic about it.

 

[plecostomus]

Nice choice to include moving around out of turn when the software won't prevent it. I was in an online game during the pandemic (PaizoCon, I think) and the GM was using Roll20 with dynamic lighting. One one hand, it was cool to experience it. But MAN did the other players move around scoping out revealed rooms as soon as they were able to do so - and with them having light sources, it was causing all of our displays to have weird updates. It was really distracting.

When I was checking out Foundry and looking at their trailer, it kept showing players walking around in completely separate hallways or corners of the map, zipping in and out of rooms with no pause whatsoever for interaction with the DM. I was like who plays like this??

 

[nyvinter]

"Insists on rolling physical dice when everyone else rolls in the VTT"

This jsut shows how different tables are. We roll physical dice with VTT rolls optional. Why? Dice are more fun.

 

[Deset Gled]

The issue with that is that you can be trying to fix a problem, go through various backflips, and it just doesn't happen. I went through probably five conference mikes before I found one that seemed to be consistent, and that doesn't even go through the things that were bandwidth-related before FIOS became available in our area.

In my experience, this sort of thing isn't uncommon; sometimes technical problems can be fairly intractable.

Your experience was that you tried your best and still lost, and that's both frustrating and understandable. But the issue of etiquette isn't just about the technical problem, it's about how you handle the failure socially. Things like communicating about the problem, accepting advice, and taking responsibility. In a very extreme scenario, it means the person with the problem needs to drop out of the game voluntarily rather than make the rest of the group suffer.

Thankfully, I've never had this problem in a game, but I've had to deal with it in the workplace. My company actually had a training session that talked about it during COVID.

 

[Koloth]

One thing to add to the list - the GM not having stuff ready. Sucks when the game halts while the GM preps an NPC or map. Or the map doesn't match the scenario because the GM couldn't/didn't find the proper map. Also not finding a decent token for NPCs and continually using one of the default tokens.

As an IT support person, I know that getting audio and video stuff to work correctly can be a PITA. The base OS controls are often not well documented and often hard to find. Not to mention Windows often allows setting adjustments at the driver level, basic OS level and 3rd party software level, all at the same time. Sometimes worth it to schedule an out of game time slot to test various things if someone continues to have problems.

In an earlier era, a group of friends was really into World of Tanks. I tripped over a source of basic but decent surplus headsets for $3/each. Picked up a case so we could send them to folks that were having issues with their audio setups. Really helped several folks out.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Your experience was that you tried your best and still lost, and that's both frustrating and understandable. But the issue of etiquette isn't just about the technical problem, it's about how you handle the failure socially. Things like communicating about the problem, accepting advice, and taking responsibility. In a very extreme scenario, it means the person with the problem needs to drop out of the game voluntarily rather than make the rest of the group suffer.

I guess I've just seen periods when most of a group had some technical problems some of the time. I don't think its terrible etiquette to let the rest of the group decide if the problems are severe enough to say "Sorry, we just can't deal with your static every session any more" rather than assuming dealing with whatever it isn't necessarily too big an ask.

Thankfully, I've never had this problem in a game, but I've had to deal with it in the workplace. My company actually had a training session that talked about it during COVID.

I think the situations in an entertainment situation and a professional one aren't entirely parallel.

 

[Thomas Shey]

One thing to add to the list - the GM not having stuff ready. Sucks when the game halts while the GM preps an NPC or map. Or the map doesn't match the scenario because the GM couldn't/didn't find the proper map. Also not finding a decent token for NPCs and continually using one of the default tokens.

I can see some of that (though I think the token thing is being kind of picky) but most of it seems to apply to FTF, too.

As an IT support person, I know that getting audio and video stuff to work correctly can be a PITA. The base OS controls are often not well documented and often hard to find. Not to mention Windows often allows setting adjustments at the driver level, basic OS level and 3rd party software level, all at the same time. Sometimes worth it to schedule an out of game time slot to test various things if someone continues to have problems.

In an earlier era, a group of friends was really into World of Tanks. I tripped over a source of basic but decent surplus headsets for $3/each. Picked up a case so we could send them to folks that were having issues with their audio setups. Really helped several folks out.

Like I said, it can be really odd with audio hardware; I've had stuff that didn't want to work for remote play that seemed like it was fine if you were using it to, for example, just listen to music. The problems I had with conference mikes really boggled me.

 

[Blue]

I can understand cameras-on being contentious, mainly because both of my (young adult) children game, and there's very different expectations.

For me, I've worked for international companies for decades so was comfortable with video meetings well before work-from-home, which cemented it. I'd tried remote play with phone systems and didn't like it, it wasn't until I could see body language that it really worked for me. And while part of that is emoting your character, there's also a lot there for who's going to talk next and other things that make it closer to people being together in a room.

(All that said, we often have someone turning off a camera when we play, say for bandwidth issues or they are eating.)

For them and others their age, cameras are almost always off. It was a big deal for my eldest when she found herself gesturing and stimming (the character has ADHD) in-character and wanted to share it, and would turn on her camera. Cameras on can increase social anxiety as well. Also they've grown up with voice chat with multiple people and have a better sense of when someone is going to talk and such.

 

[Blue]

During a recent game that fell apart, the DM got super annoyed at one player who would openly crochet on screen, but there was another player that got away with playing something (solitaire or similar) on their second monitor. Obviously, it was a DM pet situation that escalated from there. I don't think the rest of us were supposed to know, but we knew. I wouldn't have cared too much about the background gaming as long as the guy was still attentive, but the fact that the DM had a problem with crochet but not that should have been a bigger red flag for other eventual problems.

For me, I'd assume crocheting was like a fidget - something you do with your hands to let you focus better. ADHD is well represented in TTRPGs.