Hey guys! Long time reader, first time poster.
Question for groups with one or more remote members: what is your preferred setup?
One of my players is moving a few hours away, so I’ve ordered a nice widescreen webcam and a conference microphone for our next session. We plan to hook up a laptop to a television and broadcast our remote player’s webcam feed on the big screen. I’m toying around with using Roll20 or another similar program meant for remote play. However, I’ve also seen some groups using Skype or Facetime to similar effect.
Any tips or things to watch out for?
The setup you described sounds great, and I think it’s awesome that you’re putting in the work to stay connected 🙂 I play fairly regularly with a group that’s spread across the US. For us, Roll20 has been great for dice rolling and character sheet management, but its built-in audio/visual is somewhat wonky for us, so we usually use a Google Hangout for the audio/visual aspect. Play around with different tools and see what works best for your group. There will inevitably be some hiccups now and then, but as long as everyone is patient, I think you’ll have a great time. Cheers!
Benny Tsai Thanks! Great suggestions.
Roll20 is a great virtual tabletop but is definitely not a must for Motw, especially if your players are familiar with the game and know their playbooks reasonably well. You might however use a virtual board to share documents and draw pictures (Realtimeboard is awesome but the free option allows only 4 members per board, so some computer-sharing might be necessary).
You could nevertheless use Roll20 to share music and sounds, if you like to use them during play. There are many other options available but the Roll20 jukebox does the trick pretty well.
Your setup sound awesome, have a blast 🙂
One of my game groups did a session during a snowstorm where we used Roll20 for the gaming but we were having serious audio issues! Not everyone could hear everyone or be heard all the time. (We’re still not sure what happened). If you’re having issues you could use discord as a backup audio/chat room.