The Tentacled Monkey

I am, at heart, a tabletop RPG’er. After some devastating personal calamities (Hurricane Ike) We decided to move further inland to escape potential hurricanes and flooding. In the process I left behind the majority of my friends and every tabletop gamer I knew. Instead for almost two years I have not gamed, I have dreamt about it, bought books that will likely never get used, etc.

So bearing that in mind this is about gaming using Skype as a connection tool. Skype, for those of you who do not know is a simple VOIP solution provided for free (or for very little cost), that will allow you to make Skype-to-Skype calls (free) or calls from Skype to a regular landline or cell ($$$) phone. The free and easy to use bit is what is important to remember here.

After some looking around I found some guys that actually have done this quite successfully and have posted the sessions in a podcast format. The guys over at Nerdbound did it in a few episodes of their awesome podcast while running a game of FFG’s Rogue Trader for the Warhammer 40k universe. I was really surprised and delighted to see that these sessions went off without much trouble, and this really brought this more to the fore-front of my mind so far as gaming. Also, Daniel Perez listed pros and cons of using Skype in his blog in January this year.

There are some some things that I noticed and wanted to comment on, Daniel I’m not trying to copy you man.

Dice

So if you are not sitting face-to-face with another human being while gaming the first thing  that will pop into most GM’s minds is the subject of dice rolls. After thinking about this for a bit I’ve come up with a few solutions.

• Honesty – It isn’t hard to make the argument that the most fun and enjoyable gaming experiences center around some really bad rolling. Knowing this it would seem anathema to purposefully fudge rolls since the GM and other players can’t see you dice. We all know what this is like, and we have all played with those people. The game is more about winning every combat and skill check rather than having a great time. To be quite honest, this is likely to be my personal solution to the majority of rolls made. However, I can imagine a time when a particularly important roll needs to be made, and more for dramatic effect than anything else, the entire group would watch it. Which brings me to…
• Communal Dice Rollers – The most simple of which is done by CatchYourHare.com. Graham over there has a web based simple die roller that will allow other people to see your rolls when the same password has been entered. Another app worth looking at is Hamete Virtual Dice Server, this allows members to view a real time log of dice rolls. And the Dice Room at rpgp.org.
• Virtual Tabletops… more on these later.

Maps

Another concern of remote gaming, I just thought of that one, is the maps of encounters and what not that invariably go with any RPG.

• Virtual Tabletops
• Communal Maps – I’ll call them this at least for lack of a better phrase. The only one worth mentioning that I am aware of is RPTools’s MapTool which will allow you to create a map and then start a server app which players can log into. There is a lot of flexibility with this app and I know it does have chat built in and can do macros, but I am not certain if the macros will do dice rolls. If it does then it is a serious plus.
• Go without – There is the possibility of being able to run the session without any maps, relying instead on the descriptions set down by the GM. This is not entirely undoable, but maps would be nice in some situations.
• Post online – GM’s could load their encounter maps on a private server and dole out the links as needed via the Skype chat. Or the maps could be in a locked forum post that the GM would provide a password for when needed. This isn’t too bad an idea actually, but then players lose the ability to place tokens on the map reflecting their positions.

Technical Issues

Since this is Skype, there are a few quirks that will need to be overcome. First off, if someone has a significant drop in bandwidth Skype will drop a user from the conversation, or severely cut back the call quality. If multiple people start talking all at once, it seems that the loudest person get the floor and all others are either muted, or cutoff while he speaks. So it is fairly important to only talk once at a time or someone will get cut off. There is a reliance on tech that Daniel Perez brings up, but honestly that isn’t that big a deal for me or the guys I typically would game with.

Video

This is something that is generally not covered by VTT’s in general, I’m leaving out iTableTop here of course, and would make things even more simple in an session. Skype does provide video conferencing, however again we have to rely on the parties all having webcams and the drain on bandwidth is significantly more while using it.

Virtual Tabletops

There are a number of virtual tabletop applications that would allow for a group to meet, share a map, chat, and dice roller all in one. Many of these are subscription based and are therefore quite costly to implement for the common 4-5 man group. Some of the ones that I am aware of are below. There is a more comprehensive list, however, at RPGVirtualTableTop.com.

• OpenRPG – Free – This guy has been around for a bit, and I do like it, but the map is somewhat difficult to learn. There is a lot of flexibility in this platform but it hasn’t been updated since 2009 I think.
• GameTable – Free – I actually like this one as well. Lots of freedom to add macros and the map is really easy to use.
• RPGTonight – Free – This is a web-based solution that seems interesting, but I have not played with it enough to really say if it will work or not.
• iTabletop -- This is the guy I have been following for quite awhile, but unfortunately my laptop run 64-bit Windows that iTabletop does not run on. There is a complete re-write call SilverTable that will allow it to run on virtually all platforms, but it is still in development. Also, this guy isn’t cheap.
• Battlegrounds – This is the grand-daddy of VTT’s and is designed to be ran basically via chat without voice. Again this is a somewhat costly guy but it does virtually everything you could want.
• FantasyGrounds II – I haven’t tried this for awhile but this is the same, basically don’t crucify me for saying this, as Battlegrounds.

Conclusion

Skype as a gaming platform does seem like it is a viable choice on its own. And when coupled with some of the other free tools listed above this seems to be a worthwhile replacement to face-to-face gaming.

All that remains now is to get some guys together and try it out. I’ll update periodically with progress on how this turns out.