Back when I lived in Michigan, one of my players moved away during a campaign. We all missed him, and we discussed the possibility of using a webcam to allow him to continue playing with us.
This setup never materialized, but it certainly sounded workable. We’d have set up a webcam with a view of the whole table, as well as a central microphone (so he could hear us) and speakers (so we could hear him).
On the whole, this arrangement sounds like it would come as close as possible to the experience of all sitting around the same table, without breaking the bank. (A pro videoconferencing setup would obviously be better, but who has that kind of money?)
How well do you think this would work? If you’ve ever tried it, how well did it work?
Of of our players moved to upstate New York and didn’t have much luck finding people to roleplay with. He was eager to run or play this way– coordinating via Fantasy Grounds.
We were pretty fuddy-duddy and eased away. I like the interaction and body language of face to face play– from what little I’ve seen, it’d be hard to keep enough happening in the camera’s line of sight to keep him informed that way. All that said, if someone’s come up with a good way to make it work, I’m all ears.
It doesn’t work in my opinion. Even with a several thousands of dollars videoconferencing system at work regular old meetings are not as productive with video conferencing systems if you are doing much more than reporting with them.
I’ve tried using web cams and a high quality digital speaker phone for a gaming session once, and the player who was teleplaying had a hard time hearing and seeing all of the details. His comments were easily drowned out by anyone who was at the actual table, and it slowed down the game in general.
I’ve played a few times over the Internet by using Skype for voice conversations and Fantasy Grounds for gameplay. It works great, but FG isn’t as reliable as it could be.
Yeah, I’m thinking it’s not such an easy way to do it either. Webcams are limited in scope, and someone is still just sitting there staring at their computer.
The second best option (which gets into more like a video game sometimes) would be to do it within Second Life. I’ve never used second life, but I’ve heard and read numerous articles about companies doing full meetings in there. If the group came together, and bought a parcel of land they could build (or buy) something there and all meet in game with some kind of audio conference set up. It would take setup and work, and I’m not sure how much of the original gaming experience you could capture. People might also get distracted trying to figure out all the cool stuff they can do in second life.
I’d be interested to hear this too, as we’ve got a similar situation on the horizon. I can see die rolls being particularly tricky.
I have to agree with VV_GM, as we use video & telecons extensively at work, if you are attending from the ‘offsite’ locations it is too easy to feel distracted or left out. Also, any side conversations or secondary noises that get picked up by the microphones will easily make it hard to keep up with whats actually going on.
The only way I could see this working is if all players were attending virtually. Then everyone is on the same frame of reference. Otherwise the remote player will be more likely to quit from frustration due to lack of personal involvement.
Fantasy Grounds sounds like a good suggestion. Would that require the rest of the group (not just the webcam player) to be using FG too, though?
It’s a bummer that this setup apparently doesn’t work as well as it sounds like it might.
Incidentally, Pixar uses something very similar to TelePresence (perhaps it is the same thing) to coordinate geographically disparate animation groups. Their setup includes a thingie where you doodle on it and everyone sharing the conference sees your doodle. Pretty neat.
We are looking at doing this with the XBOX 360 cams. I don’t know how it is going to work yet, but they are easy to use and pretty clear.
A friend of ours moved to Oregan, and he’s joined us virtually several times via teleconferencing. We used a digital video camera mounted on a tripod focused on the game map (but occasionally panned outward for a look at the gaming room). The camera was hooked up to my PowerBook, which then sent the video signal to our player in Oregan via iChat.
He then sent his own video back using an iSight on his iMac. To avoid the “disembodied voice” syndrome, I hooked a second monitor up to my PowerBook, and put the iChat video feed on that screen (thus creating “James Headroom”). As a result, our remote friend had a real, albiet it monitor-projected, presence in the room. It gave folks something to look at, and reminded everyone he was at the table.
How well did it work? We had mixed results. It’s easy to get distracted when you’re not really *in* the room, and James fell victim to that more than once. As the DM, I had to make a conscious effort to make sure he was included, specifically asking him questions, occasionally recapping the action in case he missed something off-camera. The biggest challenge, IMHO, was the time difference — we’re on the East Coast, he’s on the West, and when we’re ready to start at 7, he’s just finishing up his day.
I think this setup *does* work though, and we had more successes than failures. My biggest bit of advice would be to make sure you’ve got that second monitor with the return video feed — it makes a world of difference.
“Fantasy Grounds sounds like a good suggestion. Would that require the rest of the group (not just the webcam player) to be using FG too, though?”
Yep. That’s where FG gets into trouble; all players and the DM must run reliably and may have to configure their routers to allow FG traffic.
When it’s working, though, it’s great. You have a common map to draw on, dice rolls are graphical, and there’s a lot of D20 stuff built in so it functions as a DM’s reference. You can add your own monsters and characters also.
If Fantasy Grounds proved to be unstable for you, or you prefer a non d20 based game system, look into a program called MapTool available at RPTools.net.
It has an amazing map and drawing features, excellent token(minis) controls and a great chat. It runs in Java as well, so those Mac guys can sit in with windows people. Very stable, I tried to kill the program and was unable to do so.
I stumbled across this post while searching for the solution to a very similar problem. My group has entered that late-twenties period where marriage and children have entered the picture along with geographical distance. Reading the mentions of Fantasy Grounds, I took a look at it and it does look like a nice package, but I don’t run Windows except at work so for me this was a non-starter.
I ran across OpenRPG, which suits me better since it runs on Linux (and the setup was astonishingly easy on my Ubuntu system ;). I would be interested to hear any experiences others have had with this software before I try to convince my disparate friends to use it. Cheers!
Martin: done. :]
Excellent! And it looks like your thread has already generated some feedback. Welcome to the boards. 🙂