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IMHO, the issue with player vision is that most versions only let you see what your token can see, which means in most fights you are going to spend 70% of the fight listening to other players describe plans and strategies for stuff you can't see, or you only partially know about out of character. It's harder to stay engaged when you don't see what people are talking about most of the time. That issue gets even worse if the map uses art that's a little vague, so it's hard to understand what is being depicted without seeing the entire asset or structure. Shared vision across tokens, generous light walls, and maps that use extremely well thought through graphic design all help, but take a ton of time and effort to make.
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Apr 13, 2021 00:13
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All I really want out of a lighting system is to be able to quickly unveil a dungeon to the players one room at a time. Are there any where you can pre-define room outlines and then just alt+click on a room or something and it will make it player visible? I know in roll20 I can turn off dynamic lighting and draw custom unveiling shapes but it’s not pleasant to do live and kind of a momentum killer for any non-rectangular room.
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Apr 13, 2021 00:19
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Toshimo posted:Yeah, we are using the official Abom Vaults and the lighting/walls are TERRIBLE. We are constantly getting caught on things and the fog of war is almost totally defined outset from the walls instead of inset so its just wandering through a set of amorphous black blobs constantly asking the DM to describe what this particular blob is. This is especially bad because you can't just draw a route to measure a move before you execute it like R20 (or, if you can, none of the 5 of us has discovered it). You are able to do this. Holding ctrl click a token you control and then you can click around to set waypoints for them to move and it shows the distance of your move and then hit space to trigger that move. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syfXAt_UcJ8 If this is extremely obnoxious or something let me know. I do genuinely only mean to try and help.
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Apr 13, 2021 00:24
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Dexo posted:It's exactly the same on the player side for me. Again, you've got DM eye-in-the-sky on, which is a choice you can have, but isn't what I typically see people mean when they are talking about dynamic lighting vision. What you are telling me the players see:  What we were seeing as players (actual dynamic lighting/vision):  I mean, what we were using was miserable, but I'm not getting the appeal of the one you are using, given that it doesn't give the "atmosphere" other posters were describing, when you can see the whole map already.
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Apr 13, 2021 00:28
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pog boyfriend posted:i messed around with it almost a year ago off kickstarter. the program looks neat and i look forward to future development. maybe later today i will give it a try again now that it has had a bunch more updates. the system is kind of finnicky at first but if you want to make square maps that are very much on grids it is perfect
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Apr 13, 2021 00:29
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Dexo posted:You are able to do this. Yes, I know about that, but you can't do it in ruler mode, like when you are trying to plan. AFAIK, when you release everything in movement mode (and, again, Foundry's business model means I can't just go check this because I haven't paid full price and set up a server), it moves you, so it's much less useful for planning out or describing things to folks. (Idk if you can even do that thing for something other than your token).
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Apr 13, 2021 00:30
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Foundry would be 100x more appealing to me if you could download a free single-user version so you could test/learn/develop as a player without having to buy in at full price and maintain a server.
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Apr 13, 2021 00:32
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Eggnogium posted:All I really want out of a lighting system is to be able to quickly unveil a dungeon to the players one room at a time. Are there any where you can pre-define room outlines and then just alt+click on a room or something and it will make it player visible? I know in roll20 I can turn off dynamic lighting and draw custom unveiling shapes but it’s not pleasant to do live and kind of a momentum killer for any non-rectangular room. There is an addon that might do what you need it to do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTt6FDQ7iQA Editorializing but yeah. Toshimo posted:Again, you've got DM eye-in-the-sky on, which is a choice you can have, but isn't what I typically see people mean when they are talking about dynamic lighting vision. Nah, I just have Fog Exploration(you can see what you've already seen) on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz8MutHFTGk
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Apr 13, 2021 00:34
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I decided that I am going to run Storm King's Thunder once my players finish up LMoP but I was curious if there were any resources out there that people would recommend for the campaign. I know there is a DMsGuild bundle available for this adventure but wanted to know if anyone had used it or would recommend something else. I have read through most of the adventure book and was looking for some tips / suggestions on how to make improvements. Has anyone run this module before found they had to put a lot of effort into map-making? Even with there being plenty of resources available for LMoP maps, I found that most of my prep time has been spent setting up maps in roll20. I wrote a quick list of my process for setting up maps and would definitely appreciate any tips people might have for making this easier.
One thing I have noticed is that when running combat, I still need to reference the monster's stat blocks for resistances and special abilities and haven't figured out a good way to do this without looking it up in the source book or monster manual. I hate killing the momentum of an encounter and feel like I am probably missing a feature on roll20 that could make this easier. I have had a lot of fun running this first adventure and the players have all said they are really enjoying it. I feel like I have gotten a lot better at DMing over the course of these sessions and the players all say they are having a great time. The last session I ran was entirely based in Phandalin (after returning from Cragmaw Castle) and didn't have a single combat encounter but the group really enjoyed the change of pace. I think I want to introduce more of that in this next campaign, they seem to really enjoy investigation and solving mysteries.
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Apr 13, 2021 00:37
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Toshimo posted:Yes, I know about that, but you can't do it in ruler mode, like when you are trying to plan. AFAIK, when you release everything in movement mode (and, again, Foundry's business model means I can't just go check this because I haven't paid full price and set up a server), it moves you, so it's much less useful for planning out or describing things to folks. (Idk if you can even do that thing for something other than your token). If you don't press space you don't move. You don't need to go into ruler mode. Just stop holding ctrl and it goes away. You can just hold control to measure from any point while on the Select or target option. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQiA5sAEZFY
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Apr 13, 2021 00:43
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MrSargent posted:I decided that I am going to run Storm King's Thunder once my players finish up LMoP but I was curious if there were any resources out there that people would recommend for the campaign. I know there is a DMsGuild bundle available for this adventure but wanted to know if anyone had used it or would recommend something else. I have read through most of the adventure book and was looking for some tips / suggestions on how to make improvements. Has anyone run this module before found they had to put a lot of effort into map-making? Even with there being plenty of resources available for LMoP maps, I found that most of my prep time has been spent setting up maps in roll20. I wrote a quick list of my process for setting up maps and would definitely appreciate any tips people might have for making this easier. Having drag-and-drop monsters you can just click on and get full stat blocks on is a night-and-day difference in usability. Trying to run pre-made modules without this feature is going to be painful and kill your momentum, yeah. Either buy the monster packs or take the long way around installing the 5etools import addon.
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Apr 13, 2021 00:45
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Toshimo posted:Foundry would be 100x more appealing to me if you could download a free single-user version so you could test/learn/develop as a player without having to buy in at full price and maintain a server. It. Runs. On. Your. PC. Just like Fantasy Grounds Or a docker container, or a raspberry pi, or practically anything else. A perpetual license costs the same as a single 5e hardcover. As for lighting, just get your GM to turn on the popular and extremely simple module called "Less Fog" which fixes the gripes people have about explored areas being black blobs. See below for my GM view compared to the player view for an AoA game I'm running - they have already explored the areas on to the south and east. I won't bother to otherwise compare Foundry's lighting to the shitshow that is UDL on R20  
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Apr 13, 2021 00:51
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In order to test stuff without a player buying it does require the GM to keep/put the server up which to me is nbd or the player to buy the software to test locally and then copy it to the GM's version whenever they put it up. I've had players ask me to turn the server on in discord and I just go into the app and turn it on. But yeah you can run it locally without needing to expose it publicly to dick around if you do infact buy it.
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Apr 13, 2021 01:06
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Toshimo posted:Having drag-and-drop monsters you can just click on and get full stat blocks on is a night-and-day difference in usability. Trying to run pre-made modules without this feature is going to be painful and kill your momentum, yeah. Either buy the monster packs or take the long way around installing the 5etools import addon. Thanks for the tip, I think I will break down and buy some of the monster packs. I would also like to look into the 5etools import addon, but am not really familiar with using any addons in roll20. Is there a good resource to learn more about this addon and how to use it for a complete noob like myself? Edit: oh man I am a dumbass. I didn't realize you could purchase LMoP within roll20 and that gave you access to maps and monsters. Oof, I think this would have saved me a bunch of time. Unfortunately I don't see a module for STK which is kind of a bummer. MrSargent fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Apr 13, 2021 |
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Apr 13, 2021 01:44
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sponszi posted:I've been playing on Tabletop Simulator during quarantine - there's no integration with Beyond as far as I can tell and building maps can be kind of wonky finding objects and weird physics but getting to actually move pieces around on a gameboard and roll dice in a 3d environment is really fun. Getting to import characters from Heroforge is also really sweet. i messed around with tabletop simulator dming for a few hundred hours and i can confidently say it kind of absolutely sucks, physics glitching out can destroy any immersion you are trying to build and you find yourself fighting the limitations of it nearly all the time. it does work remarkably well for a theatre of the mind type rules light game experience though Bell_ posted:How does it work? Everyone buys/installs the same client and one ends up hosting the others? (so everyone needs to be on a PC?) I tried looking on Twitch, but content was looking kinda sparse. I love the aesthetic, but ultimately it needs to be something that will be relatively user-friendly for me and any other players. If a goon DM wants to get their hands dirty, I'll be happy to pick up a copy to help test it out. E: the actual multiplayer aspect was handled pretty well from steam last time i tried, and that was in april of 2020, so theres no way its gotten worse than that. i am checking out some of the new features now and will report back pog boyfriend fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Apr 13, 2021 |
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Apr 13, 2021 02:45
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MrSargent posted:Edit: oh man I am a dumbass. I didn't realize you could purchase LMoP within roll20 and that gave you access to maps and monsters. Oof, I think this would have saved me a bunch of time. Unfortunately I don't see a module for STK which is kind of a bummer. https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/module/42/storm-kings-thunder
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Apr 13, 2021 02:57
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Syrinxx posted:Good news - it's on there! You're right, they are a big time saver although I usually wind up adding maps for random encounters, things not covered int he book, and other stuff - but a huge amount of the heavy lifting is done for you already. Oh poo poo, thanks a ton for the link! I must have been looking in the wrong place.
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Apr 13, 2021 03:10
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Splicer posted:If you just want a map try https://www.owlbear.rodeo/ Thanks for this. I'm at least intrigued.
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Apr 13, 2021 03:45
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So my party did something fun that I didn't prepare for and now I could use some advice on how to reward them for their inventiveness. Last session they ran into a Rug of Smothering and the party's barbarian absolutely insisted on capturing it instead of killing it. I rolled with it and improvised a little minigame and as a result of some improbable rolls, the barbarian now has a rolled up rug sticking out of his pack that continually tries to beat him to death like a demented pool noodle. We're winding down the current module and afterwards I want to find a way to turn it into some cool magic item as a reward for doing something cool within character (he thought it was a trapped/enslaved creature and spent a decent chunk of the minigame trying to reason with it / calm it). Any thoughts on what it could be turned into if I had him meet up with a suitably skilled magical tailor?
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Apr 13, 2021 04:36
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Azathoth posted:So my party did something fun that I didn't prepare for and now I could use some advice on how to reward them for their inventiveness. Last session they ran into a Rug of Smothering and the party's barbarian absolutely insisted on capturing it instead of killing it. I rolled with it and improvised a little minigame and as a result of some improbable rolls, the barbarian now has a rolled up rug sticking out of his pack that continually tries to beat him to death like a demented pool noodle. My first thought https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe6B6Cd8qfQ Some sort of cape or arm wrap or something that would help him grapple, either give a bonus to his grapple, or act as an extra arm or something and can grapple and throw weapons or something independently as like an extra arm, as a bonus action or something. Or do a Get over here move or something on a short rest. Toss in a use a reaction to featherfall or something. I don't know how powerful you want to be. But something like that thematically matches the concept of it being a rug of smothering. Dexo fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Apr 13, 2021 |
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Apr 13, 2021 04:42
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Who's got some super-cool stuff going on in their game? My group started a side campaign for when people can't make it and it would negatively impact the session. It's set in a modern day office and we all made white-collar losers working at an insurance company instead of finding treasure and slaying monsters. It was fun coming up with office setting related characters. I settled on a Aarokocra monk working as an insurance appraiser that just watched Fight Club for the first time and wants to emulate Tyler Durden but is actually a total wiener. He'll dance around like a Bird of Paradise for drunken master flavor. Some other ideas I was tossing around were Tech Support Artificer with a fax machine golem and a Hexblade Warlock Janitor that just got his Broomshakalaka in the mail and after skipping the fine print signed an unholy pact to eliminate even the toughest of stains. You know, fun light stuff to laugh about while playing this absurd make-believe game.
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Apr 13, 2021 04:43
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Azathoth posted:So my party did something fun that I didn't prepare for and now I could use some advice on how to reward them for their inventiveness. Last session they ran into a Rug of Smothering and the party's barbarian absolutely insisted on capturing it instead of killing it. I rolled with it and improvised a little minigame and as a result of some improbable rolls, the barbarian now has a rolled up rug sticking out of his pack that continually tries to beat him to death like a demented pool noodle. Send him on a quest for reagents (like spun gold, a magical loom, drow silk, etc) and it can be turned into a friendly flying carpet ala Aladdin? Maybe just the 3' x 5' one?
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Apr 13, 2021 04:44
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change my name posted:Send him on a quest for reagents (like spun gold, a magical loom, drow silk, etc) and it can be turned into a friendly flying carpet ala Aladdin? Maybe just the 3' x 5' one? You could turn it into Trackless Boots (because its a rug) or a Huggie Snuggie that gives some grappling advantages.
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Apr 13, 2021 04:49
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Azathoth posted:So my party did something fun that I didn't prepare for and now I could use some advice on how to reward them for their inventiveness. Last session they ran into a Rug of Smothering and the party's barbarian absolutely insisted on capturing it instead of killing it. I rolled with it and improvised a little minigame and as a result of some improbable rolls, the barbarian now has a rolled up rug sticking out of his pack that continually tries to beat him to death like a demented pool noodle. https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Belt_of_the_Grappler_(5e_Equipment)
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Apr 13, 2021 04:59
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oh, yeah something like that is exactly what I was thinking of.
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Apr 13, 2021 05:00
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Thanks for the suggestions everyone but holy poo poo this is literally exactly what I didn't know I exactly wanted until you posted the exact thing that it turns out I wanted. Holy poo poo thank you
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Apr 13, 2021 05:07
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Also throw them up against a Hill Giant grappler in the near future who is legendary for wrestling and wears a huge gold eyepatch over one eye. Then when they defeat him and take the eyepatch the flat oval plate that it is becomes the centerpiece of his new championship title grappling belt.
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Apr 13, 2021 05:08
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I would advice making this magic item a pair of gloves but yeah it's pretty good.
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Apr 13, 2021 10:06
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So my Husband has been running a 5e Game wherein we've been loving around with a heavily modified Deck of Many Things called something like the "Deck of Possibilities." Main differences being power and no draw limit; there's no cards that turn you into a King or trap your soul for eternity or give you a Wish, and you can draw as many cards from the Deck as you want and don't have to do all the draws at once. Our whole party has gotten some wacky effects, some of which we've been promised we can have removed by talented Clerics if we don't want to keep them, but my Paladin has basically hit the Magical Deck Jackpot... with two exceptions. On drawing one card I was given the opportunity to lower one my attribute scores by 2 to raise another by 3, no stat cap. I chose to lower my Constitution (now I'm wishing I'd lowered my Dexterity but hey, when you're in the moment you don't think "Optimally") and raise my Strength, granting me a Strength Score of 23. Another card gave me a pair of ethereal Angel Wings that I can summon or dismiss as a reaction to gain a Fly speed equal to my Walk speed as long as I'm not Encumbered. A third card used a modified version of a "Wish" spell to create a willing Squire to become my pupil and assist me, granting me my own little follower buddy to really help sell the Holy Knight aesthetic. A fourth card gave me the silver tongue of a devil, giving me Expertise with Persuasion Checks while also making me completely unable to tell lies. Any time my character lies or tries to lie he is forced to immediately tell the truth instead, but I am able to avoid saying anything at all or say creative not-lies ("Hey are you one of us?" can not be answered with "I'm Dave, I just transferred" but CAN be answered with "I'm wearing the Uniform, aren't I?") Combine this with a Flametongue I found in one of the earlier dungeons and I've basically back-ended myself into being an Angel; hyper strong, incredibly charming, honest to a fault, glowing golden wings, flaming sword, loyal follower (who, being a Paladin, I immediately had to have the in-characte "you don't HAVE to follow me, I'm not your Master and you're free to do absolutely anything you want" chat), and chock full of divine paladin-y goodness powers. On the other hand my rifling with Fate has thrown two huge future complications above my head. I'm being stalked by some sort of incredibly powerful "Beast" that, from what I've been informed, is "waiting for when I'm at my most vulnerable to strike." Also one of the cards was called "The Thief" and I got a "vague sense that something bad was going to happen to me in the future" so I suspect I'm going to get blamed for some sort of major crime or something really valuable to me is going to be stolen. Let me tell you though, going from "normal good boy paladin" to "Archangel of Justice" has led to some really fun roleplaying and it's a hoot playing a character who's now physically unable to not tell the truth. You don't notice how many times you want to tell people half-truths or make up some story when you're trying to do something you don't want people to know about, I've already had a couple of times where I've been like "We're here on very Important Business that I really don't want to talk about so I'll let [Fighter] explain more..." This deck has also produced some fun shenanigans for the rest of the party. Our Battle Master Fighter is now powered by the sun and gains bonuses if he's gathered enough direct sunlight in a day, and is able to expend them to momentarily cast the Daylight spell to unleash Actual Sunlight in a burst around him for a short while, as well as getting one of his weapons turned into a Silvered weapon. He's been the most stingy with the cards, just drawing two and calling it quits. A couple of NPCs drew some cards; one turning into a natural Lycanthrope (a were-tiger in this case, but in full control so no "Rawr Murder" issues) and our cleric NPC instantly gained a Level. The other card hogs are the Gnome Artificer (I'll get to him in a bit) and the Eldritch Knight Fighter who became a partial wolfman (advantage on any checks relying on scent, darkvision, +1 Dex and Str, and +5 Move Speed) who now looks like a super hot greataxe fighter Bigby Wolf. He's also drawn a card that conjured a stone in his hand and if he ever doesn't have it on his person he loses all gravity and begins to float upwards ..... for one minute, at which point the stone returns to his hand and he falls to the ground. Discovered THAT one the hard way, had to do a bit of healing after that fall. Another card he got gave him a magical treasure map that leads to supposedly a super-awesome treasure buried on an off-shore island we're going to have to get to at some point. The real card hog of the party has been the Gnome, though. The effects currently stacked upon him from drawing cards are as follows: 1: He is Resistant to Lightning Damage but if a Lighting Spell or Effect ever occurs within 10 feet of him it targets him or shifts its area until it includes him within it. He's become a walking Lightning Rod from The Storm. 2: He is also resistant to Necrotic Damage but he only takes 1/2 the effect of all Healing Spells unless they can heal Undead, at which point he heals the amount an Undead would. He's become a Frankenstein from Death. 3: He lost one of his known languages or tools and immediately gained proficiency in another one, and he's gone from knowing how to play cards to suddenly being able to speak Dragon. 4: He drew the worst card in the deck. Any time you roll a Natural 20 you have to reroll it. It's the absolute worst effect in the deck, and there's only two ways to cure it; high level curse breaking magic, or- 5: He then drew the BEST card in the deck! Any time he rolls a 1, he has to reroll it! These two cards are stated to over-write each other, so his amazing fortune has basically given him the halfling racial ability while removing the curse from the previous card. 6: He immediately gained two spells known and permanently increased his spells available to prepare each day by 1. I'm not sure how that works with Artificers because it's not my character so I don't worry too much about other peoples mechanics. 7: His most recent draw was "The Fool", a card which struck him instantly Blind, Deaf, and Dumb until he received 3 Lesser Restorations or, more interestingly, a VERY SPECIFIC but mundane act he gained knowledge of occurred in his presence, which would change if he tried to write it down. In this case, my Paladin to kiss the Battle Master while both of us were standing on one foot. He wasn't allowed to write this down, and through some VERY ingenious roleplay on his part of trying to reach out for peoples hands and batting away the hands of the "wrong people" (we have very distinct hands/gloves and sizes/races so it was easy tell us apart) he hopped on one leg, pointed to the two of our characters, and pantomimed two hand-puppet mouths kissing each other. My paladin figured it out first and was willing to just do it for the sake of helping someone. He's not at all into the scruffy battlemaster but what's a momentary embarrassment for curing a friend? The battle master on the other hand was IC having NONE of it, though we were all cracking up OOC. He was adamant we could just wait a few hours and I could cast the appropriate spell a few times and that'd be that. I didn't want to just leave the poor guy deaf and blind and mute for the length of a long rest so I took it upon myself to make this kiss happen. I couldn't tell lies at this point but pointing behind someone's back and screaming "OH MY GOD WHAT'S THAT!?" isn't lying. Battlemaster requested I make a Persuasion versus his Insight which I won. It distracted him long enough for me to request a strength check to grapple, which I also won. I grabbed the back of his head, gave him a full dip so that we were both on one leg (including grabbing his thigh and lifting HIS leg), and gave him a full kiss on the lips. Minus the silver tongue since there wasn't any need to go THAT far. The curses immediately broke and the Gnome decided he's had enough of the crazy deck of cards for one day. We've still got like 6 cards left in the deck and my paladin is firmly of the belief that the remaining cards (which include Plague and Dragon) are either really good things that will continue the train of making us more capable to fight evil, or are really bad things that someone like a Paladin should endure to make sure someone who isn't immune to disease or can't cast Lesser Restoration on themselves doesn't draw. As far as I know The Dragon summons a Dragon Mount for you to ride- or it could conjure an angry Dragon you have to fight. Or give you a Fire Breath attack. All we know is that deck probably isn't going to kill us but it's not all Good Stuff. Some of the party want to see what other Cool Stuff they can get, I want to make sure this thing doesn't just sit around with nothing but Bad Stuff waiting for the next guy who gets it, and the Battlemaster thinks we're all loving insane for continuing to go back to it. Which we possibly are. Moral of the story? Random bullshit is fun! Also the Squire's name is Evangeline and she's adorable and apparently has the potential to become a Paladin or Cleric if I train her and teach her properly. I've only had her for one day but if anything happens to her I'm immediately falling and Death Knighting every motherfucker who's even responsible-adjacent. (edit) and yes, this was all rolled legit. He may be my husband but he's shown me the list of cards in the deck (not what they do, but what die roll corresponds to what card) and they've all been legit. The artificer and I have just gotten lucky in most cases and have been willing to live with the side effects or bad cards. (double edit) I was talking to the Artificer and forgot he had drawn ANOTHER card. At one point in his life he may cause a fully-furnished but otherwise mundane two story Cottage to magically spring into existence permanently in a location of his choosing. He's really been going ham with the deck. Fumbles fucked around with this message at 10:58 on Apr 13, 2021 |
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Apr 13, 2021 10:33
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The key to any good cult is telling people you have a secret that you can share and then they will be in on the secret, but outsiders will not.
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Apr 13, 2021 11:37
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Devorum posted:The key to any good cult is telling people you have a secret that you can share and then they will be in on the secret, but outsiders will not. The secret, of course, being that there is a series of further secrets which they can learn with time, dedication, and monthly payments
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Apr 13, 2021 13:08
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The secret, of course, being that there is a series of further secrets which they can learn with time, dedication, and monthly payments I can't confirm that until you've made seven payments on the Further Secrets DLC.
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Apr 13, 2021 13:50
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On the VTT topic, is it just our group using it as a literal tabletop replacement? Everyone prefers their paper char sheets and real dice, so I run Foundry locally and cast the player view over a Zoom call. Players managing their characters in it, and the whole walls/lighting thing seem like the most complex parts of running it, so just not doing that works fine for us. Sometimes I set up lighting for certain set pieces, but its never been necessary. Anyone else doing this?
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Apr 13, 2021 14:47
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Real UK Grime posted:On the VTT topic, is it just our group using it as a literal tabletop replacement? Everyone prefers their paper char sheets and real dice, so I run Foundry locally and cast the player view over a Zoom call. All 3 of my groups tried this, but in the end we stuck with R20 for automatically calculating rolls and ease of movement by players themselves in order to speed up the mechanical aspect of playing. This allows us to play on weeknights across time zones and still feel like we got a real session in even on nights we can only manage 2 to 2.5 hours of time. It was quite surprising how clunky and slow it made the game feel to stick with paper while having a digital tabletop. I'm sure we would have got a lot more efficient with time and practice, but in the end we all decided to move to entirely digital. The first campaign we did entirely in R20 was Avernus, too, and the DM was willing to dedicate the time to learning all the intricacies of what R20 can do, so that helped make the decision easier. That being said, we still use Zoom/Hangouts for audio and video since one of R20s worst "features" is its A/V handling (though the dice rolling outcomes are quite obviously also a problem). Interestingly, I do think note-taking on the player's part is worse when done digitally, but that's just anecdotal from my groups.
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Apr 13, 2021 14:57
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One of the things I've been discussing with friends this week is that part of the failing of 5e and some other recent systems is that they don't line up well with the new paradigm of online play. You get that scene in Stranger Things at the beginning where the mother calls down and says it's time for one of the kids to go home and one of the kids yells back up we've only been playing for 14 hours and honestly that was sort of my '80s D&D experience. Nowadays it's tough to wrangle people for more than 3 hours at a time, but honestly a lot of the time I don't know even know if I would want to. We get as much plot/exploration/advancement done in 3 hours on a virtual tabletop as we ever did in 8 hours of sitting around someone's house fiddling with books. The pace of play is just so incredibly fast, especially when people have a grasp of the virtual tabletop mechanics, that even just prepping for more than 3 hours of session as a DM is just an incredible undertaking. And, the concept of just taking a 15-minute break while people go get snacks or whatever while the DM repopulate some maps or draws up some stuff, that's just a session killer at the pace of online play. Why I say this is tied into failings of 5e or Pathfinder 2 or some other systems is that conceptually stuff like short rest doesn't fit into this new abbreviated model of play. Like I've said before, even if we went back to in person play, I'd almost certainly be using a large display to host a virtual tabletop and possibly even just have people have laptops or something equivalent instead of character sheets and dice because I don't think that I ever want to return to that sort of muddled 80's-style session. Also, I'll probably never own a physical RPG book ever again, and I really don't miss it.
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Apr 13, 2021 15:15
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I also have 3 hour sessions, but I wouldn't say we go through content faster than an in-person group. My party is currently raiding a noble's manor. Last session my party explored six keyed locations in three hours (a secret tunnel, two bedrooms, a stable, and two evil shines. They questioned one NPC, and fought two encounters--one with a devil and another with a devil and an NPC spellcaster. That's about standard pace for my group.
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Apr 13, 2021 16:07
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Reveilled posted:I also have 3 hour sessions, but I wouldn't say we go through content faster than an in-person group. My party is currently raiding a noble's manor. Last session my party explored six keyed locations in three hours (a secret tunnel, two bedrooms, a stable, and two evil shines. They questioned one NPC, and fought two encounters--one with a devil and another with a devil and an NPC spellcaster. That's about standard pace for my group. it depends on what you are doing i guess. i am confident in my ability to stretch out scenes with improv to make the time fit neatly into a 4 hour chunk if need be in order to help people schedule things, but the old 8-12 hour sessions i used to do in my youth are just not happening with grown adults with families and jobs... i do think online is slightly faster but i dont think it makes a dramatic difference.
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Apr 13, 2021 16:30
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I run 3 hour sessions and wish we had 4, I always feel like it's not enough time
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Apr 13, 2021 16:32
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I tend to run 2 hour sessions and wish I had 3 All my players are academics or professionals
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Apr 13, 2021 16:37
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| # ? Jun 6, 2024 05:11 |
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Toshimo posted:Why I say this is tied into failings of 5e or Pathfinder 2 or some other systems is that conceptually stuff like short rest doesn't fit into this new abbreviated model of play. Toshimo posted:Also, I'll probably never own a physical RPG book ever again, and I really don't miss it.
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Apr 13, 2021 16:37
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