As America starts our fourth of July weekend, we also begin our fifth month of living under COVID-19. This quarantine forced several changes into our lives, and gaming is not an exception. Gamers quickly adapted to continuing their games online in one form or another. Virtual Tabletops (or VTTs) like Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds became bogged down by their sudden increase in traffic.
There are many good tools and videos to help make the most of your VTT or online dice roller. There is significantly less about the human element of gaming online. Role-playing games are a social activity; a large part of their appeal is the gathering of friends and building a story together. This includes side conversations, secret whispers, subtle visual cues, and exclamations of happiness or despair in reaction to dice rolls or dramatic reveals. This instantaneous feedback contributes to the quality of a good Game Master. Online communication methods curb or negate this element of this social activity.
When my wife and I had a baby years ago, we started gaming online out of necessity. My career is in television production, so I’ve been working with audio and video tools for as long as I’ve been gaming. These tools became much more accessible since smartphones came along and are extremely flexible. In contrast, video conferencing advanced slowly and still faces many challenges to maintain a quality signal throughout, especially for the gamer on a tight budget.
In this series, I cover some of the preparations and techniques to help improve your online role-playing games.
Upgrade Your Gear
I assume that you have a computer, an internet connection, and some form of audio and possibly video recording. These upgrades do require a financial investment into your computer setup, but they are worth a bit of shopping to find something in your price range.
A Second Monitor
About the same time I started to focus on online gaming, I also made the jump to PDF file books for my role-playing game library. This meant needing to have the rulebook, the VTT, game notes, and the chat software open at the same time. All those windows take up a lot of space on your monitor.
When I was the GM, I would need even more space than normal, so I plugged my computer into our television to use as another monitor.
Headphones with Microphone
Many laptops and computer monitors come with cameras and microphones installed and ready to go. However, the monitor microphone is just as likely to pick up the sound from your speakers as your voice. This causes distracting echoes for everyone else in the chat, or worse, it creates a feedback whine. In addition, these microphones have a large dynamic range in order to capture as much as possible. This may allow your friends to hear other background noise in your house, like crying babies.
By using headphones, you prevent the microphone from picking up noise from the speakers. A smaller microphone, with a tighter dynamic range, reduces the unintended background noise. Decent USB headphones can be found for under $20, though you can spend more to improve comfort, audio quality, microphones, and gain Bluetooth flexibility.
Key Lighting
As an extremely visual-based species, using video in online games enables many desirable social elements... assuming that the viewers can see your face. Make sure you have a light source that is in front of you other than your monitor. Light sources either on the ceiling or behind you light the back of your head and shoulders making your face appear darker. Consider what is visible in the room behind you before turning on the camera, including open doors.
Update your Computer
Fortunately, most of the software we’re talking about doesn’t require much more than a web browser. Even so, it can be vital to make sure that your browser is up to date, including any extensions you need. Chat software usually updates when launched, but I recommend doing that well ahead of game time to avoid delays. Similarly, updating your computer’s operating system regularly and before game time prevents awkward interruptions.
Have a Backup Plan
Despite your best efforts, things may still go wrong. For example, something outside your control like online traffic spikes, server failure, and website crashes. It’s important to have a backup plan for any element of your game to fail.
When running online for GamerNation Con in April, Roll20 had significant lag from traffic, causing rolls to take up to a minute to resolve or never happen at all. For Roll20, this is exacerbated when using features that require an API extension running, which the Genesys dice roller does. When I’d had enough, I asked everyone to grab their physical dice and just use Roll20 for the maps and character sheets.
Now you have the tools and environment ready to go. The next topic is preparations for the game itself. Watch this space for future updates.
We have the Power, Gamers.
Image by Tumisu.