I got a few good ideas that I hadn’t thought of, and I came up with a few of my own, so for those who maybe have missed the bigger gaming via Zoom or are tired of just playing games like Scattergories, Codenames, or other more party style games via Zoom, here are some ideas that I was given and were given to me.

Charterstone

Now, this is a game that I was recommended and there is only one way to make this work and that’s playing it through the app. Everyone can connect to the same game and you just sit down and play it all together remotely on your device while chatting via Zoom. This is actually a really good one for a lot of people because all it requires is that you have a camera pointed at a board on a table or anything like that, this is done purely with digital gaming. Now, I have played through all but 1 game of this in the physical form, and one of the other people who I play with has played through it all, so it wasn’t the game for us, but for a lot of people, this is going to be a really good option.

Gloomhaven

Now, Gloomhaven can work two ways, if you are playing it with people near you, you can drop off their character and show the game on the board so that people can play with their own physical thing, one person will just have the duty of moving everything and doing all of that house keeping, which could be a lot. Though, with the Gloomhaven Helper App, someone else could be in charge of monster initiative and what the monsters are doing, so not the worst option and personally, I like playing with the physical components better than option two which is play it through the mod on Tabletop Simulator. Now, the base game is scripted, which means it helps with set-up, but there is still a lot of book keeping and if it seemed like a lot on the physical version, it is slower on the Tabletop Simulator version. This, obviously, also wasn’t an option for my group because that’s the game we’re literally finishing.

Pandemic Legacy Season 0, 1, and 2

Now, this one shows up and from here on out, you’re going to need a camera on the table. But Pandemic is a great game because there is no hidden information in the game. You play with the location cards out in front of you, so you can plan and worth together, your character is also open information as to what they can do. The only thing someone might need is a sheet of what the actions are that they can take, and that’s something that the person who owns the game can write up and add to as more actions are unlocked. Like Gloomhaven and basically anything that requires a camera pointed a the table, one person is going to have to do all the book keeping, but with Pandemic, that isn’t too hard, fairly often when playing Pandemic Legacy Season 1 & 2 with four players one person would be moving more of the pawns anyways just because of how it was positioned on the table. This again, though, for my group, falls into the category of games that won’t work as well because two of us have played them before, and I’ve played Season 1 twice now. And while none of us have played Season 0, that is one that I want to play with the people we played Seasons 1 & 2 with.

Folklore: The Affliction

This is one that I had recommend and I hadn’t thought of, but it’s actually one that wouldn’t be too difficult to do. Folklore is an RPG type of game in a box. You roll dice for your attacks, have a character sheet, and go through stories and scenarios. What I hadn’t thought about was the fact that beyond needing your own set of dice, which everyone in my gaming group has because they are all RPGer’s and of course they have at least one set of dice, I think one only one who doesn’t have at least five sets of dice is playing in my D&D campaign, and he probably has two sets of dice. But this one all you need is a camera pointed at a board, and sure, there are items and stats and things to track, but that’s like a regular RPG, so that can be done between sessions via e-mail or text messages without much trouble as players level up their characters. And, again, technically there is no or very little hidden information so that isn’t an issue with the game. Definitely one for people who want more of a pen and paper RPG feel. Might be one for my group.

Yggdrasil Chronicles

Now, I own this game, and I am excited to play it, I just don’t know a ton about it. But according to one person in our group who has the game as well, this is one where there is no hidden information in it, the god cards and their powers are out there. This is game that I hope would work well, my concern about this one is that because it has a 3D tree element you would need to know fairly well what is on all sides of the tree as things rotate and it changes. That for me would be the biggest challenge, granted, it wouldn’t be an issue for me because I have the tree in front of me, so I could see all sides at once, but for other people it might be a bigger deal if they get distracted or lose track of what is on what side and what is rotating which way. This one definitely interests me, but I’d want to play it in person a couple of times first so that everyone knew what was going on, it seems less intuitive than some others.

Tainted Grail

Now, I’m sure there are more but this is the last one that I’m going to talk about. In Tainted Grail you are exploring a large, about 50 hour, campaign as you explore through the lands of Avalon, journey to Kamelot, and keep Menhir lit to fight back the wyrdness that threatens to overtake the land. This is one that I’m definitely interested in trying, it’s already in my Top 10 games, and I’ve made it part of the way through, but to restart with more players seems like a lot of fun, though challenging in some other ways. This game would work if you could get the players their characters. They’d need both their character, the basic cards for their character and class and the upgrade cards as well. Items could be sent via text or e-mail between sessions. This is really such an exploration game, I think it would work well, the person who owns the game would just be reading the passages, which I actually like not the person who is doing the action reading the passages because it feels like there is more mystery in the choices. This is one that is definitely in consideration for our group as well, it’s one that I am enjoying already and I’m confident that our group would enjoy as well.

Now, I’m sure there are many a campaign game that I missed. Some of them, like Arkham Horror: The Card Game, could work as well, but people would probably need their own set of the base game to make it work. Forgotten Waters is another one that can work well, which I failed to mention, but see on my shelf, and because of when it got released, around May this year, I know they have focused on supporting it in a way that it can be played with more people. I’m hesitant to use that for my group, because I know my wife is interested in it, so I want to leave that free to play with her as well. Which would you try? Have you considered doing a bigger campaign game via Zoom, besides something like D&D?

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Tabletop Simulator (TTS) is a digital gaming system. It is basically an “engine” that can drive any type of board game from simple card games to something as complex as Gloomhaven. To play a game, you have to first get and install the module, but only the person who is hosting the “server” will have to install the module, the other people playing will be able to connect. Then, if the game is scripted it’ll help set-up the game and get you ready to go, if it isn’t, you have to set-up the game. After that you can hop in and start playing the game.

Now, that sounds pretty cool, but I want to talk about scripted versus not scripted because that is an important topic. Scripted games are pretty enjoyable on TTS. It gets you up and running fast, and while there can be some hiccups with how they work, for the most part it isn’t bad. I’ve played Clank, for the first time ever, on TTS and it was easy to pick-up and work with, even with some hiccups in the scripting. I’ve played multiple games of Dice Throne through their official module on TTS and that worked extremely smoothly. On the other hand, we were playing the Forgotten Circles expansion on TTS for Gloomhaven and that was not scripted and set-up was over an hour, some of it was learning the system but some of it is that without scripting there is a ton more work for the set-up. And scripting is often beyond set-up, Dice Throne has a button for the upkeep phase when you start your turn so you don’t have to remember to draw a card and get a CP (combat point).

Game play, I’d say, is generally a little bit slower. Some of that is just the technology. The commands are a bit slower to do as compared to playing in real life as well. Scripted again is faster, but a scenario of Gloomhaven took us, without set-up, around 2.5 hours to get through the whole thing in two nights versus about 1.5 hours if we’d played it in person, or possibly even less than that. Playing Dice Throne, however, was only marginally slower than it would be in real life. I’d say that it would be pretty similar for Clank as well. But it is slower and if something gets messed up, it can take a little while, even with the rewind functionality to fix it. And some of this depends on network speed as well. The processing for everything is kind of jointly handled, so if someone has a slow connection, it can really make the whole thing lag.

There’s another issue with TTS that I want to address. Some of the modules that you can install are fan made and not official. Things like the Gloomhaven one have become officially licensed, but it wasn’t originally. Dice Throne one is official as well. Now, even the unofficial ones can be great to use and will give you an idea about the game, but understand that the company hasn’t signed off on it and technically it is illegal for that to be there, a direct copy of the game. But when companies do use it for a game it’s great. I was able to teach Dice Throne to someone who has been interested in it for a while, but hasn’t had a chance to play my copy. Even for the official ones, I would strongly recommend, if you enjoy the game on TTS to pick it up or at least someone in the group to, so you can continue to support the actual businesses and game designers directly.

With that said, there is something great about it as well. It gives you a chance to test out a game to see if you’d like it before you buy it. And there are some companies that will put out a module with a first scenario or a bit of the game when they launch a Kickstarter or release the game so that people can test it out. So in that way, it can help drive sales to release a limited version, shorter, smaller, however it might be limited, for people to try out and really get an idea of game play. I might be hard pressed to put $100 into a campaign game (I’m really not), but if I could try out an intro scenario that is just made for teaching the game on TTS, that would be great and give me a better idea if I’d like it or not.

So, as a system is it worth getting? I would say, kind of. I think it works well when you want to play a board game as a distance. There are some good modules and a good number of scripted ones. But, it does lack the same feeling as playing across a table from another person. And for me, the little bit of added time, or a lot of added time in the case of Gloomhaven without it being scripted was disappointing. The best way I can describe it is that because the system was made to handle any game, it can’t handle any game extremely efficiently. It works in a pinch, and if you don’t think you’ll get out gaming for a while and you want to game, it’s worth it.

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Now, I’m not the only one talking about this, D&D Beyond has put up several articles on it, but I got the chance to run a quick session of Dungeons and Dragons on Saturday night for some friends and my wife via Google Hangouts, so I wanted to talk about that and what else you can use as well.

Let me start off by saying that as long as people have access to a way to roll dice, playing Dungeons and Dragons across a distance is easy. You need a webcam, someone with access to another device to go on D&D Beyond, and even with the free stuff there and the limited character creation, you have enough to run an enjoyable game for a little while without it becoming boring or stale. However, that’ll limit you a little bit, so I’d strongly suggest someone grabbing the books either digitally through D&D Beyond, or pick up a physical copy of the core three books, Players Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master’s Guide.

The only real physical thing that is nice to have is for players to have dice, but again that isn’t even needed. On Google Hangouts, they have commands that roll dice for you so you can do that in the chat section. And other virtual tabletops, like Fantasy Grounds or Roll20.net will also give you the ability to roll dice as well. Personally, I like rolling physical dice, but those are something that can be gotten easily from your friendly local game store that is hopefully doing curbside pick-up of orders or delivery now, as well, of course as places like Amazon or if you want fancier dice, Easy Roller Dice. You might just have to wait longer for those, even though, I think Amazon should consider dice to be essential items that get priority shipping.

Then you can really just dive into playing. Make up your own world, do theater of the mind, and just let the game and imaginations run wild. Now, I will say that if you are starting out, I’d recommend that people roll up characters for the first time in the limited options on D&D Beyond. Or that the person who is running the game does that for everyone simply so that you don’t have to start by going through the process of creating characters over the internet. But if you have a group of more experienced players, you probably have more of them who have the player handbook or can find online resources to build out the character that they want on their own or during a session zero where you talk through a story idea.

Let’s talk a little bit about theater of the mind, depending on what you’re playing on, you’re going to need to determine the level of theater of the mind. If you’re not familiar with that term, it basically means that your combat and encounters are all done in your head, when you describe it, people picture what you are saying in their head, and they can’t look down at a grid or anything to figure out how close their characters are to the bad guys or anything like that. With some of them Fantasy Grounds and Roll20, you won’t have to play that way, if you don’t want to, but it’ll add in more prep and planning to your game. The advantage of theater of the mind is if a combat happens, it can just happen because you don’t need to prep a map, put characters and monsters where they are supposed to be. I personally prefer theater of the mind and find it easier and easier for online because it requires considerably less work. However, in a major boss battle, it can be fun to set the mood for the combat with a map as well.

What are some pitfalls when playing online? Obviously internet connectivity is a must and it might be possible that you’ll run into situations where someone freezes or lags. So someone might be trying to say something and it gets lost because of that, also it’s harder for people to talk over each other and for everyone to hear everything. So, this is something I picked up with podcasting, try and not talk over each other, in particular, if you see someone is starting to say something at the same time you are, pause and let them go first and then jump in fast so that you can say what you want, but so that you aren’t stepping on someone else’s toes. The more people in more different locations the more likely you’re going to run into this issue.

There’s also going to be a learning curve for players who are familiar with Dungeons and Dragons because it plays differently than it does at the table. I feel like playing online requires a little bit more buy in and a little bit more go with the flow of what is being presented. Going back to Fantasy Grounds and Roll20, you can set-up a map for an encounter, but you aren’t able to pivot as quickly as you might if you were playing all at the same location and you could draw it out or set it up on the fly for whatever encounter your players get into. This is going to be something that trips up players who are familiar with playing that style, versus new players who might be jumping into it for the first time or so.

With those two negatives for it, or not really negatives, but potential pitfalls to watch out for, I will say that compared to board games, Dungeons and Dragons is way easier to do over physical distancing and if you’ve been in a situation where you don’t have people around to play with, this is a chance to try digital and find people around your area and all around the world who would want to play some Dungeons and Dragons with you.

Have you played D&D online? Are there any tips or tricks that you recommend for people starting up playing digitally?

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