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Tips for Games with Both Local and Remote Players

MNBlockHead

Well-known member
I use RW for at-table games with everyone co-located. If I wanted to bring in a player who is remote, what are your recommendations?

My thought is that I would use Google Hangouts.

In good hangouts I would share the second screen (a plasma TV) that I use for the player view during the game.

I have a camera/mic that is made for my TV that I've used for skype and does a good job picking up sound from across the room. I've also used it for on-line trainings, plugged into my computer. So I'm pretty confident that video and audio will not be a problem.

My main issue is how to handle combat. I don't want to make the investment in money and (mostly) time to use something like Fantasy Grounds or Role20. Players will still be using physical dice and printed character sheets.

Also, I would like to minimize map management.

Is there a program that just gives me a map and allows me to move counters over it? On a screen?

Anyone else in this situation? What do you do?
 
I've got friends that run whole game with google hangout and a white board app. That's generally old school/theater of the mind but using the white board for things hard to explain verbally.

I used to use just maptools and found it very easy. Of course I didn't use the dice roller or any macros, just placing maps and the visual blocking layer business for lighting.
 
Is there any chance that you can set up your web cam over the table ? That way you can keep it classic.

Otherwise, I think any vector drawing software could possibly display a map in a background and you can move objects around. And possibly share the desktop through skype with your remote buddy. Anyway this would need some testing beforehand.

Libreoffice has a drawing software, and it's free (windows and nx platofrms).
 
I really like d20pro. You can use anything from the suite of tools or ignore them all if you wish. I have one player screen at the table and remote players have their own. Since we are using the maps with images like traditional mini's, a wireless mouse makes movement simple and quick. I like that I can easily apply fog-of-war to the maps and reveal as we play. My players roll real dice while I find that combat goes much quicker for me electronically which lets me focus on story rather than crunch.
 
I'd second MapTool, or a fork of it called Mote. They are both free, and cross-platform.

Although if time is an issue, it can get overly complex if you really want to dig into building your own framework (i.e., a bunch of preset macros that do lots of automated rules adjudication), but setting up a few basic damage tracking macros and the like isn't too hard. Further, out of the box it can handle really basic token movement along the lines of a battlemat without any real tweaking at all, and it comes with line of sight, dynamic lighting, and fog of war features out of the box.

There are actually lots of frameworks available from the community, but some of them are pretty complicated, and you can run into problems of underdeveloped or no longer developed frameworks that might need some work under the hood.

All that said, I've actually heard good things about Roll20 - it's supposed to be stupid easy to use and connect, and I believe there is a free tier if you don't care about some of the more advanced features like lighting and vision. It might be worth a look if you just want a very basic battlemat replacement.

Finally, I'm not sure about this capability in Hangouts, but I am pretty sure Skype allows you to share an application window with someone you're conferencing with - that should allow you to share the player's view window from Realm Works with your remote player if that's important.
 
I'm really just looking for a virtual battlemap. Dice rolls, calculations, etc. will all be old school. I'm running DnD 5e, so managing combat is not as onerous as other systems. I've looked into Fantasy Grounds, but the cost for the software and all the 5e DLC is too high for the limited use and I'm not looking forward to ANOTHER application with a high learning curve.

I can easily share a screen or application in Google Hangouts, so that's not an issue. I'll probably continue to use RW for showing maps and managing fog of war.

I'm just looking for a virtual battlemap. I'll try out Roll20, though I'm not sure I'll use it enough to justify the subscription.

I have maptools. If I can just load the map and tokens, and ignore all the other stuff, that is an option.

I've been playing around with 3D Virtual Tabletop Community on my iPhone. I like how easy it is to use as a simple digital battle map. You can even just take a photo with your camera and turn it into a battlemap. But adding another device into the mix is more complicated than I would like.

The camera I have, wouldn't be great for displaying the tabletop, but I may just try that and or just make the remote player rely on his imagination more.
 
I've played with d20Pro, though I haven't used it beyond that. Back in 2014 LWD's newsletter mentioned Hero Labs and Realm Works integration being part of their rewrite, though I don't believe that's come to anything yet.
 
Back in 2014 LWD's newsletter mentioned Hero Labs and Realm Works integration being part of their rewrite, though I don't believe that's come to anything yet.

That would be cool and I would definitely consider Roll20 if that is the case.
 
I'm just looking for a virtual battlemap. I'll try out Roll20, though I'm not sure I'll use it enough to justify the subscription.

Roll20 is free for basic use. The subscription is to help support adding features, and gets you a few perks.. but if all you want is the shared map, that's free (at least time I looked).
 
I've been looking at d20pro as a solution for a local VTT (which would work as a remote VTT too), since it can be used purely for revealing maps as they explore and moving tokens around the board (and handling their visibility). I have no wish to use their combat dice rolling.
 
I play entirely online due to player separation, and I GM using Roll20 as a VTT (I've never subscribed to it), Skype for voice chat (Roll20s integrated voice/video chat hates my computer), Skype for screen sharing RW player view. Dropbox holds the PC portfolio for Hero Lab, which everyone can access, but only I update (players send me updated portfolios when things change).

It took a while to get used to, but it works really well.
 
I keep forgetting about d20pro...everytime it is mentioned I read/hear it as Roll20. I'll look at d20pro again. Whatever helps me take an existing image from a RW topic and display as a battlemap and move digital token around will be what I go with.

One other thing, do any of these VTT products allow you to just draw on blank battlemap. For many minor encounters I just draw on a vinyl battlemap using wet-erase markers. Would be nice to be able to do this digitally.
 
In the campaign I run, which has 6 PCs, we're almost always all there at the same location, but there have been a couple sessions where I've had one of the players join remotely when they couldn't be there in person. I use RW as the main source for mapping. During the session, I'll have player view up on a projector (which is connected as a second monitor) in the room. If players are exploring an area, but there's no combat, then I'll just have them describe to me where they are going and what they are doing. Based on that, I'll reveal portions of the map in RW so they can see it on the projector. If combat starts, then I'll draw the combat area on a wet-erase combat mat (we use this one), and we'll use minis to resolve combat. Some players just use normal paper character sheets, some run theirs out of hero lab on laptops.

When we've run sessions where one player was remote, we just setup a webcam and had the remote player join us using skype, and basically ran things as normal. Outside of combat, I just pointed the webcam at the projector so he could see the maps there. During combat, I would just point the webcam at the battle map. We setup a mini for the remote player's character as usual, and on his turn, he'd tell us where he wanted to move, and what he wanted to do, and other players would move his mini around based on that. If I wanted to get fancier, I could have shared the monitor with player view on it rather than point the webcam at the projector screen, but that worked well enough. Moving the webcam and mini for the remote player was delegated to players at the table.
 
One other thing, do any of these VTT products allow you to just draw on blank battlemap. For many minor encounters I just draw on a vinyl battlemap using wet-erase markers. Would be nice to be able to do this digitally.

Roll20 allows that. Search the Roll20 help wiki for "Drawing Tools" for more details about what they offer.
 
Sleepwalk, your situation and setup is exactly like mine. I'll see if the current Webcam I have for my TV can point at and pick up the battlemap with enough detail to make your approach work. I can test using a second computer at home to be the "remote player". If that works, that is certainly the easiest approach.
 
The KS update for d20pro backers today was pretty spiffy. The beta looks to be developing nicely. Tablet interface, board and card game support, and a pretty new look. Dynamic shadows were shown in the alpha but are not available yet. Couple that with HL support and the possibility of RW support....
 
I keep forgetting about d20pro...everytime it is mentioned I read/hear it as Roll20. I'll look at d20pro again. Whatever helps me take an existing image from a RW topic and display as a battlemap and move digital token around will be what I go with.

One other thing, do any of these VTT products allow you to just draw on blank battlemap. For many minor encounters I just draw on a vinyl battlemap using wet-erase markers. Would be nice to be able to do this digitally.

To Add to what AEIOU has noted... I too am a Kickstarter backer for D20Pro (ie MageHand now) and have found it the most useful versus learning curve compared to Fantasy Grounds, Roll20, Maptool, and Battlegrounds.

Combined with the ability to import Herolab into the stats tabs of the tokens (which I really don't utilize other than spot checks for Skills and Saves etc) it still picks up the PC image and converts that to a token. Though this is not a perfect import in custom cases, losing track of special character types, or custom skills, it is great for simply creating multiple maps with fog of war and tokens (u can create these as well) I find it useful.

Further, I too have two young men logging on remotely when they were stationed overseas. We found it superior to placing a camera over top the table for the following reasons.
1> the camera had a difficult time seeing the minis and details of the map versus the amount of lighting you apply.
2> by utilizing a dedicated IP address (assigned by you the DM)your players can logon anywhere they have an internet connection and See the same detail (less mini's (I would duplicate with tokens under mini's as a placeholder)) as the other table based players.

The response and game prep are also nice since multiple maps can be preopened by the DM and are then simply a click away.
This leaves your camera to OOC moments for your players to have "face time" for questions, etc. We set up an old 15" monitor to put our guys on at the end of the table... it was almost like having them there, except they ate less pizza!

Downside...
As AEIOU noted there is not a dynamic Fog of War (yet) so you have to mask as you wish to reveal, and that takes some prep time, but is not very cumbersome.
There is a $ cost, and although it isn't substantial it is to be considered. For the DM the cost is $30 (includes two guest slots) for the players logging into a DM session wishing to have their own license the cost is $10.


I utilize one of my "player" slots as the display for my tables (assigning it a separate IP) so I know EXACTLY what is displayed remotely because it is the same as at the table. (see my what does your table look like post for details).

For me it was a good $50 well spent, and the possibilities for combining with HL and RW makes it all the more tempting.

D20Pro info http://d20pro.com/dl/Download_Win.php#faq

My Two Coppers
DLG
 
AEIOU and DLG, thanks for sharing your knowledge and experiences. I'll play with both approaches. I think that a VTT would be a better experience for the remote player for sure, but I don't want that to be at the expense of my local players. But that just means I need to make time to learn, test, and become comfortable with the new software. I went a number of game sessions before using player view in RW because I didn't want fiddling with technology to distract from the game play.

I will definitely make time in the near future to check out d20pro, but Roll20 seems to make more sense for right now. For what I need, Roll20 is free.

If d20pro does end up integrating with RW, then I'll definitely check it out more seriously. HeroLab integration is not useful to me, however, as I run a DnD 5e campaign.
 
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