Our D&D group is notoriously bad at consistently meeting.
It is something that happens when you grow up; schedules are incompatible, real life issues interfere, and it just has to take lower priority.
Throughout the last few years, we've struggled to meet once every 3 or 4 months on a Sunday night.
Due to this and other concerns, we decided to give it a try to use an online video chat service for one person to be remotely available. Our first guinea pig was not Mike (our friend who moved away), but me. Circumstances had me needing to stay home, but available for gaming.
We first tried Google Hangout, but the video was a little bit choppy (over wifi, at least) and it was wreaking havoc on my poor netbook's system resources.
I suggested we use Skype instead.
From my perspective, Skype was generating a clearer smoother picture and better audio... but for whatever reason it ended up crashing the machine on the other side.
So we went back to Google Hangout, and I resorted to getting out my incredibly-long-cat5-cable to plug the netbook into the wired network.
Had to work out some audio issues, but eventually it started working better, and we got used to it.. so, technologically, it was working OK.
Whether it will hold up with a 3rd or 4th person in conference is a whole other question, but we'll see.
As for the experience itself, I know I was fooling around with zooming in on random objects and making funny faces for a lot of the time, but that was just to make sure people still knew I was there. (It was also weird because my view of myself was mirror-flipped.. whooaaaa)
I also felt a little bit like I was watching a live event, and not participating, so there were times that I completely zoned out, did stuff in another window, and waited to hear my name.
But when I did hear my name, and when I was included, then I did feel like we accomplished something. I was more-or-less able to see the BattleMat and my character actually did kill some goblins and stuff. :)
So, conceptually, I approve. I think this can work.
Technically, I think we still have to figure out what the ideal setup is.
Hopefully, next time, I will be one of the people in the physical room, though.
Showing posts with label dungeons and dragons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dungeons and dragons. Show all posts
Monday, August 22, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
How about a crawl?
Yesterday, got together with the Tufts Gamer Crew (or at least a subset of the current subset of it) for some gaming.
The GM of our "regular" (i.e. invested some time in character creation and had at least one Full Session) RPG game could not make it, so we had other options to consider.
Of course you know that I would always advocate Board Gaming over RPGs.
I even brought both my ipad, and my Huge Box Of Overly Separated Small World Bits.
But, consensus was to dungeon-crawl, and I wanted to play something with my friends instead of bickering about what to play.
Plus, crawling is also likely to get silly which is a good thing.
**
The game system was D&D 3.25-ish, with GM Mike's "low Hit Point world" rules (only 1 HP per level, with an extra full die of HP every few levels, armor provides DR instead of AC, very low magic, a few other rules).
I was Oorf, a 12th-level Halfling Barbarian (me), riding his trusty Dire Badger.
After my clan of near-feral Halflings captured a traveling Human Fighter, we found that he had a treasure map. Along the way, we fought some bandits and met up with a Gnome Monk in search of adventure.
We made it to the location on the treasure map (which the Human claimed was his home) without much incident, where we encountered some insect-like creatures, but deep within their lair was a hoard of gold and assorted Dungeon Crawler's Treasure.
Of course, guarding this gold was a Dragon. A Gold Dragon, so it happens.
Due to the nature of the mechanics of the system, it was a dangerous battle (i had about 40 HP as a 12th-level barbarian, and attack/weapon damage is not scaled down). But with my magic Keen Shortsword and some lucky rolls, and of course the help of the party, we managed to defeat the beast and take home whatever treasure didn't fall down the inevitable trap we discovered.
It was a short cliche adventure, but it was fun.
The GM of our "regular" (i.e. invested some time in character creation and had at least one Full Session) RPG game could not make it, so we had other options to consider.
Of course you know that I would always advocate Board Gaming over RPGs.
I even brought both my ipad, and my Huge Box Of Overly Separated Small World Bits.
But, consensus was to dungeon-crawl, and I wanted to play something with my friends instead of bickering about what to play.
Plus, crawling is also likely to get silly which is a good thing.
**
The game system was D&D 3.25-ish, with GM Mike's "low Hit Point world" rules (only 1 HP per level, with an extra full die of HP every few levels, armor provides DR instead of AC, very low magic, a few other rules).
I was Oorf, a 12th-level Halfling Barbarian (me), riding his trusty Dire Badger.
After my clan of near-feral Halflings captured a traveling Human Fighter, we found that he had a treasure map. Along the way, we fought some bandits and met up with a Gnome Monk in search of adventure.
We made it to the location on the treasure map (which the Human claimed was his home) without much incident, where we encountered some insect-like creatures, but deep within their lair was a hoard of gold and assorted Dungeon Crawler's Treasure.
Of course, guarding this gold was a Dragon. A Gold Dragon, so it happens.
Due to the nature of the mechanics of the system, it was a dangerous battle (i had about 40 HP as a 12th-level barbarian, and attack/weapon damage is not scaled down). But with my magic Keen Shortsword and some lucky rolls, and of course the help of the party, we managed to defeat the beast and take home whatever treasure didn't fall down the inevitable trap we discovered.
It was a short cliche adventure, but it was fun.
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