New technology for old format

  As my readers may have noticed, I'm a bit of a gamer.  I may focus this blog on GW games (especially 40k), but I'm certainly not limited to just those.  In fact, the right-hand rail of this site is packed with links to game companies that I also support, including card games (deck-building and collectible), board games, and other miniature-wargames.  In fact, I even have a bi-weekly group to play poker and lose even more money to (which is still less expensive than GW).  But my first gaming love was RPGs, especially that Dungeons & Dragons game.

  I've run a few groups and campaigns over the last few years, almost always focused on abusing the captive audience of my family plus a friend or two.  The last campaign I ran was a homebrew that just finished up a couple months ago with everyone's character leveling up to five.  But with the current limitations on getting together and work schedules being exceptionally precious, that campaign had to come to an end.  I can't live without throwing some d20s and some people have asked me to get another game going, so my problem-solving brain had to get to work.

  And that's where the new technology comes in.  While my wife and kids are already here (and when the wife is not working), other people that want to play may not have the ability to join us.  That leaves me in a bit of a conundrum.  As it turns out, there's a great many programs to allow people to play over the internet and adhere to the social-distancing rules.  Plus, most of my friends live hundreds of miles away and only visit once or twice a year.  So I started looking into those programs to see how they could work. 

  I had a cacophony of suggestions come from every direction.  In addition to my research (great article here), I found that I wasn't doing anything groundbreaking.  I'm no pioneer (in fact, I'm known as a "late-adopter" or "laggart" in marketing terms), so seeing that other people had the same thoughts years ago was helpful.  Those suggestions and my research narrowed everything down to three main options:

1. Discord- everyone suggested Discord as a great site to run voice-chat and even store some documents for people.  But this was too generic for me and wasn't what I was looking for.  If you're playing some video games, then this is definitely the site.  But role-playing?  Not so much.

2.  Roll 20- This program is awesome!  In fact, it's specifically made to create that virtual environment for people to role-play in.  It contains all kinds of graphic interfaces and tools to be able to show all players where their characters, foes and stashes are in well-designed rooms.  But it still didn't have that thing that I'm wanting...

3.  Zoom-  This video-conferencing program allows for people to speak to each other and, most importantly, see each other face-to-face.  This is what I want in a game.  I've been a DM since the late 80's and I have outstanding storytelling skills (yes, I even do voices).  This means I don't need the visuals of Roll20 to immerse the characters.  However, I still need the face-to-face ability and video-conferencing turns out to be the only way to accomplish this.

  Now, I am BY NO MEANS promoting Zoom to people.  I am not paid by them, nor do I work for the company.  But I'm an instructor and this is the program that I use and am familiar with.  In fact, I play Star Wars Armada over this program with a buddy from New York (I'm a good 'ol Texan, so a bit far away to get together) and it works great!  Plus, we have certain tools such as setting up a 'virtual background' and changing profile picture (although I've forgotten how to do that recently), which can be very useful in the game.  This platform meets my needs specifically and that's what I needed (see what I did there?).

  Being a D&D player since the old days of yellow-bound 1st edition and trying to capture that same imagination-based concept in today's video-driven society is often difficult.  I've already had two other potential gamers decline joining my group because they "don't have the imagination" (something I can't understand, but I also didn't think there were people without an internal voice, so...).  My skills as a storyteller come from decades of narration-to-immersion and my love of video games is limited because of that.  Luckily, it's often the tools you use for unrelated activities that can be the most useful (who thought pipe-cleaners could be used for making animals in kindergarten?). 

  I'll be kicking off this group in a week.  We'll play the Lost Mines of Phandelver adventure from the D&D Starter Kit and then work into an adventure book.  This use of published material will serve as the 'control' in this experiment of modern tools so that I can focus on managing the interaction of the party.  After all, I don't have a table to rap on when they start to get out-of-hand.

  Let me know if you've found some esoteric answers to interesting problems like this in your gaming life.  Have you used real-life programs or tools to aid your gaming adventures?  I'd LOVE to hear your suggestions and stories below.  Until next post- Happy Gaming!