D&D on Skype? Good or Bad?

[Bulix]

I'm trying to play D&D with my friends who just moved to Canada, and I'm in Venezuela...
Is using Skype a good idea? It gets kinda messy in voice-chat so I'm considering doing it by text but copy-pasting pre-written large paragraphs of info and description so they don't have to wait too long...
What do you think?

[Dairuga]

I am currently DMing over Skype, as well as playing scenarios, with one guy from America, and another guy from Australia. And I must say, all in all, it is one of the greatest experiences I have ever had. Skype makes things incredibly easy, far, far more so than paragraph-by-paragraph writing. Granted, accents and poor english might dampen the experience somewhat, but you cannot really help that.

I have had my most enjoyable moments on Skype, given that I have not had the chance to actually play In real life with people. Granted, it might get hard to hear people over the roaring bouts of laughter when people crack jokes or does something unbelievable, but if the entire group is sent into roaring laughter, I think everyone can take a minute or so break to calm things down before continuing, without it hurting the mood.

As for Paragraph upon Paragraphs of text to aid Skype conversations. That would indeed be a great addition, if you do not wish to directly speak over Skype, as it helps to give flavour and an atmosphere to the setting, if you do not feel confident in being able to speak and live into the scene.

The messy in-voice chat has never been a problem wtih me. Of course, there are instances where people wish to go at the same time as others, and they end speaking over eachother, garbling eachother out; but a simple "Okay, you first" solves that problem quite nicely, and makes sure only one speaks at the same time.

[Alefiend]

Many people also have a lot of success using Google+ Hangouts, or services like Roll20.com -- you should check those out as well.

[Knaight]

Text based roleplaying over Skype is painfully slow in my experience, and Skype isn't a great medium for it if you use the chat. However, there is the voice chat option, and at that point it is the second best option, right after physically sharing a table. It does take a while to get used to it, and there could be issues with internet speed and similar, but it is almost certainly a better option.

[Togath]

Text based roleplaying over Skype is painfully slow in my experience, and Skype isn't a great medium for it if you use the chat. However, there is the voice chat option, and at that point it is the second best option, right after physically sharing a table. It does take a while to get used to it, and there could be issues with internet speed and similar, but it is almost certainly a better option.

text based skype games aren't that bad, or at least the one we tried seemed fine(then again, I dont have much experience with being a player instead of a gm in an rpg, so it might have been slower then normal, The main other time I played dnd as a player instead of a gm had only rping for the first session)

[Eldariel]

Voice over Skype with e.g. MapTools (or hell, Webcam) to handle the mechanical aspects has worked quite well for us.

[LeshLush]

For multi-way video, I personally find Google+ hangouts to have a slight edge over skype in terms of functionality. I'd recommend giving both a try and seeing what you have better luck with. However, as far as the concept of D&D via internet video chat goes, I'd certainly say it's a great alternative to sharing a table.

[Knaight]

For multi-way video, I personally find Google+ hangouts to have a slight edge over skype in terms of functionality. I'd recommend giving both a try and seeing what you have better luck with. However, as far as the concept of D&D via internet video chat goes, I'd certainly say it's a great alternative to sharing a table.

I'd generally recommend using audio only, and Skype is better at that than Google+ is.

[Glimbur]

Voice over Skype with e.g. MapTools (or hell, Webcam) to handle the mechanical aspects has worked quite well for us.

I would second the vote for MapTools or a similar service; depending on the edition of D&D and play style exact placement of people can be very important. It also lets you roll dice in chat and run macros, which are convenient.

My experience with D&D over Skype is that side conversations are more disruptive, but it can work.

[Chromascope3D]

Voice Skype would probably work, but I can whole-heartily recommend not using IMS. Maybe it was just my group, but action got painfully slow fast. It usually just came to a dead stop multiple times in a single encounter. Heck, even when we weren't supposed to be doing anything, we found a way to slow it down. Usually the chat is so flooded with comments and jokes that it's hard to tell when we're actually moving on. We tried it at least half a dozen times, and rarely got past level 2.

[thunderzach]

I've actually been looking for a way to get back to playing with friends after I've moved away. we tried using a video chat service with my camera facing my dice and theirs facing the tabletop but between lag and camera quality it did not work out well. I really just want them to be able to have their in house game and me essentially conference call into it.

I looked at the roll20.com site and it doesn't seem like it would be what I'm looking for. Any suggestions? Maybe even help with the logistics of getting the google+ chat to work better.

[Eldariel]

I've actually been looking for a way to get back to playing with friends after I've moved away. we tried using a video chat service with my camera facing my dice and theirs facing the tabletop but between lag and camera quality it did not work out well. I really just want them to be able to have their in house game and me essentially conference call into it.

I looked at the roll20.com site and it doesn't seem like it would be what I'm looking for. Any suggestions? Maybe even help with the logistics of getting the google+ chat to work better.

Like already said in this thread, MapTools is a fairly solid way of going about it; not a hard program and does about everything you need.

[Venger]

I've been playing a game remotely for 3 years, and it works great. I use skype's video chat so I can see the battlemap for combat and see peoples' reactions and stuff. skype's mic does cut out sometimes, I find google video to be more reliable and the picture quality isn't as clear, but the framerate is considerably better.

I say go for it, the only thing that's a problem is positioning for combat. that along with my character idea in general (businessman) has made me (at first unconcsiously) and now consciously try to avoid combat as a way of solving problems, but it really depends on your character, camera quality, etc.

[NichG]

I'm running a Skype audio only/Maptools game right now (two 12-hour long games in). My advice:

- Require everyone to use headphones. One person's feedback ruins the entire call.
- Get used to using text for secret conversations/etc. You can't easily take a player aside.
- In a large enough group there will always be someone with technical issues. Budget 30 minutes before the start of the first few games to make sure everything is working.
- Loud people will dominate even more than usual. With Skype you can't hear someone at all if someone louder is talking. Its good to listen for people starting to say something and stopping themselves, and then explicitly try to bring them in ("X has something to say, lets listen").

Otherwise its pretty smooth. I wouldn't use it for music, but I use an icecast server that my players can stream music from for that, which is much cleaner since it just parcels up the mp3s.

For MapTools:

- VBL and personal fog of war is cool, but I've had those features cause annoying glitches for some (but not all, curiously) of my players. Don't rely too much on them.
- MapTools lets you enforce players views based on your own screen. Learn to use that feature and love it, its a good way to get players to see what you're pointing at (they could otherwise be on a different map, a different zoom level, etc).
- Personally I'd say let players expose their own views, rather than retaining that control. Its too much extra work for the DM to maintain player Fog of War after every move I think.

[Anxe]

I use Google Hangouts for my group. Skype doesn't allow for group video chat sessions. Google does. If you're planning on doing text only for your sessions you should plan on people dropping out. That's going to be painfully slow and you might as well just start a play-by-post game. I do video every time. Audio only could work, but if I was offered that as my method for playing, I would decline.

I personally don't like maptools, but a lot of other people do. I'd suggest checking that out. Roll20 is another program that I believe works through Google Hangouts. Check that one out too. I just point my camera at my battleboard for combats. That's worked decently for my sessions.