Starting up an old campaign 3.5 - Online Sessions Help

[lytokk]

Summary: Starting up an old campaign, but all of the players have moved to opposite ends of the country, need a medium to play in.

So, I got to meet up with a few old friends of mine this weekend and we started talking about the old D&D games we played together. One of them which was my first experience DMing, ended badly, and I've always been dissapointed in it. Basically, it ended with me throwing the party through a portal since I was going to let someone else take over as DM. I was going back to college and one of the players had told me he'd like to DM, but wanted to take them out of Forgotten Realms and into Ravenloft, where he intended to basically torture the rest of the players. As I said, first time DMing, and I HATE that I ended it this way.

It turns out that 2 of the players, the only 2 I still talk to still have their character sheets, and I still have all of my campaign notes. When we realized this, we knew we could restart the game, and all of our spouses were more than willing to join in as new party members. The only problem is we live so far apart.

Immediately after getting home, I made an account on roll20, since I've heard stories about people using it, but the whole interface didn't work with me, couldn't figure out how to create dungeons or anything. I was wondering if there were better options out there, or if there were good tutorials for DMing using it. Or does most of the functionality not turn on unless you're paying to use it? We'd be more than willing to just use skype for the games, but we've always had a battle grid, so some sort of screen sharing software is almost a must.

[Rhynn]

IRC (on a server like DarkMyst, with dice rolling bots etc.).

OpenRPG (free Python program)

Skype

Google Hangouts

[Ansem]

Skype works great, you just need a digital gridmap for combat and you're set.

[lytokk]

I'll have to look into OpenRPG, since I'm having to learn python for my job anyway, it'd be nice to be able to play with it in a more relaxed setting. Unfortunately, the installers look like they're for windows only, and 2 of my players for sure use only macs, so will have to look into that one a little deeper.

But yes, any sort of shared battlegrid system combined with skype would be ideal. Everyone likes actually rolling the dice, so an online roller is far from necessary. A sufficiently made excel spreadsheet can eliminate the need for physical character sheets, as well as make it easier for them to send me their sheets for review.

[Rhynn]

There's websites (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetindex.php) for character sheets, actually.

I never bother with spreadsheets for character records, personally (although when creating sheets or tables to be printed, I build them as spreadsheets and convert to PDF); .txt and .rtf files are plenty, and they can be edited with programs like Jarte and NoteTab that are very compact and have little clutter in the UI, leaving most of my desktop "free" (even on a laptop).

[lytokk]

The only reason I would suggest spreadsheets is due to the fact they're easily editable. Heck, even a decent Google Doc could work, shared between each player and myself.

Desktop space is a non-issue for me, between my laptop screen and the dual monitors on my desktop.

I've never tried mythweavers, beyond using their treasure or dungeon generator. I think it it was mythweavers at least.

[Firest Kathon]

Did you look at the Roll20 documentation (https://wiki.roll20.net/Main_Page), especially the D&D 3.5 guide (https://wiki.roll20.net/Dungeons_and_Dragons_3.5)? I found this quite helpful. Also, if you decide on using Roll20, get acquainted with the dice rolling and macros mechanics, it will greatly ease play.

[Rhynn]

The only reason I would suggest spreadsheets is due to the fact they're easily editable. Heck, even a decent Google Doc could work, shared between each player and myself.

Well, so are .rtf files and so on. Don't get me wrong, several of the people I play with use spreadsheets - but they really use them, putting in macros and formulas to present themselves useful info during play, rather than just for recording the info.

[Brunks]

Having played and GMed a few online campaigns I have to say that roll20.net is an excellent site for your needs.
Sure the UI is very confusing, and managing a lot of maps can be a hassle, but you don't need to know a lot to play. You can learn the site as you use it.
In some ways it made my campaigns a lot better, you can upload your maps and use digital images a lot more effectively. Using macros and the measuring tools will make combat go a LOT faster.
Its not perfect, but certainly worth the effort of learning the UI.

As an optimizer I cannot live without spreadsheats. But mythweaver sheets will certainly do just fine for your players.

[Icewraith]

How good is roll20 when one of your players throws a complete and utter wrench in your plans and your premade maps are useless?

How quickly can you cobble something together... say a large room with some stairs and maybe traps or a large outdoor area with some varied terrain for tactical options?

[lytokk]

After watching the tutorial roll20 got a lot easier to work with. Suppose I was a little too eager to dive into it and shouldn't have cancelled that tutorial video when I logged in the first time. I'll be sure to read up on the wiki and it looks like this really is the best move. Now, all I have to do is figure out better ways to construct dungeons. I really liked the interface when I used to work with a neverwinter nights persistent world and that would really be awesome if I could just find a way to import environments from there. I should be able to export those maps as a jpg, somehow.

[Madcrafter]

How good is roll20 when one of your players throws a complete and utter wrench in your plans and your premade maps are useless?

How quickly can you cobble something together... say a large room with some stairs and maybe traps or a large outdoor area with some varied terrain for tactical options?

When in doubt one could always just use the draw tool and sketch it out old-school as far as I remember. Easier if you have stylus input, but doable with a mouse.

But yeah, roll20 is probably good, and has the ability to be integrated with google hangouts too.

[lytokk]

How good is roll20 when one of your players throws a complete and utter wrench in your plans and your premade maps are useless?

How quickly can you cobble something together... say a large room with some stairs and maybe traps or a large outdoor area with some varied terrain for tactical options?

Normally this has never been a problem with this group. We play story based games, not open sandbox, so as long as I leave them clues as to where I'd like them to go next, 95% of the time thats where they go.