Playing d&d 5th edition over interwebs with friends.

[Spacehamster]

So me and couple of friends in my wow guild is interested to start playing
some D&D together over the interwebs and wanted to ask what is needed
for doing this and making as smooth as possible in addition to discord or something
else to talk over ofc? :)

[Sigreid]

I do it all the time with friends. Bare bones you need a voice application, a dice roller, and a shared whiteboard for clarifications.

That said, a lot of people like roll20 (I don't ), and I've become very fond of Fantasy Grounds.

Edit: the dice roller is so you all get to see the rolls.

[Beelzebubba]

- Laptop with Skype that you prop up at the end of the table so they can see everyone
- Laptop (or even better, a tablet) with free web whiteboard app that lets you sketch the map at the table and the remote players can see what's up

Optional: better microphone/speaker you can put in the middle of the table, for great sound, laptop speakers and microphones aren't that great across the room and it will be much nicer for the remote player

We do that, and we have our game in Sweden and include a player who's in Southeast Asia right now. It's perfect. He has a Warlock, so it's really easy for him to contribute with a relatively straightforward, simple character.

[Arcangel4774]

As sigried mentioned roll20 is popular. Biggest issue with it (too me) is it's unreliable voice chat. For that reason I'd recommend replacing it with, well, any other voice chat you guys are comfortable with.

[Beelzebubba]

Twitch is adding really awesome internet play with DNDBeyond soon. Did you see the announcement? The integration looks AMAZING.

[KorvinStarmast]

Roll20 is fine. We've used it for 2 years.

Use your own voice chat, like TeamSpeak, Ventrillo, SKype, discord.
If you like voice and video, and all machines can handle it, there are numerous choices. I find Skype to be resource hungry, but YMMV.
Great fun.

[Sigreid]

As sigried mentioned roll20 is popular. Biggest issue with it (too me) is it's unreliable voice chat. For that reason I'd recommend replacing it with, well, any other voice chat you guys are comfortable with.

I find a lot of the controls tedious. I received an ultimate license for Fantasy Geounds as a gift and after a brief learning curve I find it very quick and easy. It's just not cheap if you buy the 5e rule set plug ins. But I'm finding them worth it.

[GorogIrongut]

We just play using skype... We put little clips, typed snippets and pictures of the creatures or maps that we're dealing with in the little side chat.
That side chat, after a while, becomes predominantly out of character comments so that we can all stay in person while on the videolink. For example, two of the characters in the party were fighting vociferously about the path that the party should go down in the coming weeks... The draconic sorceror decided that it was time to include a youtube clip of the Love Boat theme song, because they'd been at it for 10+ mins.

As for verifying rolls... we all play with people we know so we trust one another. But... we have a habit of proving to everyone else that we're not cheating when we get an exceptionally good roll. All it takes is for us to move the webcam down to show the dice untouched on the table after it was rolled.

The players send the dm up to date character sheets every couple sessions just to make sure we're on the same page and one player doesn't suddenly show up with something crazy that we weren't expecting. And like I already mentioned, the DM already has maps pre prepared that he shares in the skype side chat.

So all you need really is skype.

[Sigreid]

We just play using skype... We put little clips, typed snippets and pictures of the creatures or maps that we're dealing with in the little side chat.
That side chat, after a while, becomes predominantly out of character comments so that we can all stay in person while on the videolink. For example, two of the characters in the party were fighting vociferously about the path that the party should go down in the coming weeks... The draconic sorceror decided that it was time to include a youtube clip of the Love Boat theme song, because they'd been at it for 10+ mins.

As for verifying rolls... we all play with people we know so we trust one another. But... we have a habit of proving to everyone else that we're not cheating when we get an exceptionally good roll. All it takes is for us to move the webcam down to show the dice untouched on the table after it was rolled.

The players send the dm up to date character sheets every couple sessions just to make sure we're on the same page and one player doesn't suddenly show up with something crazy that we weren't expecting. And like I already mentioned, the DM already has maps pre prepared that he shares in the skype side chat.

So all you need really is skype.

The die roller isn't about trust. From what I've seen, people like to see the die tumble and cheer or groan at the roll. To me it's part of the fun.

[Grod_The_Giant]

A virtual tabletop like roll20 can help, and a video chat can be nice if everyone's computers can handle it, but I'd hardly call either necessary. I usually play via Google Hangouts or Discord, with the occasional quick share screens/copy-paste Paint sketch when a map is necessary.

[Vogonjeltz]

So me and couple of friends in my wow guild is interested to start playing
some D&D together over the interwebs and wanted to ask what is needed
for doing this and making as smooth as possible in addition to discord or something
else to talk over ofc? :)

1) Your choice of video/chat
2) Dice or Digital Proxy thereof
3) Character Sheets (Paper copy or digital)
4) Reference books (Basic rules, PHB, DMG, MM, Modules, etcetera).

Those are the things you'll use just about every single session. The platform you use may determine if you're playing theater of the mind (TotM) or using a grid. For the purposes of online play TotM is probably more conducive to keeping the game moving.

Whoever is DMing will generally just sketch the location of the characters/NPCs in combat situations so people can have a more solid idea of where everyone is relative to everyone else.


The die roller isn't about trust. From what I've seen, people like to see the die tumble and cheer or groan at the roll. To me it's part of the fun.

I find die roller animations to be tedious, and less fun than actually rolling a die.

[Sigreid]

1) Your choice of video/chat
2) Dice or Digital Proxy thereof
3) Character Sheets (Paper copy or digital)
4) Reference books (Basic rules, PHB, DMG, MM, Modules, etcetera).

Those are the things you'll use just about every single session. The platform you use may determine if you're playing theater of the mind (TotM) or using a grid. For the purposes of online play TotM is probably more conducive to keeping the game moving.

Whoever is DMing will generally just sketch the location of the characters/NPCs in combat situations so people can have a more solid idea of where everyone is relative to everyone else.



I find die roller animations to be tedious, and less fun than actually rolling a die.

Yeah but if you are looking at die rolling as part of the group fun, it's basically what you have to work with.

[GlenSmash!]

I find a lot of the controls tedious. I received an ultimate license for Fantasy Geounds as a gift and after a brief learning curve I find it very quick and easy. It's just not cheap if you buy the 5e rule set plug ins. But I'm finding them worth it.

That is a very nice gift.

[Sigreid]

That is a very nice gift.

Yes. Especially since I likely never would have tried it, and have found I do like it a lot.

The unfortunate part about it is Wizards wants their money so the plug ins for the books cost basically what the book costs if they aren't on sale. But you can manually enter what you need if you have the time and patience. I spent a lot getting the plug ins.

[polymphus]

Roll20 is very good for maps but not great for the rest. We use Google Hangouts for voice chat. I've also heard of people using Mumble/Discord to good effect but my group like having the video feeds from Hangouts.

[Armored Walrus]

I personally use roll20 for my group. I like it more now that we just use discord for voice, and got out of the habit of needing to have a map and tokens for every battle. I do primarily theater of the mind and throw up a splash screen to try to evoke the feeling of what is happening in this session. Even though I'm not using 80% of the features, it's nice to have the character sheets and, as has been mentioned above, everyone can see the dice rolling. Also, having a place to have all the handouts and session notes stored is helpful.

[xanderh]

I'm just going to throw more kind words at Roll20. It's been working excellently for my group.
For 5e specifically, there's a few character sheets. The OGL sheet works well, but it's basically just a digital version of the paper sheet, with no extra features to speak of. I personally prefer the Shaped sheet, but it's in active development, so there is a slight risk that a broken update is pushed just before your game starts. It's pretty rare, but it has happened.

[GlenSmash!]

Yes. Especially since I likely never would have tried it, and have found I do like it a lot.

The unfortunate part about it is Wizards wants their money so the plug ins for the books cost basically what the book costs if they aren't on sale. But you can manually enter what you need if you have the time and patience. I spent a lot getting the plug ins.

Yep, that's kept me from trying it out.

Love the Signature btw.

[Sigreid]

Yep, that's kept me from trying it out.

Love the Signature btw.

I understand, it held me up too. Now I kind of wish I'd bought it first and skipped the hard copies.

And thank you.

[Biggstick]

Yes. Especially since I likely never would have tried it, and have found I do like it a lot.

The unfortunate part about it is Wizards wants their money so the plug ins for the books cost basically what the book costs if they aren't on sale. But you can manually enter what you need if you have the time and patience. I spent a lot getting the plug ins.

If you're playing one of the modules that WOTC have released on Roll20 (STK and Yawning Portal as far as I know), I'll tell you right now it's completely worth it (speaking from personal experience with the STK module). Even if you've already purchased the physical book, it's still worth it. Having EVERYTHING already set-up for you makes the game so much easier to run. Roll20 has already gone through the overwhelming amount of time to create everything, place it as it should, place everything on the correct layers, and pretty much just do your entire job for you.

You might see it as WOTC trying to make money. I see it as paying 50 dollars for over 200 hours worth of work. Completely building an entire campaign from scratch would have overwhelmed me online, but having this got me into the whole online DM'ing thing. DM'ing in person though, way easier for me.

[Coidzor]

Number 1 most important thing is, that if it's a scenario where you have to pay careful attention to the narration describing things in order to figure out what's going on, you need to either have a really good audio connection that basically never skips anything or cuts out or you need to have it in text form.

We've been trying to go through some of the retro adventures they've released recently and it's hell to get killed by something because you missed two words of what the DM said due to technical difficulties.

The second most important thing is to beware angering the dice roller you use.

[Sigreid]

If you're playing one of the modules that WOTC have released on Roll20 (STK and Yawning Portal as far as I know), I'll tell you right now it's completely worth it (speaking from personal experience with the STK module). Even if you've already purchased the physical book, it's still worth it. Having EVERYTHING already set-up for you makes the game so much easier to run. Roll20 has already gone through the overwhelming amount of time to create everything, place it as it should, place everything on the correct layers, and pretty much just do your entire job for you.

You might see it as WOTC trying to make money. I see it as paying 50 dollars for over 200 hours worth of work. Completely building an entire campaign from scratch would have overwhelmed me online, but having this got me into the whole online DM'ing thing. DM'ing in person though, way easier for me.

Oh, it's worth it on FG as well. Having everything, especially the core books readily searchable with drag to character functionality is awesome.

As for Wizards wants their money, that wasn't a criticism. I didn't want to accidentally have someone thinking that if you buy a Fantasy Grounds license that came bundled. FG gives free what the company allows them to.

Edit to the point of one post up, with FG I can send a text description to the party with a click to support what I say.