Increasing Immersion in Online Games

[Nagog]

Hey there folks!

I've been listening a lot to various D&D Podcasts lately (Mostly Critical Role and OG Adventure Zone) and I'd like to up my game in regards to my DMing. After receiving feedback from my players, I believe the issue is immersion into the characters and world of the story. I've attempted to increase the immersion by asking players to describe their actions in downtime, and to generally help the POV shift from the player lording over their character to that of a character being an individual person whose role the player plays. Overall, it was very difficult to do due to the medium which this game is played: Video chat. Much of the synergy and sense of community among the party is lost in translation. What can I do as a DM to otherwise increase the immersion, and therefore enjoyment, of my players?

[Tawmis]

Hey there folks!

I've been listening a lot to various D&D Podcasts lately (Mostly Critical Role and OG Adventure Zone) and I'd like to up my game in regards to my DMing. After receiving feedback from my players, I believe the issue is immersion into the characters and world of the story. I've attempted to increase the immersion by asking players to describe their actions in downtime, and to generally help the POV shift from the player lording over their character to that of a character being an individual person whose role the player plays. Overall, it was very difficult to do due to the medium which this game is played: Video chat. Much of the synergy and sense of community among the party is lost in translation. What can I do as a DM to otherwise increase the immersion, and therefore enjoyment, of my players?

So one thing you can do is when they roll (whether they hit or miss) - be more descriptive than.

DM: "OK, the goblin springs to his feet, having heard you trying to approach! He growls and grips his javelin, clearly ready to fight."

(Roll Initiative, Player_01 gets higher)

Player_01: "OK, I knock a arrow and fire."

DM: "OK, roll."

Player_01 rolls. "9."

DM: "You miss."

Spice stuff like that up.

Rather than "You miss" or "You hit" - say what happens.

DM: "You aim your arrow and unleash it through the air. The arrow narrowly missing the goblin's right ear, infuriating him further!"

Player_02 rolls. "16."

DM: "That's a hit. Roll me some damage."

Player_02 rolls. "11"

DM: "You draw your long sword and charge forward. As you rush forward, you see the goblin's eyes open wide in terror, clearly not expecting to be rushed at! You take your sword and plunge it deep into the side of his leg!"

On and on.

This maintains a visual of what's happening.

Also, I'd use mood music. If you've never heard of table top audio - I highly recommend it.

https://tabletopaudio.com/

[Keravath]

I think a lot of the enjoyment and immersion of the players comes from the scene the DM sets. Having the players develop the background of the characters and understand their characters better may help but it is work for them and it doesn't really help with immersion in the story itself.

There are two things I think would help

1) Displays and pictures of where the characters are. Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, something that allows the characters to see and more importantly imagine where they are.

2) Good and vivid descriptions of the scene by the DM combined with a bit of roleplaying of the NPCs. Make the NPCs come to life. They may have their own speech or behavior mannerisms. They may have their own interests or ways of doing things. Describe this in such a way that the players can imagine what is going on. How good the players are at imagining varies a lot so the DM needs to be able to give them enough detail in a short enough span of time so that it doesn't bog down the game but at the same time gives food for the imagination.

Examples:

Too little
You enter a room that is about 20' by 20', there are doors in the east and west walls, there are light sources in the corners.

Too much
You enter a dusty room. It is about 20' by 20'. There is a large stone fireplace in the north wall containing the ashes of an old fire. Soot trails run up the front of the fireplace. Dust lies thick on all the furniture and floats in the air glinting in the light from ever burning torches located in the four corners of the room. The furniture is old and well worn. There are two settees, a table in front of the fire place and a trestle table in the south-west corner. The floor is dressed stone with signs of water leakage from the roof during occasional rain storms. The walls appear to be oak paneling overlaid on stone. The wood of the paneling smells musty and damp. There is a iron bound oak door with a blackened handle in the west wall and a newer pine door in the east wall. Both doors are closed. The ceiling is made of wooden beams and it looks like there is a wooden floor of the level above sitting on the beams. The beams are at least 8" thick and appear blackened as if from fire or smoke.

Maybe about right.
You enter a 20'x20' room with paneled walls and a stone floor. There are several pieces of well worn furniture covered with dust in front of an old fireplace. There are doors in the east and west walls. The eastern door is iron bound wood while the other appears to be a newer pine door. The room smells damp and musty.

Give the players enough description to imagine the room themselves and let them fill in the details. They will ask if they want to know more. Try to include any important relevant details in the description but leave out irrelevant ones unless you have players who really like more detailed descriptions.

Also, just have a general idea in your mind what the room is like and make up the details of the description as you go along, record any of these details that may be important later but the idea is to give the players enough detail that they can imagine (a la theatre of the mind) what their character is doing and the surroundings they are doing it in ... this is where immersion comes from whether you are playing in person or online.

However, the description can and ideally should be supplemented by maps, images and tactical layouts so that the players can better imagine what is going on and make suitable decisions for their characters. One example is NPCs, if you have a picture that you can share over the video chat this will give the players a better idea of who they are interacting with.

[Nagog]

Thank you both. I will try to add more in-world embellishment to my descriptions of the world to encourage visualization, that sounds amazing and I think it will really help.
Alas, I have tried to set background music, but thus far it brings down the audio quality on the video call to the point it's difficult to hear people. :(

[Tawmis]

One thing I hadn't seen in my eons of playing D&D until playing 5th edition...

If someone lands a killing blow; ask them to describe it. This really pulls them in and gives them a chance to have some fun with how the goblin's skull is crushed beneath their mace, as the eyes buldge out, teeth shatter, severing the goblin's tongue as it falls dead, eyes gazing upward at the mace that delivered the killing blow...

[follacchioso]

Make sure everybody has time and space to describe what their characters do. In any group, few players will tend to take protagonism and talk more than the others. This is fine and it is good for the game, and you should not discourage such players; however, at the same time you need to make sure that everybody has space to describe what their characters are doing.

Another good rule is to make the player speak as much as possible. Ask them to introduce themselves at the beginning, and to explain something about their characters. Ask them to describe the effects of their spells and attacks. Prompt them to ask questions about maps and NPCs. A good DM does not need to speak much, but he must be a good listener.

[Randomthom]

Hey there folks!

I've been listening a lot to various D&D Podcasts lately (Mostly Critical Role and OG Adventure Zone) and I'd like to up my game in regards to my DMing. After receiving feedback from my players, I believe the issue is immersion into the characters and world of the story. I've attempted to increase the immersion by asking players to describe their actions in downtime, and to generally help the POV shift from the player lording over their character to that of a character being an individual person whose role the player plays. Overall, it was very difficult to do due to the medium which this game is played: Video chat. Much of the synergy and sense of community among the party is lost in translation. What can I do as a DM to otherwise increase the immersion, and therefore enjoyment, of my players?

It can be hard for players (new or old) who have been playing with the "my character does X" or "says Y" to transition to speaking directly on behalf of their character.

There's a few psychological tricks you can employ though that help with the immersion. Ask them to say their character's name rather than "my character". Encourage people to use each other's character's names, not their real names while gaming. So "Neblin" rather than "Jon's Goblin Rogue" or "my character". "Neblin does X" and "Neblin says Y".

The next step is talking in first-person as their character but I'd be wary of saying that this is a good fit for every table. It's what we see in CR (where they are all professional actors who can improvise a role on-the-fly pretty damn well) and so naturally people want to see it at their table but you'll find that it doesn't flow anything like as well in 99% of cases.

Basically I'm saying that stopping at "Neblin says..." is sometimes the happy medium and as much as you can expect from the average D&D player and it's enough.

Regarding immersion, pacing is important. Pacing should ebb and flow. Slow followed by fast followed by slow followed by fast.

One of the major problems with D&D is that the thing that in a movie would be fast (combat) is slow in D&D. We need to be better at making it fast. Rush your players. Make them make quick decisions. Hurry them. Combat-by-committee is one of the biggest mood killers out there, where each player spends minutes asking the other players what they think they should do with their turn and eventually arrive at some optimal decision.
Ask players to have a good idea of what they want to do before their turn which means paying attention during other peoples turns and re-evaluating. They can certainly ask for clarifications as to their understanding.If they're taking too much time, hurry them with a "come on..." and if they still take too long move to "you miss the opening that was there and the [next creature in initiative performs its' turn]"

Likewise, you need to be quick, know your monsters and their abilities. Narrate but don't go overboard, sometimes changing a single adjective is enough.
The giant snake moves 30 ft towards Neblin and tries to grapple him.
The giant snake slithers towards Neblin and begins to coil around you.
One is mechanical, the player is now thinking in mechanical terms. Ok, grapple, I'm good at Acrobatics, this will probably fail.
One is descriptive, it puts the player in the mind of their character, especially using first-person pronouns, and the visual matches the mechanics.
Try to spend no more time on the mechanics than necessary to resolve what happens.

[MoiMagnus]

I've never used an online platform, but I know music can help. It requires preparation work to find adequate music, and a platform that support you switching music for everyone.

Art helps too. Not everyone has the skill or time to draw art for every session, but even simple things like map of a city/kingdom helps a lot.

Put your times on things that interest your players. In real life, it is much easier to see if what you're saying caught the interest of your players (so you can continue talking), or if they're starting to look at their character sheet for the next level-up (so you should jump into the action). Through online platform, it means you need to be even more attentive to what kind of things interest which player.

Use between-session time. Imagine you have a 'end of mission', and the next session is planed to take place few in-universe months latter. You can use emails or 1-to-1 discussion with each of your players to talk about "what kind of things the PCs do during the downtime, what are their contact, ...". And next session can start with 10min where everyone say to the others what they were doing during this time (truthfully or not, by the way).

Talking about beginning of session, randomly roll for one player at the beginning of session, and ask him/her to do a "mental sum up" of the previous session. Something like "Yesterday was a wild ride. Mister 'I know everything' found a map to a treasure. I would have bet the map was a fake, but nobody listened to me. And now we've fall into a trap and we're tied into a boat in the middle of nowhere... F*cking cultists..." or "Dear journal, yesterday, we left for a mission given by the Great Priest. I come up with a brilliant idea to capture our target : a fake treasure map. So John faked being a merchant and one of our target bought the map. Fortunately for us, they weren't that strong, so we smoothly were able to capture them. I can't wait to receive our reward."

[NaughtyTiger]

Things that kill immersion with Roll20:

1) bad audio. make sure everyone has good mics and no barking dogs
2) distracted players. players looking at their phone at a live table is bad, but without other players giving side eye, it's worse online
3) talking over each other. encourage player to player comms using chat
4) slower than at a table. on the fly maps are harder to generate, so have "random" encounters (even a generic tavern) ready to go on standby
5) macros. the full subscription to roll20 is worth it for the macros, so every player has the tools to add their own flourish. and automates passive perception stuff
6) lighting. i want to like the dynamic lighting, but it is finicky and doesn't always show what you want or expect it to. either skip it and use blocking tiles over a room that you delete, or have lots of invisible light sources that you can drop in to make what you want visible. (conflicts with #5)
7) pointless character moves. i spent forever making a tunnel with traps that automatically spring when a PC hits it, or automatically glitter when the PC's passive percep detects it. the players took their turns moving the PCs 30ft at a time... through mostly inert tunnel. so slow. (conflicts with #5)
8) unnecessary set pieces. just cause you have a set piece ready to go, doesn't mean you need to use it. TotM is great for the standard shopping trip, actually switching to market set peice and putting the players in position sucks (conflicts with #4)

[Lupine]

I ran my first campaign over video call for about the first half. I know your pain.
I have some advice
1) You absolutely need to find a high quality steaming service. It will save you so much trouble. I played on Google hangouts, and it was terrible for this. Would not recommend.
2) Don't bother with hand gestures. They probably aren't watching them (this rolls into #3)
3) Be quicker about how you describe things. Your players probably are not actively watching your camera, and even if they are, they probably have other things fighting for their attention. If they're on their phone, probably social media. If they're on a PC, then its the other tabs. Currently, the average human attention span is falling, and is around 10 seconds. The internet is trying to pull their attention to get clicks, and thereby, money. They want to listen. They really do. But the internet is psychologically manipulating them for its fiscal purposes. You have to make your stuff engaging enough that they stay with you.
The irony is that I typed all this out in block form...:smallbiggrin: