Tips for gaming through Discord or other online means

[Bonzai]

I had a long running gaming group. Sadly life happened and we moved in different states. We have discussed trying to get together and gaming online, but none of us have much experience in this. Any programs or suggestions that could help with this would be greatly appreciated!

[Eldan]

Roll 20 is probably still the best. It has character sheets with built in dice rollers for many, many systems, and functions like private messaging and the ability for the GM to upload files and show them to all or some of the players.

[calam]

I second using something like roll20 if you tend to use girds. Otherwise you could probably work with a dice rolling bot on discord.

[Kurald Galain]

Roll20, hands down.

That said, check in advance what character sheets exist for the game you want, and pick a good one. Sheets are community-made, and some of them are extremely convenient and speed up gameplay; whereas others are so bad that most people ignore them and hand-write macros instead.

[Magelyte]

I use Maptools to play online with my friends, with Discord for voice chat. I find that it works fairly well, but we just use Maptools for dice-rolling, as a grid map, and for tracking hp. Maptools doesn’t have game systems built in though, although you can get fan made packages for systems, so if you want to integrate the game mechanics with the program more it might be easier to use another virtual tabletop like Foundry/Roll20/Fantasygrounds.

[Eldan]

I second using something like roll20 if you tend to use girds. Otherwise you could probably work with a dice rolling bot on discord.

I play three different games in different systems without battle maps (currently FATE, Degenesis and Unknown Armies) and Roll 20 is stil totally worth it, just for automated character sheets that update in real time for everyone.. Just clicking on a skill and having it rolled with all modifiers is very neat.

[Hachristo]

As others have said, roll20 for maps and dice rolls, discord for voice. Roll20 doesn't have acceptable tools for drawing dungeon maps, but there are many different applications to draw maps that can be imported to roll20. I use dungeon scrawl personally; it's easy to use and pretty enough.

https://probabletrain.itch.io/dungeon-scrawl

Definitely go through the tutorial on roll20; it's not self explanatory without it. They have some videos on their YouTube channel as well, never watched them but they're probably worth checking out.

[Asmotherion]

Roll 20 is very easy to use. Other than that, discord has various bots that can emulate dice rolls and track initiative. A google search will give you lots of results.

[Fizban]

You need some sort of map, unless you're already the type of DM that fakes the entire concept of combat positioning to begin with.

And that's pretty much it. A lot of people will go on about automated dice rollers and built in character sheets, and even the little hands-on experience I've had indicate these are the exact opposite of the way to go. The more automated the tools are, the more the players will be encouraged to treat it like a video game rather than a tabletop game. If you want video game dnd, there are already video games for that. If you want tabletop dnd, running it through an interface that makes it more video-gamey is just a bad idea.

Built in automated character sheets? Great, now you have players that aren't actually aware of what books their stuff came out of, or anything that's not in the character generator, or how their character math works when they need to suddenly change it. Built in dice rollers and macros? Same problem. Built in hit point and status effect tracking? Great, now you have to ram stuff through an interface instead of just telling people what happens. Built in lighting and line of sight engines seem perfect for limiting information exactly how it should be, until the DM puts something in just the wrong place or fumbles it or fails to setup the overly complex system correctly and spoils their own stuff. Initiative trackers? Now people pay even less attention when it's not their turn, even though for the game to run smoothly they need to be paying attention to everyone's turns all the time. A built in shared chat room for the game seems like a good idea, but can turn into yet another information stream to split attention if you're using something else for communication.

Even a pile of pre-existing artwork and dungeon maps that can be easily added to seems like a great idea, until you start using it- and now *everything* has to have matched art and dungeon maps, even if no such art or map exists, and going without will break immersion and make it look cheap.

And if, gods forbid, you have a player that wanted to play tabletop and not learn how to wrangle this automated dnd-bot thing, now you've got an even worse split.

All I want, is something like the free image editor I tried out a while back, but on a page I could link to everyone and they could move stuff around on in real time. Something I could upload or draw a map and tokens on, save it locally, load it back up later, and then link the page so everyone can move their tokens around. Maybe a DM layer for hiding stuff, and a token generator that would automatically superimpose letters over the picture if desired. Keep all the DM stuff off to the side under a "DM screen," and drag it in when I know it should be visible. Decide beforehand whether I'm going all provided module maps, all pre-made map-pack maps, or all hand drawn. Make sure I have a source of pics for anything weird I want to make long before actually writing it into the plan.

Maptools when we tried it years ago worked, but was cumbersome and getting everyone connected was a chore with routers and dynamic ip addresses could take half an hour of extra start-up time, no idea what it's like nowadays.

Maybe Roll20 is that easy to use, but since the first thing people always mention is the built in X/Y/Z/Q, it gives an impression that I don't even want to bother with it.

[Zanos]

I think Foundry VTT is the best virtual table top by a mile, but roll20 has the best(read: most populated) LFG. If you already have a group together I would use Foundry.

[Bonzai]

Thanks for all the tips guys! I will start checking out these programs.

[Eldan]

You need some sort of map, unless you're already the type of DM that fakes the entire concept of combat positioning to begin with.

And that's pretty much it. A lot of people will go on about automated dice rollers and built in character sheets, and even the little hands-on experience I've had indicate these are the exact opposite of the way to go. The more automated the tools are, the more the players will be encouraged to treat it like a video game rather than a tabletop game. If you want video game dnd, there are already video games for that. If you want tabletop dnd, running it through an interface that makes it more video-gamey is just a bad idea.

Not... my experience at all. Maybe we just had different levels of automation, but my players still have to know when to activate their talents and what they exactly do, and which modifiers to activate for which roll. Having an online dice roller I've found enormously helpful. And my group has a tendency to talk over each other when excited (which is horrible on discord, so much so that I implemented radio protocols in combat. I attack with my longsword, over. Copy that, you slay the orc. Over. ) so an automated dice roller that clearly labels what someone rolled help a lot with clarity.

E.g. if I, as a DM see "Jeff rolled 6d6, results are 3 successes" in the chat, occasionally, I'm not sure what they just did. Having it say "Jeff rolled Social (Domination) with +2 dice for his impressive clothing and social status and -1 die for stress" just helps controlling the number of times I have to ask back what they rolled exactly and why, so it speeds up gameplay considerably. Meaning we can spend more time on the interesting stuff instead of discussing rules.

I also like having the sheets somewhere online where both I and the player can access them, so I can surreptitiously check things like how high someone's knowledge score was again or similar.

Apart from that, we're like the least videogamey group you can imagine.

[Fizban]

Not... my experience at all.
Indeed, most people who speak of it love the stuff, so my experience seems quite atypical, all the more reason to mention it.

Maybe we just had different levels of automation, but my players still have to know when to activate their talents and what they exactly do, and which modifiers to activate for which roll.
I am in some ways extrapolating- as I said, we played with maptools for a while, which doesn't have as much automation (no character generator for example). But between stories from people dealing with pickup groups on Roll20 with entitlement issues and/or no knowledge of the game other than what's in the character generator, players in my own groups (or in streams I've watched) that could barely be bothered to know the rules for their own characters, and the simple problems inherent in how much automation (or even fighting to make the automation knock it off) vs how much the DM is just running themselves, I can see it going badly very easily.

Having an online dice roller I've found enormously helpful. And my group has a tendency to talk over each other when excited (which is horrible on discord, so much so that I implemented radio protocols in combat. I attack with my longsword, over. Copy that, you slay the orc. Over. ) so an automated dice roller that clearly labels what someone rolled help a lot with clarity.
It can also have the effect of people constantly jumping the gun and putting in official rolls for things they shouldn't be rolling for, or with the wrong modifiers, or for actions they immediately realize they shouldn't be taking, even if they aren't goofing off. And unlike dice at the table, those rolls would stay in the text feed that's supposed to be useful, unless they've added selective deletion ability. Which exacerbates a usual problem of premature rolling in people rolling before they should and seeing a high number and wanting to keep it, now enshrined in the text feed they have to look at.

E.g. if I, as a DM see "Jeff rolled 6d6, results are 3 successes" in the chat, occasionally, I'm not sure what they just did. Having it say "Jeff rolled Social (Domination) with +2 dice for his impressive clothing and social status and -1 die for stress" just helps controlling the number of times I have to ask back what they rolled exactly and why, so it speeds up gameplay considerably. Meaning we can spend more time on the interesting stuff instead of discussing rules.
Most of those sorts of dice pool games I'm familiar with are a lot simpler to begin with- you have a standard pool, maybe the DM tells you to add or subtract some, and success has a standard effect- I would expect fewer problems there in general. Where DnD has multiple types of rolls made multiple times per turn, sometimes out of turn, which can be subject to all sorts of small fiddly modifiers which the players and/or automated system may or may not be tracking.

To clarify- I'm talking about stuff like "oh it has all the monsters' stats and you can move up and click attack and it will do the whole attack on the monster for you!" kind of stuff. Get one bug in the system (from a mis-filled box or somesuch) and it becomes completely useless until you figure out the problem, or have to manually override it constantly, or switch gears partway through. A dice roller is just a dice roller*, but integrated lighting and initiative and stats and status tracking and so on combined with the complexities of 3.x, are just begging for problems, in my experience.

*Though, which is more tortuous: watching someone slowly pick out and roll dice one by one then try to find the numbers to add from their sheet, or waiting for someone with no typing ability to peck in a roll string to make their official roll- when in both cases you already know their bonuses and could have slammed the roll in 3 seconds flat. Which is why the automated attack rolls and stuff are supposed to be so great of course, but then situational modifiers and buffs require more boxes to be ticked and eventually the player that needed the automated roll is going to mis-tick something and then poof. Better to make them practice doing it all by hand/head to begin with, or they'll never cope with high level 3.x, if that's a goal.

I also like having the sheets somewhere online where both I and the player can access them, so I can surreptitiously check things like how high someone's knowledge score was again or similar.
Oh I've considered that standard ever since online sheets were a thing, but it doesn't need to be integrated with the other tools.

[Melcar]

I had a long running gaming group. Sadly life happened and we moved in different states. We have discussed trying to get together and gaming online, but none of us have much experience in this. Any programs or suggestions that could help with this would be greatly appreciated!

Life’s the worst!!!

We use roll20 and Discord. We have found roll20 works brilliantly for dungeon crawling and simple things, but heavy role playing seems to not translate well, at least not for us!

[Twurps]

...And my group has a tendency to talk over each other when excited (which is horrible on discord, so much so that I implemented radio protocols in combat. I attack with my longsword, over. Copy that, you slay the orc. Over. ) ...

this. So very much this....

No matter what platform you use, you just can't have 3 people talking at once. Or, as I found out to my dimay: Actually you can. and they'll keep it up for quite some time as well.
So use whatever map, character, die-rolling etc tool you like, it doesn't matter al that much. Focus on getting a real good voice chat, without delays, cut-outs etc (definitely don't use roll20 for this!). And have like a session 0 specifically for 'gaming long distance' to develop whatever phone etiquette will work for you whilst still being fun.

[Xervous]

I think Foundry VTT is the best virtual table top by a mile, but roll20 has the best(read: most populated) LFG. If you already have a group together I would use Foundry.

If you don’t want to spend money, roll20. If you get to using roll20 and consider a subscription, just get foundry so long as your system is supported. If you like coding and have the time for it, get foundry yesterday.

Or if you find someone who has foundry just go along for the ride. Only the server needs the license and you can host multiple campaigns on the same server.

[Piggy Knowles]

My current group is a bunch of 30-something dads who all live fairly close and used to meet in person about once a month, but since the pandemic we’ve started doing things electronically. We have a Discord to keep things organized, and then meet up on Zoom for video chat, and use Roll20 if there’s ever anything that requires die rolling or grid-based play. I’m the DM, and I don’t fully utilize all Roll20 has to offer; I mostly just sketch out a quick map and use it for keeping position during combat and the like, and use Zoom for everything else. Roll20 has built in videoconferencing, but we found it was pretty unreliable, hence Zoom.

We actually ended up switching from meeting monthly in person to meeting almost weekly via Zoom, and even though we’re all vaccinated now the ease of doing things this way (it’s much easier to schedule around all our IRL obligations when we can just meet up for a couple of hours on a random evening from the comfort of our homes) means we’ll probably keep holding sessions this way for at least a little while.

That said, we’ve always been fairly casual - we generally only get through one encounter in a night, and spend most of the time talking and drinking, and we never got that into maps and minis when we met IRL. I’d typically just draw something up on a whiteboard, and we’d use whatever minis the host happened to have kicking around. So, the minimalist style of playing that we’re doing now works well for our particular group, but might be tougher for others.

[Troacctid]

The Roll20 character sheets for 3.5e are not amazing, mostly because of the weapon and spell sections, which are something of a mess. It's definitely a little harder to use than the character sheets for some other systems. But if you get past the learning curve, it can be a powerful and customizable tool that will greatly enhance your game.

Roll20 is totally free, no subscription needed—although as the DM, you might find it worthwhile to purchase the Pathfinder Bestiary, just to get access to tokens for almost every monster in the SRD, and if you do subscribe, you get access to a couple fancy extras like dynamic lighting and visual fx.

[Zanos]

If you don’t want to spend money, roll20. If you get to using roll20 and consider a subscription, just get foundry so long as your system is supported. If you like coding and have the time for it, get foundry yesterday.

Or if you find someone who has foundry just go along for the ride. Only the server needs the license and you can host multiple campaigns on the same server.
Yeah, roll20 being free is hard to beat for value per dollar, but considering I spend (tens of?) thousands of hours gaming, I don't mind forking over the one time 50$ fee for everything Foundry offers. That's under a year of r20s fee for it's premium features(and less than 5 months of R20 pro), which I find pretty underwhelming comparatively. Specifically r20s dynamic lighting feature is atrociously laggy and Foundry's is as smooth as butter. And nobody considering messing with an API or custom sheets should be anywhere near R20 vs. the alternatives.

I will say there was a time when R20 was best in class for easy to use VTTs. And it's always hard to beat 'free'. But they've stagnated badly and I am more frustrated with it than not these days. It also doesn't help that the guy who runs r20 is a massive jerk and I don't want to support the way he behaves.

One of my favorite thing Foundry is the sheer variety of community additions. The entirety of the 3.5 support is fanmade and it works better than the stuff r20 provides made by 'professionals'. Plus since it's self hosted I can upload whatever music, sounds, images, and other such nonsense I like without running into filesize limits or getting slapped. Or just not being able to since R20 disabled most of the music features.

[Lilapop]

unless they've added selective deletion ability
Gib.


Most of those sorts of dice pool games I'm familiar with are a lot simpler to begin with- you have a standard pool, maybe the DM tells you to add or subtract some, and success has a standard effect- I would expect fewer problems there in general. Where DnD has multiple types of rolls made multiple times per turn, sometimes out of turn, which can be subject to all sorts of small fiddly modifiers which the players and/or automated system may or may not be tracking.
As far as I understand it, Eldan's concern was less on the roll, result and mechanics, and more on the "I sweettalk him with a social roll" vs "I punch him in the face with an attack roll" layer on communication.


I need to get around to putting all my roll20 macros on GitHub. There are a few bits in there I'm kinda proud of, like selecting arrow types (even leading to a lower damage die in one case) and selecting sneak attack type (none/penetrating strike/full). And I wish there was a way to get strings as roll results...

[Eldan]

Yeah, I just like having a mouse-over label on every roll that tells me what exactly my players rolled. In some systems, that saves a lot of discussion time.

[Jay R]

Our group had trouble with the audio on roll20. So we now use Roll20 for the grid and Discord for conversation.

One very useful result is that I have the grid on my big computer screen, but when I walk into the kitchen for pizza or coffee, I'm still listening to the game.

[Elkad]

Roll20 for something simple.
MapTools is far stronger (and fully free), but the learning curve is also steeper.

[RexDart]

Our group had trouble with the audio on roll20. So we now use Roll20 for the grid and Discord for conversation.

One very useful result is that I have the grid on my big computer screen, but when I walk into the kitchen for pizza or coffee, I'm still listening to the game.

Same on all accounts. My DM has gotten a bunch of the Roll20 extra DM add-ons, and they work well, but unfortunately I don't know the details.

It may be good to have people have the audio on "push to talk," but I've never actually done it. Crosstalk and background noise can be problems, but that's probably player-dependent. I'm in two games with the same DM, and one of them works pretty smoothly while the other has 1-2 players with whom it's almost impossible to get a word in edgewise.

[TaiLiu]

You don't have to go high-tech with this. In fact, if you're not used to it, the transition to online D&D might be smoother if you limit the tech and keep many of the things the same.

My group just uses a video chat program (it used to be Discord but we switched to Google Meet). That lets us see each other's faces and allows for nonverbal communication. And that's mostly it, really. We have a Discord group that we chat in and throw in links and stuff. But otherwise we roll dice on our tables and we use whatever character sheet is easiest for us. We don't use maps, so we've never had to mess with Roll20 or anything like it.


It also doesn't help that the guy who runs r20 is a massive jerk and I don't want to support the way he behaves.
Do you have any details about this?

[Zanos]

Do you have any details about this?
TL;DR is that he refuses to do business with people for being "white and male"(he is white and male) and he bans critics from the roll20 forums unless tens of thousands of people tell him he screwed up, and only then he engages the people he actually hired to manage his PR to do damage control.

Both incidents should be relatively easily found with google. Just search roll20 controversy or something like that.

[Batcathat]

My group just uses a video chat program (it used to be Discord but we switched to Google Meet). That lets us see each other's faces and allows for nonverbal communication. And that's mostly it, really. We have a Discord group that we chat in and throw in links and stuff. But otherwise we roll dice on our tables and we use whatever character sheet is easiest for us. We don't use maps, so we've never had to mess with Roll20 or anything like it.

This is pretty much exactly how my group does it as well. It probably helps that the system we're using is fairly rules light.

[rrwoods]

TL;DR is that he refuses to do business with people for being "white and male"(he is white and male) and he bans critics from the roll20 forums unless tens of thousands of people tell him he screwed up, and only then he engages the people he actually hired to manage his PR to do damage control.

Both incidents should be relatively easily found with google. Just search roll20 controversy or something like that.

I would encourage anyone who reads this post to read about the incidents being referred to here and form their own conclusions before taking the word of anyone posting about them in a thread about how to game with their friends online.

[Axecleft]

If you are playing Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 on a VTT then The Foundry is the way to go without a doubt.

I ran several 3.5 DnD campaigns on Roll20 over an 7 year span with 8500+ hours spent in the system and migrated all of my games to The Foundry last summer.

Roll20 is the largest and has the largest player base but they only have basic support for DnD 3.5. by way of a character sheet. All other game content you will have to create yourself as there are no compendiums of download ready materials that you can download and jump into play.*
*(there is one premade demo adventure for 3.5 but it is for "0" level characters and is only to give you an idea of what might be possible.)

The Foundry has all the features available with a Pro subscription on Roll20 for a one time cost and does them flawlessly where as Roll20 still can't get basic lighting to work after 6 years of trying.

As an added benefit. Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 SRD is fully supported in The Foundry with a game system that includes automated character sheets, attack/save/skill rolls, damage reduction, regen and healing, automated spell books, psionics, all SRD spells and powers, loot and merchant sheets for automation, random encounter generation, XP calculation and awarding system, complete SRD equipment and magic item compendium, complete SRD bestiary. This system is being given to us by a developer who is a true Master of his craft and as with all systems in The Foundry is free to use.

The system developer has also began publishing premade materials for use with the DnD 3.5 SRD system so that a GM/group can simple load up a one shot and run an entire game without the need to spend hours/days putting together a campaign.

I will not post links here because I honestly do not know if it is allowed but a simple search for foundry DnD 3.5 will bring up plenty of information for you to make comparisons for yourself.

I hope this gives everyone who would be interested in 3.5 on a VTT a helpful idea of the Roll20/The Foundry comparison.

Axecleft

[storiweaver]

FWIW, i've played all the good versions of D&D (1,2,3,3.5) and i've even played 5 a bit (4 doesn't count and we shall not speak of it further). i've played a couple of campaigns totalling 4500+ hours on roll20. their endless debacles on broken lighting, unresponsive development, incompetent operations and unfathomable product decisions drove me away. i tried out foundry and i'm not even looking back. my roll20 pro subscription will expire this month with my previous credit card, now that i've got everything i need. i like that i had a one-time cost (~$50), i host from my own pc (i have good internet and h/w), and i can make my own competent backups and decide on my own when my platform will undergo changes, if at all.

now here's the extra thing that really turned me on to foundry was that once i decided to sink $50 into the platform (even though i was only 80% sure i was going to proceed at that point). once i asked for help with the 3.5e platform on the discord server (there's foundry and a 3.5e platform that sits on top of foundry; two different things, two different--and great--communities), the first guy who responded was super helpful and took the time to walk me through a couple things and answer noob questions, even though he was busy with some other stuff at the time. he wasn't the only one. the discord community supporting this platform is very supportive; it was a real breath of fresh air. turns out, btw, the first guy was the primary developer of the 3.5e platform for foundry! having gotten to know the community and it's members better over the last couple of months, i'm a big fan now.

see, when i finally decided i'd had it with roll20's announced retirement of a working lighting system in favour of a unfinished, broken one, i would have been happy to simple go to another platform and pay the same or less for the same functionality (maps, tokens, hp tracking, automation of some attacks). we've always done the rest (text, voice, inventory, canonical character sheets, important visuals and narration texts) in discord and on my campaign website. anything else would be frosting. but where i am now... i'm eager to try more of the available automation and tracking that the platform allows; things i said i didn't really need. i say this because roll20 never made me feel like i wanted to use more of it.

so, here i am. i've paid a one-time cost that's worth a small # of months of roll20 pro subscription, and i have a system that is more reliable, more flexible, within my control, cheaper, more fully features, better supported and has more shiny-shiny. bottom line: way more value for money.

so, for balance: foundry does require a bit more h/w muscle on the client side. only one of my players has h/w as good as mine, all the rest have less (some dramatically less). when i asked them (6 players in one game, 3 in another), they were all happy to stay on foundry and listen to their fans whine a bit in favour of the benefits. the performance of their weakest machines with foundry doesn't seem any worse than the performance of roll20 of late.

i offer this for anyone else who, like me 6 months ago, is wondering if they should jump somewhere else. even if you don't choose foundry, you can see what kinds of things played a part in the decision and what things were at least possible for others. and if it makes any difference to you, there's a steady stream of people showing up in the 3.5e foundry community who start with "i just cancelled my subscription in the other place" or "just showing up to try this out and see if it's worth switching". i'm one of them, and there's plenty others.

happy hunting. hope you find a good place to land.

[Kitsuneymg]

The roll 20 lighting change makes me livid. They didn’t fix the things that needed fixed and now every map I made months ago needs to be rechecked :/

How much is it to ask that we get a fog/darkness effect? I want to be able to drop a circle that limits vision to x feet if you’re inside it. If there’s a way on roll20, please share. Otherwise I’ll pay one year of r20 to get foundry forever