Tabletop session with one player remote through laptop?

[Kol Korran]

My group meets only once every 4-5 weeks, due to RL obligations and constraints. We decided we'll make as much effort as reasonably can for all of us to meet, and rarely play without a player.

However, one player has informed us that his wife's surgery got advanced to a day prior to our next meeting. She will most likely return home on the following day, and he will be thee to help her and so on.

So we tried to find another date, but the only one possible is again- 4-5 weeks after. The player in questions suggested either playing without him, or perhaps have him partly participate in the game from long distance, through cam, mic, and so on. We realize this won't be full participation, but this will be mostly done for the social aspect.

I would like however to enable the player get the best feel of the game, (Between attending to his wife), while not disturbing the tabletop game too much.

We don't have any experience with this kind of long distance participation. Does any of you have? We assume we'll need a cam, a mic and some speakers, but other than that? Where to set things, how to pace matters and so on.

Edit due to the posts below: We use miniatures and a battle grid, not Roll20.

Any help would be appreciated!

[lytokk]

I honestly don't see any reason this can't work. If you use miniatures, that would be the only real hangup, but can be gotten around pretty easily so long is everyone is able to help him with movement and such. Plenty of people play via web chat exclusively on websites such as roll20.

Most webcams come with a built in microphone, so you won't need more than that on your end, besides something to actually use. If you happen to have a computer with HDMI output and a HDTV in your gaming area, you can hook them up and have the player on the big screen. So long as he has a webcam it should work almost seamlessly.

[SethoMarkus]

Pretty much what lytokk said. Roll20.net is a wonderful website for long-distance gaming, but if you don't want to go through the trouble (since it sounds like this will be a one time, possibly two time, thing) you can use Skype as well. Skype won't allow him to make dice rolls through the application and there is no virtual tabletop, which sounds like it will help keep this as uncomplicated as possible for now.

[Kol Korran]

We do use miniatures and a battle grid. I know of Roll20 (I'm a player on 2 games in a PbP). But My players prefer the grid stuff... I was thinking of putting my cam on either my computer or one of the players' computers, pointed at the grid. Not perfect, but might work?

Skype sounds like a good idea! Simple to use, and we know of it.

Any other suggestions?

[Grod_The_Giant]

Maybe 2 cams and a group video chat-- one pointed at the grid, and one looking at the group.

[The Insanity]

http://ffn.nodwick.com/?p=61

[bulbaquil]

It's entirely possible. My group routinely plays a Pathfinder campaign with full battlemap-and-minis combat with one player living 2,000 miles away using Skype. It's not ideal, of course (among other things, there's no way to vet his dice rolls), but it's feasible.

You probably will want a speaker, though; laptop built-in speakers are not really designed for anyone to be listening other than the actual laptop user. Even at maximum volume, it may be hard for the entire gaming table to hear (especially if the laptop is toward the end of the table rather than the middle, which is likely if it's the GM's).

[NichG]

For a one time think I think its okay. In general though, I prefer either all-digital or all in-person. When you mix things, it can be a bit disruptive. Basically there's a certain etiquette if everyone is using something like Skype/Hangout/Roll20, because there's a single shared airspace all at the same volume and often one person speaking will drown out what everyone else is saying. In person, you can talk loudly or softly, so you can whisper to someone while the DM is doing someone else's round and things like that.

When you mix the two, the problem is that the guy on the laptop is going to have trouble separating the table chatter out, and it may be hard for them to tell when they're being addressed (missing visual cues), so it can get a little bit rough. For a single emergency session though I don't see a problem with trying it out at least.

[Alejandro]

I can definitely address this, because we do it.

Our gaming group plays each weekend. All the members except one live in the same city, one moved to California. We have one place at the table where instead of a chair, there's a laptop on a little table. Camera integrated in laptop, small speaker set plugged into laptop. On his end, he can see the mat and some of us, and hear us. On our end, we can see him. We're so used to it now, it's like he's physically there. He's on Skype, btw.

A few things you need:

- A good Internet connection
- Some table control (people need to learn to shut up when the remote player is talking or listening to someone.)
- The ability to trust the remote player, as you won't see his or her dice rolls unless they aim a camera at them
- The remote player needs to be OK with delegating a little to your other players. Trust them to handle exactly which square his mini moves to; let the remote player say "I move to a good spot and make an attack." This is way easier than expecting the remote player to be able to see everything as clearly as someone physically present.

[TeflonSam1]

My only advice is don't wait until game night to try this for the first time.
Set up a trial session with the remote player ahead of time so you can troubleshoot any tech issues then, instead of consuming valuable playing time.

[TheCountAlucard]

Definitely agreed on the "trial session." One of my players routinely played via Skype over his webcam because of a two-hour drive distance, only attending physically at most every couple of months; it can actually go pretty smoothly, but the system in which we played didn't rely on battle-grids, so I don't know to what degree that might complicate things.

[Knaight]

This seems straightforward to me. That said, the battlegrid complicates things a bit - the easiest thing here would be to label it. If you've got a fight in a room, quickly label one side A-H (or whatever) and the other 1-10 (or whatever). This makes expressing the movement verbally easy, using chess style (B1 to G3) notation.

It's also standard practice to have a second webcam up to check rolls made by the remote player. I'd consider this a total and utter waste of time, unless the player's math speeds are such that it is actually faster for someone else to look at the rolls and crunch the numbers. Granted, this relies on some level of trust between player and GM, but given that everyone in the group seems to know each other, that's fine.

[DrBurr]

I'd advise to play without him or just everyone play online that week. My group tried the whole skype in a friend thing and it didn't really work. The person playing online inevitably will get distracted, and will likely have feelings of exclusion because there not going to part of [insert stupid table event].

I'm sure it can work as a temporary fix so long as you address these problems but I'd highly advise against it being a regular thing.

[Nepenthe]

My group used to do this quite a bit. It is extremely helpful for the remote player if you can mic all the other players individualy. Otherwise all the table chatter just collapses into a ball of noise pollution.

[2E Phoinex]

My group has had the exact same situation where we wanted to play but one of our fellows was in another city.

We tried Roll 20 once but had a lot of difficulty setting up the video chat. I'll need to look into it more later though since it seemed neat.
Any way we soon wound up just using skype.

Setting up a trial run proved extremely helpful for us. We were able to find the laptop a place on the table that allowed the player to see me (the DM) and most of the game board. sadly we couldn't enable him to have each other player in his view at all times but in the end as long as he was able to hear them he was able to cope.

I say go the whole hog with tech while your at it: assign someone to take pictures of the board with their phone and send it to him. This worked out well for us though we don't use a grid and for the session in question there was minimal miniature usage. We let him use a dice roller on his phone and trusted the results.

In our game there weren't any feelings of exclusion and indeed it turned out to be a fun session, but I can see how this could easily become a problem.
True, when you have your game occurring in effectively two locations there will be the potential for twice as many distractions; but, our long distance player was engaged in the game and there were few interruptions.
When it comes to noise pollution for us, as a group of 5, it was really just a matter of being respectful and only having one person speak at a time. If anything my normally disruptive group seemed more attentive in order to compensate, but that was just a happy side affect.

The point is everyone had fun and yes this is completely doable. Just try to have a trial run and make sure everyone understands the need to reign in multiple conversations to a manageable level.

[Eldan]

I just had an idea, but:

Play Shadowrun or another Cyberpunkish game. Have the player on the Laptop be the group's hacker who's sitting in his defended home base, helping the group remotely.

Bam. Atmosphere.

[TheCountAlucard]

We actually bounced that idea around, the player I mentioned and I; unfortunately, I was the one playing the Matrix character.

[Kol Korran]

Thanks folks! I've spoken with the player, and we will probably due a trial run as some of you suggested this weekend. That is some good advice! We'll see how it goes. Thanks!