When I moved, I left all my tabletop RPG buddies behind. These are good friends, some of whom I’ve gamed with since high school (well, junior high if you want to consider that inarticulate fumbling with dice and half-comprehended charts true gaming). I promised myself (and them) that we would continue to play — through the power of the Internet.
Six months later, I got around to looking into how to actually do this. Specifically, I explored the world of virtual tabletop RPG software. The point of such software is simulate the round-the-table, Cheeto-munching, Dew-swigging experience of an actual RPG session, but online. It doesn’t (usually) handle the rules for you; it’s just a tabletop. Our group tried out a couple different systems, but in hopes of passing our experience along and saving other gamers some time, here’s what we’ve found works best:
- MapTool is our VT of choice. It’s free, easy to set up, and easy to use. It doesn’t have any audio, but it does have chat, and comes with enough playmats and tokens to get anyone up and playing a DnD game in minutes. The specifics of the playmat are based on the d20 system, but you can tweak them to accommodate whatever you’re doing. (While at their website, check out TokenTool, which turns any graphic on your hard drive into a DnD-style battle token. Yes, random guy from Google images, you’re now an NPC in my zombie apocalypse RPG.)
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Skype is the obvious choice of software to let everyone talk to each other. The conference call option lets everyone talk at once, and it has built-in chat software, so the GM can privately chat with any of the players. The only thing we haven’t been able to force Skype to do is play music while we game.
- For our most recent game, our GM figured out how to use Ventrilo to stream a soundtrack for the session. I suspect that with more fiddling, we might be able to condense our voice-chat and soundtrack both onto Ventrilo, but we haven’t figured it out yet. And maybe we won’t; I like the option of adjusting the soundtrack volume separate from the VOIP volume. I love Bear McCreary as much as the next guy, but sometimes you got to turn those drums down.
If you don’t have your gaming friends nearby, I recommend giving the virtual tabletop thing a try. If you, give ’em a hug — a big, awkward, sweaty geek hug that says, “I’m glad I don’t have jump through a bunch of internet hoops just to toss dice with you, ya big lug.”
