Roll20 Solo: Going Digital

As an experiment, I took down my gaming table, removed all the giant maps, cleared everything off, plopped down a large monitor, and hooked up a computer. I also managed the cables to make it all look nice.

I left room for books and a dice tray, but no physical maps or figures were on the table - just the monitor and computer. I then fired up Roll20 and used that as my "game table" on the computer.

I mostly play solo, so giving up my game table for another "computer workstation" was a radical change. But I promised myself no "PC gaming" here; this is just a virtual game table setup, as if I were streaming and DM-ing from this table. This is why I left a lot of empty room on the table, no knick-knacks, no piles of notebooks, no figures, and no clutter.

I have a part of the table reserved for books I use during play. On the other side of the table, I have one dice tray with a premium set of dice, in case I want to roll something off VTT from a table in a book or check my yes/no oracle dice. Nothing else goes on this table.

One monitor. One laptop. A mouse and mousepad.

The rest of the 60x30 table is empty for gaming books and dice, as I need them. I clear it off when I'm not playing a game and put it on a shelf.

During the session, I limited my computer apps to my music player, Roll20, the windows it can spawn, and my PDF reader. This computer just needs to run a webpage, so it did not need to be anything fancy—just a machine that works well enough and can get my session running. I uninstalled programs that distract me, compete for time, or give me "other fun things to do." Social media use is not allowed on this machine during my play time.

I embraced "distraction-free gaming" and kept it simple. Like Shadowdark's rules design, I tossed out anything I did not need or that distracted from the experience.

It feels strange to use Roll20 as a solo gamer, and I know, find a group! But in the odd times I play, having something that 'saves my game" and provides a log of everything that happened last session is invaluable.

I also like Roll20 since it is more than "just D&D." This gives me a VTT and character sheets for many games, and I can also "wing it" if I want and just play without official character sheets. You can't buy GURPS or have "official support" on Roll20, but there is a good community-created character sheet, and it is not hard to make it work well on this system.

It also feels strange to use the dropdown to set "my current player" or even "set myself as referee." However, I still do this since going back and reading my chat log, rolls, attacks, damage, skill rolls, and other information I type in is invaluable. This means "talking to myself as DM" in the chat, just to keep track of what is happening, the start of encounters, and the results of actions, but I keep my notes and "flowery language" to the point, so it is not too much work.

A DM and players "must announce what is happening or their current action."

As a DM, describe the results of attacks or skill rolls.

As a player, clearly state actions.

Also, as a DM, let player skill rolls "simmer a while." If a player makes a successful check to sneak or hide, if that check succeeds, don't keep rolling a skill check every turn. Let the result stay around for a while until the situation changes. I made a sneak roll for agility for a player, rolled a 19 vs. a DC 15, and let that player remain hidden for the scene, even when they followed the monsters into another scene.

Thematically and story-wise, that skill roll should have a reasonable narrative duration.

You don't roll for every foot of progress when climbing a rope.

This method also reduced the pain of playing on a VTT since making endless rolls for every little thing, every step of the way, and every minute of the day is a terrible, grindy, slow, and sickening way to play. This is also the problem of "passive skills" since they assume an "always on" mindset; they imply that dice rolls for everything should always happen every turn. In my story, that character "creeping and following" made an excellent die roll, giving the character "sneaky status" until things change, making sense and speeding play.

You are a terrible referee if you force players to roll for the same thing twice (and nothing has changed). All you are trying to do is screw the players with the dice. Roll once and let it stand.

On the flip side, if the players fail, let that stand, and don't let them roll for the same thing twice. Find another way, another skill, or just figure out how to move forward.

Your dice rolls should mean something.

You get one die roll and stand by it.

Stop playing with the dice and rolling them repeatedly until you get the desired result. Your dice will lose their power. Imagine playing Monopoly that way.

That isn't gaming.

If you ever need to re-roll for a better result, stop and say, "GM Fiat!" Then, just say what happens without rolling another die. You will save a lot of heartache this way, and your dice will retain their mystical powers.

I treat the chat logs as my game log; typing them all in seems painful. Later, however, coming back and reading "what I said as DM" and "how a character reacted" makes the little extra effort worth it. Typing "I sneak to the treasure chest" as a character, creating a roll, and having the DM say, "You sneak over and find..." seems like more work at the time, but later on when I fire up the session again, the game is right there, and what I typed in becomes my journal.

When you play solo, it is not all "free-form mind play," that is one of the quickest ways to fail at solo gaming. Without a journal, I find my solo games all fall apart. With my Roll20 games and chat logs and having the character sheets stored online, I see everything is waiting for me to return to it and pick up right where I left off. I can have a few games running at a time.

When I started this, it seemed utterly counterintuitive.

• Why would I give up my gaming table?
• I love figures, dice, maps, and pawns!
• Nothing beats tactile, real-world play!
• The online tools and character sheets never work right!
• This is going to be more work and hassle for no benefit!

And then, I made the commitment. I am "going digital" while keeping my books and ability to roll dice outside the machine. I knew this was the right choice when I discovered how much dust was gathering on my table. My games take zero space in my room, I can switch between a few of them, and I am learning to work with the tools and systems so I will be ready to play online with others, should that come up.

I am playing more now.

I use my physical books, PDFs, and real-world dice much more. Even when gaming on a monitor, I still like to have my real-world books and dice to use, and they help me feel like I am playing the game.

Going digital was one of the best decisions I have made regarding gaming.

...versus World of Warcraft

5E turning into the 'pen and paper MMO' is doomed to fail. I logged into World of Warcraft recently to check the upcoming expansion, and while this MMO is highly flawed, it is still a better experience than an online 5E game. The metrics we all use as excuses to 'play 5E' get blown out of the water by a halfway decent MMO.

No, World of Warcraft isn't D&D.

But it is an 'activity' like D&D that shares a lot in common:

• Fantasy
• Consumes Time
• Play with Friends
• Adventure and Story
• Character Progression

Finding a game? I have a button to instantly get into a group whenever I want. I am put in the queue, and off I go! Granted, these are not the best games, but unlike 5E, I am not forced to waste weeks figuring that out - and have to give these people personal information and find a shared play space. And in an MMO, I never have to let them into my house. That may sound massively unsocial, but this is the world we live in post-2020.

Chances are I will land in an active and friendly guild on a server if I show interest and the willingness to learn and follow orders. I will always have content and groups. I will never need a dungeon master. I do not need 3d assets or a VTT to run a game. No game prep. No 80-dollar books to buy. There is a monthly fee, but it is cheaper than keeping up on 5E books and Kickstarters.

Granted, this is all an 'I know this' comparison - and a pretty lame article. There is no 'dungeon master' in World of Warcraft - but with AI advancing as quickly as it is, and Microsoft buying Blizzard, this likely is only a matter of time.

MMOs are not roleplaying. Not yet.

But a strange convergence of AI and online adventure is where we are heading.

But I ask myself, what is the Wizards VTT building? A static, non-animated, unmoving version of World of Warcraft with a few limited terrains and towns that we will all get sick of after one or two sessions? Part of the fun of a pen-and-paper game is going to places we have never been to and seeing people and cultures far removed from our experience. How fun will it be to go back to the same damn tavern map and town a few hundred times because the selection in the store isn't that great, and we don't have the money to keep buying 3d maps?

I have been in the 3d industry, especially the 3d asset creation field - building 3d sets and terrains is not cheap, and it can take weeks or months for a dedicated artist to pull off. To make that 3d set work within a VTT engine? That is further work 'editing the map' by a level-design editor, like creating the walkable surfaces the ruler will work on - more time and money spent. Testing? QA? Packaging? Store cloud space? More money is added with each step. Especially if the 3d assets you use are essentially asset flips from game stores, you get into relicensing fees and contracts (and having to pull an asset because the license expired).

Pretty soon, what you thought would take a 3d artist to 'hack out' is taking months to build a dungeon for the next major module release; the testers are complaining a few hundred issues are broken. What you thought you could flip on the VTT store for a few hundred dollars to build, and ship is turning into expensive videogame development in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in sunk development costs - that may release with a thud. You want the VTT Tomb of Horrors to be an 'experience' - of course, we need to sink more money into this!

How much can you charge for this?

The Wizards VTT feels like it is showing more for investors than for gamers. If you wanted gamers, the sets would be modular and snap together easily. You could buy pieces. This feels like a tech demo meant to grab investor attention.

Meanwhile, MMOs are sitting over there with infrastructure, cost data, scale, staff artists, animators, and the customer base to pull it off and make money doing it since they have been down that road for decades. They know how much money they can sink into a 'dungeon' for it to make money, and they have millions of customers ready to pay and allow for a profit margin.

AI plus D&D has a long way to go and is a niche experience.

AI plus an MMO is 99% of the way there and mainstream.

Wizards is trying to build a backdoor MMO with the VTT, which is doomed. Not just from a 'being negative' standpoint, but from an observational one - the level of adoption and success they would need to create the economy of scale to pull this off would be unprecedented.

And sooner or later, they start bumping heads with MMOs.

No, you can't 'roleplay' that well in MMOs. And you can't tell your 'own stories' - but the value and delivery of services are more accessible than a VTT. The costs are far less, especially when it comes to asset creation. Online roleplaying is a niche product, and VTTs are in the novelty market where more effort is needed to make the whole thing work than most people are willing to put in.

What happens when an MMO creates an AI 'dungeon master' that crafts stories around your favorite MMO character, and the game suddenly never plays the same way twice? What happens when the MMO AI DMs dynamically create adventure zones, NPCs, and 3d maps? What happens when your character's story is this complex, amazingly written creation that you have narrative control over, given your actions? What happens when your character has romance options with dynamically generated NPCs and can raise an in-game family and kingdom?

Will you even need a VTT?

An AI-driven VTT is a product designed to play the game we were interested in 10 years ago in the best way possible. It isn't forward-looking. And it will be quickly replaced by AI-driven mainstream options.

The VTT Wars

So I am late to the party with VTTs, enjoying playing solo or in person. I logged into Roll20 and made a serious effort to learn the platform. When you look at the number of games on these platforms, something deceptive is happening.

5E is the default choice since everything is ready to go. This is the "use an iPad as my computer" answer to the "Which game are we playing" question. It is about the most straightforward system to get going, all the integration features are there, and everything is done for you.

But damn, 5E is NOT designed for VTT play. If they are redesigning 5E for VTTs, the game's design needs to change dramatically to avoid all of the ritualistic "okay, do X, Y, and Z" to get a surprise round complete and the first round of combat. It is clunky and requires specialized knowledge, a rule book open, and multiple opening and closing character sheets and dice rolls to figure out what is happening.

5E's surprise round and the first round of combat remind me of old-school Car Wars in that game's slowness, ease of messing up, and complexity. It makes card-based initiative systems like Savage Worlds look amazing by comparison.

That first turn of combat is the most important. It "builds the shared universe" that defines the critical experience that is VTT play. There are so many rituals and procedures to follow; if you got a room of Apple engineers in there and said, "Simplify this and deliver a better experience," they would have a field day.

The entire game is like that, open a sheet, click on something, get the roll, and continue play. It is 90% set up, which makes it the default choice.

But what is really the default choice here?

It is not 5E.

It is the Roll20 platform.

5E is in the position the Java programming language was in a few years ago. The default choice for corporate people to build business applications in (and still the default for many organizations), but with many different flavors and vendors supporting the common language. There are other languages, but you use Java to play in the corporate sphere.

And there are as many different flavors of 5E as there is Java. Amazon, IBM, and many other companies make a version of Java to use. The default is the official Oracle version, but it is a weaker standard, and companies sometimes choose other versions. In 5E, we have Esper Genesis, Tales of the Valiant, numerous OSR variants, Low Fantasy Gaming, Advanced 5E, and many other flavors.

One of the substantial strategic weaknesses of Wizards 5E is it is fantasy only. They open the doors for competitors to play in every other genre, and other games own those spaces. Wizards should focus on 5E as a generic system, with officially supported modules for every game genre. A 5.5E wastes time, especially when the strategic goal is control of the VTT space. This is probably one of their critical mistakes with 5.5E, on the "Windows Phone" level, that people will look back on and say they blew it right here.

What happens when players want to play Cthulhu, modern, weird west, superhero, horror, or sci-fi? They play other games, some are 5E, and many are not. They use other VTTs with supported systems. You can't monopolize the VTT market by catering to one genre.

Properties Hasbro owns are using other systems! What is going on over there?

Wizards has an engine they could turn into any game genre and then control the platform that runs them all. It should be simple to see, build, implement, and support. They have the designers, IP, and know-how to do this.

But instead, they are blowing it by putting all their eggs in the D&D basket.

They should be putting their eggs in the 5E basket.

Roll20 is positioning itself as Linux, the system all games are run on. They do that by supporting all games across many genres. This is where Wizards should be, but they can't see it.

Tabletop Simulator

https://store.steampowered.com/app/286160/Tabletop_Simulator/

Tabletop Simulator. I gifted my friend this on Steam during last weekend's sale and we played around with this, and she enjoyed it a lot. I wanted to play traditional pen-and-paper games with her right away but we ended up playing with the physics sandbox a whole lot, and then we played a couple traditional games, and then we made up our own games with the pieces we had available.

I gave her spawn permissions and she had a blast. She crashed one game by spawning a couple dozen bowls into the game all at once but live and learn.

We are still playing this and her interest is shifting to pen-and-paper games, and I find that this sort of online play tool with a lot of other things and games to play is ideal for introducing new players to online play. While this isn't as full featured as a Roll20 or other dedicated virtual tabletops, there is a lot of "other stuff" to do to get someone interested in virtual gaming than other packages.

We can play chess, checkers, Chinese checkers, dominoes, poker, or any other board game she was familiar with. We got used to how online tabletop gaming worked with familiar games.

The downside is that we need to stick to simpler games, such as B/X style games, and that is also an upside as well. I can get complicated character sheets for "big book" games, but I would rather not. I would like to keep it simple and just use the note cards and a simple set of rules. I don't want to overwhelm players with complicated setups to start, though it is nice to have workshop content to cover these games.

This is an excellent introduction and sandbox for new players and we are both happy we set this up.

Sale: GM Forge

Check this out:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/842250/

This is one I spotted on Steam today, the Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds alternative GM Forge is on sale today - and it has a couple pretty good reviews. This is a good link as well in the discussion forum on the differences between this and other software:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/842250/discussions/0/1697174779847584384/

https://steamcommunity.com/app/842250/discussions/0/1697174779847825799/

What I like about this one is if the GM owns the software players can join your game for free, without owning the software. No subscriptions either, and your content is stored on your machine. The software also supports Steam Workshop content, so there is the possibility of new games and adventures being modded in and packaged up for download. There is also talk of a stand-alone server coming soon, so you will be able to run this on another machine and log in to manage the game.

Cons?

There are a couple complaints about the UI and also a learning curve, and I have got in and messed around and I can confirm that. It does feel (at the moment) just a little bit on the beta/early side of polish but I am sure that will get better as time goes on. The app also maximized on my large monitor and it was a huge space to manage, so I am hoping for a windowed mode (or a way to resize the app). It doesn't feel slick, but it does the job.

There are also some users making note of having to port-forward and expose IPs, but I am sure someone will write a FAQ on how to sort all that out and use a VPN service if you don't want your IP out there. Then again if you are running Internet/open games like that those are issues you should probably be thinking about all this before you start a game. Maybe someone (or the developer) will create a matchmaking service and we won't need to worry about this, so you never know.

This is also Windows only software at the moment on the GM side, but players can join anywhere they have a browser.

Promising...

That said I like this one and it offers me a good alternative to other systems, especially for game designers who don't want to require potential new players to have to buy a virtual tabletop client (or sign up for a service) to try out a new game with the designers, or OSR referees looking for a group without too much commitment. To be fair, I believe Fantasy Grounds also has that join for free option, but it is in one of the more costly packages. This is cheap, functional, people with just a browser can join a game for free (like on a tablet), and it works well enough for me to dive in and support the project and keep tracking it.

Fantasy Grounds vs. Tabletop Simulator, part 1

I have been looking at a number of virtual tabletops, and two grab my interest:

Fantasy Grounds

Tabletop Simulator

Fantasy Grounds has it all, robust rules support, downloadable modules, a UI written for roleplaying, character sheets, and a bunch of other great pen-and-paper features. The downsides? This is still a mostly 2d presentation, so watching people play this could be like watching a sheet of notebook paper. The game and rules would likely have to be pretty exciting to keep interest high in a game if you streamed this online for people to enjoy.

Tabletop Simulator is less pen-and-paper focused, and it is fully 3d. You don't have character sheets, dynamic drawable maps, portraits, and other focused assets to help play - but you do have a ton of 3d tabletop pieces that are fun to play with and look at. This is more for sim-ing board games where you have many small pieces, like Axis & Allies, Monopoly, card games, or other token and board games people play together on a tabletop.

The question for me is, which does a better job showcasing a game for an audience on Youtube? While Tabletop Simulator (TTS) has a great 3d look and is very watchable as everything moves around in 3d, Fantasy Grounds (FG) is made to do the pen-and-paper job and would be ultimately less frustrating when playing and explaining things.

It feels like a battle between looks and functionality.

You can't do a live character sheet in TTS, nor can you really do a great draw-as-you-go map. They recently added whiteboard style drawing support into TTS, but it is limited and very low-resolution. You would have to make a lot of comprimises to make things work in TTS, and there may be a problem with having much at all on the 3d board resemble what you are playing with, such as genres like sci-fi, modern, and other eras are not well-represented by the included 3d assets. You do have dungeon tiles and a lot to look at, but it is centered around fantasy and there is limited expansion possibilities without being a full 3d modeler.

With FG, a lot of that is solved, but your assets are all 2d and flat. I suppose this comes down to having a great DM and explaining things as they go. To keep attention, you need great assets and a constantly changing board, which FG can do. I love the 3d look of TTS though, but I have this feeling it isn't there yet when it comes to quality pen-and-paper support.

There is another alternative, Roll20, and I want to include this in on the discussion since it is free, but it falls into the same area as Fantasy Grounds since it is also a 2d tabletop. My thoughts are more of a 2d vs. 3d tabletop comparison, so I will probably include FG and R20 on the same side of this comparison (with your preference deciding which you use).

So for game demos and streaming, which do you prefer? Do you think the market is going to a more 3d presentation, or is sticking to what works in 2d the way to go forward? It is an interesting question, and one I want to check out. More on this soon.

Virtual Tabletops

Just found a cool virtual tabletop site over at Roll20.net. Paizo also announced their own Virtual Tabletop, and Wizards has just cancelled their VTT project. We used to run demo sessions of SBRPG via virtual tabletop a long time ago, so these are cool and interesting for us. They are definitely cool, and allow groups of players around the world to play together.

I have heard the largest problem was not the virtual tabletop, but finding games and joining them. Running an online pen-and-paper game is a lot of work for a referee, and at any one time, there are few referees to run games with. If there was some way of making this task simpler, maybe through prepackaged modules for use with a VTT, this would be an easier thing to get going. Another idea is to run a 'drop in and play' game on a regular schedule, but you would need a community and forum to put that together with.

You don't need an automated system, like a MMO, where players can join, have random encounters, and play without a referee. Automated play leads to automated players, and you need that one-one-one between players, the referee, and the rules. When you get into a system that was programmed against you, the natural human response is to test that programming, break it, and beat the game. With a referee, it all changes, and the magic of social interaction happens.

I would love to run a couple games of anything via VTT, and I may do so in the future someday.