The Things I’ve Learned Running Online Games So Far

Whew! This is been such a busy couple of weeks. I’ve been spending a lot of my free time just trying to get my online games set up.

For the past few weeks I’ve been running Lost Mines of Phandelver with a group of both new and experienced players. It’s been great seeing my sister and her husband learn to play the game. I’ve also just started back up with my Star Wars campaign, A Galaxy Divided.

I’ve been learning a ton of stuff along the way, and wanted to share with you.

Roll20 is superior to the janky stuff I tried to start off with. I began running Lost Mines using Zoom and… Photoshop. Yes, Photoshop. With Screen Share mode, I could just show the players the map, design my own tokens, and move things around how I wanted to. While it looked really nice, and it meant I didn’t have to teach both D&D and Roll20 to brand new players, the downside is that it was really tricky to run. Since I’ve gotten Roll20 set up, I’m enjoying it so much better. Being able to set music, use line of sight and lighting is just SO much better. I really like it.

It has a steep learning curve. Roll20, while somewhat user friendly, does take a lot of getting used to. There’s a ton to learn if you wanna make it work well. I’ve been messing with Dynamic Lighting, and it took me a good couple hours to work out all the kinks. It really helps that Bridget is in the campaign, so I can open her laptop and log her into the game to see what she’s able to see.

API scripts are your friend. I’ve gotten a ton of stuff to automate in the game using API scripting, including the really elaborate character sheets for FFG Star Wars. It’s worth the extra money to Roll20 to enable scripts.

It’s tricky to run on-the-fly. With all the maps, it can be kind of tricky to run on-the-fly stuff. To the players, it seems like you’ve got a map and tokens for anything, but if you weren’t thinking ahead enough and decide that Buzz Droids need to be the security system for the ship, you can’t just pop in nice-looking tokens. It’s much more obvious that you didn’t plan the encounter when you don’t have everything set up ready to go.

Having a computer right in front of you makes it seem like you know things better than you actually do. If I’m running in-person games, and I don’t know a piece of lore, I can pull up my phone, but if can seem pretty obvious I don’t know the information already. In the case of running at a computer, I can pull up websites with creature stats, lore, and anything else I need and talk about it like I just had it in my notes already. It really allows you to fake it till you make it.

I’m going to talk more about the specifics of each of my games in the near future. I want to know how your own games are going online! Let me know in the comments what you’re currently playing.