More Things I’ve Learned Running Games Online

I was THIS close to hurling my computer through my window. After weeks of constantly getting kicked out of any audio calls, or being just completely unable to connect, Bridget and I finally upgraded our internet. It was just running FAR to slow for me to run anything online.

So we got a new ISP, and things have been smooth sailing ever since! That’s gonna be the first of my list of more things I’ve learned running games online.

1. Get a good internet connection. Now that it’s working, I cannot stress this enough. It’s like light and day. I’m sure MOST of you out there have nice and speedy internet, but we didn’t. I didn’t realize how slow my connection was until I started downloading a new game on my XBox and it took only a few minutes.
2. Sometimes Roll20 doesn’t work as intended. For reasons I can’t explain, one of my characters CANNOT see anything with dynamic lighting. As a result, I’ve turned it off in a couple of maps. It did show them there were a bunch of zombies hidden around the corner, but they just pretended like their characers can’t see them. Still trying to figure out how to fix the dynamic lighting situation.
3. Everyone’s gotta be patient. You’ve got to acknowledge that sometimes, trying to find things by flipping through multiple computer tabs is gonna make things a little trickier to run, so as long as everyone’s comfortable chatting amongst themselves, it’s all good.
4. Sometimes, crosstalk can be a big issue. If you’re playing in person, everyone can read everyone’s body language to keep from inturrupting. Even if someone does, your brain’s able to easily separate out who’s talking, and can sometimes take in everyone talking separately and organize it to understand what’s being said. Not so online. Everything’s coming through one audio-feed, so you’re just hearing a scrambled mess of noise. Couple that with a slight delay, and you’ve got a lot of crosstalk. If you’ve got video, you can often see who’s trying to talk, and a lot of audio chats like Discord do show you who’s talking, so you can then pointedly ask each player what they were saying. Otherwise, give it a second pause, and ask each player to repeat themselves.
5. Work hard on avoiding distractions. Running online can be VERY distracting. Don’t let yourself get stuck reading something from a wiki and not listening to the players. If I know that I need to look up, say, the name of a planet and description, I’ll make sure to set my players up so that they need to talk amongst themselves for a few minutes. Give them a reason to talk about the nature of The Force or something.
6. Time Flies. I’m always shocked when it’s been 2 hours or so, and it’s time to be done. When I run stuff at home, 2-3 hours seems like a while, and we get a lot done, and get into character quick. But online, I feel like I’m just hitting my groove when we need to end. I’m running two games right now, and am only really able to start at 7PM. By 9PM, when I’ve been at work all day, I’m tired and ready to end. It seems to race by in the blink of an eye, which seems like a good reason to help push my players forward to keep momentum going.

I understand a lot of this article about the downsides of gaming online, whereas the last one was more positive, but I’ve been noticing troubles cropping up, and see how running online is definitely inferior (in my opinion) to playing in-person, and I look forward to the point that I get to do that again.

I’m sure I’ll have more observations soon. I’ll eventually come up with some good workable advice from all this.