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After many years of wanting to get a group together, I now have a good group of players, however their is a threat of one moving out of state. We have kicked around using my laptop to keep the player in group, because players are hard to find. My question is has any one used this for a table top game, & was it worth it?

Skype is a great thing, but if you have the free version you can't have video-conferencing. That is, you can see and talk to one person, but for multiple-person conferences you get audio only.

IM programs I'm a little leery of. My personal experience with them has been that every one I've tried has installed extra garbage on my machine that I can't get rid of (which is why with the new machine we aren't installing an IM client). Although Yahoo has the chat function built into email, so you could access that through the internet.

Another problem with IM programs is cheating. I'm not saying anyone does cheat, but there are people who do cheat. And without having some kind of dice rolling program that logs and shows the results, someone is bound to take liberties with their rolls.

My recommendation to you is to use one of the freely available rpg clients out there (ScreenMonkey, Fantasy Grounds, etc.) to host and play the game, and then to use skype or some other VOIP program to talk to one another while gaming.

Just my 2 copper pieces.

OpenRPG is pretty good for online play. It requires an installation of Python but there's nothing dodgy about Python (besides being named for a snake, of course).

I think using a chat device of some sort sounds like a good idea as long as you have all players use InvisibleCastle.com or some other online dice roller. That way none of the rolls are fudged. GM however doesn't need to use them if you ask me.

My last game last Friday I did this. My brother moved to Toronto for a bit and we wanted to keep him in the game so we set up a game on Skype using my laptop and it's built in mic and webcam. It actually worked pretty good but wasn't quite the same. Some people can handle not being there in person, and some people are like my brother. He'll keep doing it because he loves the game, but he'd much rather be there in person.

SkyeFyre wrote:My last game last Friday I did this. My brother moved to Toronto for a bit and we wanted to keep him in the game so we set up a game on Skype using my laptop and it's built in mic and webcam. It actually worked pretty good but wasn't quite the same. Some people can handle not being there in person, and some people are like my brother. He'll keep doing it because he loves the game, but he'd much rather be there in person.

Thanks for the real world xp. It looks like we are going to try it.

SkyeFyre wrote:My last game last Friday I did this. My brother moved to Toronto for a bit and we wanted to keep him in the game so we set up a game on Skype using my laptop and it's built in mic and webcam. It actually worked pretty good but wasn't quite the same. Some people can handle not being there in person, and some people are like my brother. He'll keep doing it because he loves the game, but he'd much rather be there in person.

We've got something similar set up. Not 100% sure how it's set up, but both ends (us in one spot, remote player in the other) are using their iPhones as the webcam. Done through the laptop with the laptop also hooked up to the large LCD tv. So the guy playing remote is on the big screen, and he also can see what's going on (iPhone stuck to a window in the room with a mobile phone/gps holder for a car). Sound, we hear the remote player through the tv, and he hears us through a head set with mic set on the table.

We get a few problems with the set up now and then, but in general it's not that bad. Not the same as having the remote player in the same room, but it works.

We had a slightly different set up, with the remote player using a webcam, but the camera on the iPhone was better than his webcam. But when he was using the webcam, he used a dice roller app on his iPhone and would hold the phone to the webcam then tap the screen, so we would actually see his result before he did.

At the moment, our referee (running Cyberpunk), is doing his dice rolling.

Oh, we're in Australia, and the remote player is in Malaysia. So don't forget to allow for timezones.

8p

CyCo wrote:Oh, we're in Australia, and the remote player is in Malaysia. So don't forget to allow for timezones.

8p

That can be a pain when you have players in Australia, Europe and North America.

We played Rifts on OpenRPG and Skype for 6+ months and it rocked. It was a small group, 4 players, with one being the "talkiest", and the rest of us chiming in from time to time. OpenRPG is great for rolling dice and keeping track of things.

One caution, if the group gets too big, then the loudest tends to dominate. So you might think about coming up with some rules on who talks when or keeping the group size to 6 or under. When I was in a D&D group that used skype, it had 8 players and a DM, and it was a lot more chaotic. You had to type and talk, which isn't always a bad thing, since it gives you a written record of play in OpenRPG that you can go back and refer to.

Shawn Merrow wrote:

CyCo wrote:Oh, we're in Australia, and the remote player is in Malaysia. So don't forget to allow for timezones.

8p

That can be a pain when you have players in Australia, Europe and North America.

Yeah. that would be somewhat problematic...



8]

I will have to agree with Athos here. Moreso remotely than when in person the GM will need to be a stricter referee on who can talk, when.

I use Skype 2-3 times a week to game with my friends. Before I had a webcam, I used Yahoo Messenger.