Jumpin' on the bandwagon

So to avoid this blog standing at just an introduction, I shall follow up on a post made by my two cohorts-in-crimeGMing. The original posts can be found here and here.

To quickly actually write this down, here's my experience with tabletop RPGs (which have nothing to do with the far superior amount of hours spent with videogame RPGs)

1. Player in a Max/Aaron-co-DM'd, 13-session DnD campaign
2. GM'd a 4-session Inquisitor game
3. Player in a 6-sesssion Orpheus game GM'd by Rome
4. About to embark on an X-session Dark Heresy campaign, GM'd by me

Of those, all but one are/will be electronic only, and to further divide it 2 and 3 were text only while 4 will be text and voice.

With that said, I have overall more experience with face-to-face RPGs, but also a lot of electronic experience, and unlike Mr. Flask and Stormshrug (I think?) I have actually GM'd a session online, so I thought I'd contribute my two cents in that direction.

Advantages!

1. Maps. Especially for the 2 40k based systems that don't use a tile system, it has been way nicer and more convenient to create electronic maps, have electronic models, and do distance and movement without a lot of awkward use of rulers. Also quick switching to new maps is a lot easier.

2. Descriptions: As said elsewhere, the ability to copy-paste long descriptions and what I called "cutscenes" made it a lot easier to me to send out a lot at once, and because reading is more active than listening I could be relatively sure most of what I wrote was getting absorbed, at least somewhat.

3. Prioritizing: I know with the face-to-face, there would be moments where all 4 of us were trying to get Aaron/Max's attention, and obviously a person can only deal with so many inputs at once. I would end up trying to get the current DM's attention for a couple minutes, or have to wait patiently, or sometimes get my question forgot. This is no fault of anyone's, since a person can only pay attention to so much at once, but with text-only I can respond in order and look back at all the questions to see what I need to still address, which helps both the players and the GM.

4. Resources: When I GM'd Inquisitor, I had two monitors up, and on them I had the game board, a dice roller, Skype for the IMing, my planned notes, an electronic copy of the rules, notes for the current session, a browser up for quick searching, as well as a physical copy of the rules next to me. This made looking things up and dealing with problems super efficient, and it's simply not possible to have so much stuff up in face-to-face unless you steal an entire half of the table. And certainly not as efficient.

Disadvantages!

1. Side chatting: I've definitely done this as a player, so it's understandable, but as a face-to-face DM you're always partial to conversations players have, which means you can potentially shoot down bad/unreasonable ideas before too much thought is put into them. However, with online you can get players making plans in private chats, which means that they can potentially come up with elaborate plans that might have a fatal overlooked flaw (I don't think this has happened, but I could see it occurring). It can also cause players to get distracted from the main screen, since I know there were a few moments where I thought players weren't paying attention but were just talking to each other. Hopefully adding voice will prevent the latter.

2. Rules look-up: In face-to-face you can find a rule/power/etc and look at it together, whereas online you have to find it yourself, tell the player(s) the page, wait for them to find it themselves, and then discuss it. Not necessarily a lot of extra time,  but it's still more slow-down in what is already a nuisance that pulls players out of the moment.

3. Friendly chatting: Although on one hand out-of-character conversation is bad, on the other you are gathered with your friends for a social event, so that kind of chatter can be very enjoyable. Being limited to a chatroom limits this a lot, and even though voice chatting should help a lot, considering how much communication is nonverbal I suspect it still won't be quite the same.

Conclusion(?)


Obviously while I do have the edge of GMing electronically, I don't have the experience of GMing face-to-face to compare it with, so I am at somewhat of a disadvantage for comparing the two. Although it's somewhat of a cop-out, it's probably safe to say that both methods have their benefits, and it might even be that certain systems benefit from one style more than the other. With that said, I'm really glad I have electronic means for breaks when physical meeting is impossible.

Well, that's the first real post. Now to hopefully remember all those other topics I thought it'd be interesting to write about and start on that. Also expect updates on Dark Heresy once we start.

-HTMC