Tips for a great TTRPG over Teleconference.
We’ve all been living our social lives out over the internet for a while now. Today, lockdowns have made a Zoom call the next best thing to meeting your friends for dinner. Even so, there are some elements of running an imaginative storytelling game online that aren’t intuitive. I’m going to lay out some of the stuff I’ve learned through my time running games through telepresence.
Visuals
Make sure that if you need to share visuals, you’ve given it some thought ahead of time. As long as you can tell a good story, your game will be fun. Sometimes showing is better (or at least faster) than telling. Here are a couple of workarounds and tricks that can give you that little extra help to make the game engaging and the story clear.
The screen-sharing feature of your teleconference may be your best friend.
As a DM, I frequently rely on some scratch paper or a whiteboard to sketch out the idea in my head or the terrain where the epic fight will go down. Drawing by hand is a challenge in teleconference since the webcam will often not pick up the ink well and not everyone will be able to see well. To avoid this, there are a couple of key things you can do.
Find a picture that gives an idea of what you’re thinking. It helps to do a little extra prep work here so that the picture is already on your hard drive or in a browser tab and ready to go.
Use an art/photo editing program to serve as an interactive map. I personally have found success in using a free software called GIMP (The GNU Image Manipulation Program, https://www.gimp.org/). You can use a base image and draw on top of it and/or draw out a map just like a digital version of the trusty whiteboard.
I also like to make little signifiers of all the characters on the board as separate layers so I can move them around easily.
You can consider using a Virtual Table Top (VTT) service that has battle maps built in as a feature. I personally have not had great luck with the big names in the space and I find that the learning curve for getting everything working has slowed down players from getting right to the game. I want to cut that prep window as much as possible. Your mileage may vary.
Consider logging in more than once.
Maybe you’ve got stuff like a physical board, tokens, or cards. All of that stuff works best when it’s seen. For this, it might be helpful to log a second device into the conference with the camera broadcasting the stuff. You may need to do some problem-solving beforehand though.
Make sure you’ve got something that can hold the device. A phone clip, tripod, or selfie stick duct taped to a shelf might be just the thing for you. I personally absconded with my wife’s ring light which had a phone holder built in.
Lighting is key. troubleshoot this the day before at the time you’ll be playing as the light coming through your windows will help/hurt how legible the cards are, how wide your marker lines need to be, and whether you need to angle the camera so the minis look like more than colourful blobs. If you can make sure you have bright, consistent, and diffuse light you should be able to control how everything looks.
Try to minimize glare. If all else fails, rigging a thin plastic bag between the light source and the table may help.
That ring light I mentioned helped a lot with this. They’re not terribly expensive so it might be worth the money for you.
Planning
Planning for a game over teleconference is pretty similar to the way you plan for a game in person. The difference is concentration. Keeping your players engaged is just a little harder online because you know that they have the whole internet right there and you’ll never know when they’ve checked out. You can beat it.
Make sure you’re challenging the player as well as the character.
Adventure hooks: a trope as old as tales. Every guidebook encourages the game runner to come up with a compelling hook for their story. Many veteran game runners can get a little cavalier about that. We know that the players want to go on an adventure and will go with a flimsy hook, trusting that you’ll get them to a cool story. Let’s say you’re playing with a bunch of folks you may not know. Maybe you’re playing in a big, open-sign-up, TTRPG event. Without the benefit of that one shared bowl of pretzels on the gaming table, it can be hard to get your players to connect as a group.
I love a good puzzle for the early to middle of the session. This gives the players something to work out in their real brains. Sure, you may give them a mental stat roll for hints or to eventually let the characters come up with a solution. Before that, you are describing something in great detail so that they can soak up those details and do some reasoning. Think of it as a session hook to go with your adventure hook.
Think about the connections they’re building to the game world. Can you pose moral dilemmas, questions of loyalty or concerns? Can you make them worry that things might not be as they appear? These challenges will deepen the connection to your story and give the players more to base character decisions on. This is nothing new to an experienced DM but it’s very helpful in this context.
Running
Try to keep things moving.
Whatever you need to do to get initiative in order, do it. Think about it ahead and have it ready. I use a spreadsheet and sort by the initiative columns a lot. Cards, magnet boards, and good, old-fashioned scratch paper lists are all good.
Who’s up after this player? Giving the group a heads-up lets them think out their action before you get to them.
Reward them with extra descriptions and cinematics for being prompt or having their move planned out. You having fun with it helps them have fun with it and doing it more when they’re on top of it is a great way to use positive reinforcement and brain chemistry to our benefit.
This is just as important out of initiative order. If you’re resolving a conversation between Player A and an NPC, let Player B know that you’re coming back to their part of the scene next.
If you are playing a game with set spells, effects, or maneuvers; have those on hand for quick reference. Whether it’s a second screen with a searchable PDF or an easy-to-hand copy of the rule set; you want to be able to adjudicate that spell and describe its effects without a lot of dead air.
Finally
I'm not an expert or authority. I’m just another DM. These pieces of advice are things I wish I had thought of, mistakes I’ve made, and solutions that have worked for me. What works for you? Have you found other ways to combat the challenges of teleconference games? The comments are open. Let’s talk about it.
