Roleplaying During The Pandemic

“The Wizard is on Mute”: Roleplaying During the Pandemic

Covid-19’s impact has been felt in all areas of life, including how we spend our free time. I’ve been very fortunate that tabletop roleplaying is one hobby that can be readily adapted for online play.

Here’s how I’ve navigated the change to online roleplaying in 2020:

What do I play?

Currently I’m a player in a weekly game of Dungeons & Dragons , the world’s most popular roleplaying game. The latest version of the rules - 5th Edition - is experiencing a sustained multi-year boom in popularity thanks to streamers such as Critical Role . My character is a Triton Bard exploring a world of Ancient Greek-themed myth and monsters.

On a bi-weekly basis, I run a game using a heavily modified version of the D6 System. This game is set in a world of gothic horror, haunted by monster-movie classics like werewolves and vampires.

Playing online - my toolkit

Moving from playing in-person, sat around a table with your friends rolling dice, to playing online is a jarring experience - at first the atmosphere is one of awkward uncertainty that will be familiar to everyone who has been to a Zoom party. However, I think it’s eminently possible to have a great roleplaying experience online, and there are lots of tools and technologies that can help you do so.

This is the setup that’s been used for the games I’ve played:

Voice Chat - Discord

In 2020 everyone knows a system or two for voice and/or video chat. I like Discord for this, it’s a lightweight reliable solution that works really well, is free for all the participants, and doesn’t require setting up meeting rooms. Mostly I have been using this for voice chat without video, as we’ve been using a virtual tabletop (see below) as the visual focus for the game.

Virtual Tabletop - Roll20

The first thing to note is that you don’t need a virtual tabletop (VTT). You can just get on a voice or video chat, roll dice on the table next to your laptop or keyboard, and start battling the forces of darkness. This is particularly true if your gaming group doesn’t use a gridded map and miniatures, instead preferring what’s called “Theatre of the Mind” play. That said, a VTT can do more than just maps: it can still be useful for sharing and storing handouts, images, and notes between the GM and the players.

When we started playing D&D online, the GM decided to use Roll20 as our VTT. It’s not perfect, and some of the UI choices are a little counterintuitive, but personally I find it much easier to use than other virtual tabletops I’ve tried, such as Fantasy Grounds. It also has support for a wide variety of systems, where Fantasy Grounds seems to be to have a bias towards running D&D.

I’ve been GMing “Theatre of the Mind” games for years, where there was no map or grid to represent the character’s locations, instead relying on shared consensus and maybe the odd hand-drawn sketch. As a result, it may surprise you to learn that when I started my own online game, I immediately started using Roll20 to host gridded battle maps with movable tokens.

Why? Well, I never wanted to lug around a gridded mat and a pile of miniatures when I was running in-person. But if you turn those things into digital assets, the whole prospect is much more appealing!

I can download amazing battle map images from the internet and get them working in Roll20 in minutes, use inspiring art to create tokens to represent characters and creatures. Plus, Roll20 has built-in tools for measuring distances and areas. Anyone who’s played RPGs with miniatures has suffered the experience of waving cardboard templates around to figure out who gets hit by a fireball, or laboriously counting squares to determine if your fighter can reach the necromancer in one turn without getting too close to any of the necromancer’s skeletal bodyguards. In Roll20 or another VTT, all that stuff is easy. You can draw on templates, measure distances, and all that stuff with minimal inconvenience, adding tactical death to your combat without having to worry about the cat knocking over your minis.

Customizing Roll20 - Macros and API scripts

As someone who GMs my own heavily modified version of the D6 System, it’s tricky for me to use tools designed for popular games such as D&D or Pathfinder. Fortunately Roll20 macros allow you to automate dice rolls and checks very easily. For some people this isn’t fun - they enjoy the tactility of rolling physical dice, and I can get behind that! But for me it’s really useful to be able to generate a roll at the click of a button, especially if the roll has some complicated logic like exploding dice.

As a GM I’ve found macros to be a godsend - I can set up my monsters in advance and then roll their checks at the click of a button, even if the monster makes multiple attacks or has special abilities. Leaves me with more time to decide what the monster will choose to do, and less time spent adding up numbers.

When macros aren’t enough, if you’re a Pro subscriber and willing to dabble with a bit of coding, then the Roll20 API is at your disposal. By writing API scripts in JavaScript (or using any of the many, many community generated scripts), you can handle complex logic and display things exactly how you want to, turning Roll20’s fairly basic chat interface into something quite spectacular. There’s all kinds of funky possibilities - like Tongues, a script that lets you post messages in chat which will only be comprehensible to players whose character can speak the specified language. Want to whisper in Elvish to the only other character who speaks it, during a tense negotiation scene? - this script has you covered!

Character Sheets & Rules - D&D Beyond

Roll20 has good support for character sheets for many systems, but if you’re playing D&D 5th Edition then D&D Beyond is the gold standard. It’s a luxury you don’t need, but it is very nice to have. Character generation is easy with options clearly presented and rulebooks purchased on Beyond by the GM are visible to all their players. Beyond character sheets are highly interactive, allowing you to add equipment, mark off spell slots, and make rolls directly from your sheet. The free Beyond20 extension for Chrome means you can send dice rolls and spell information directly to your chat or VTT (Discord, Roll20, Astral Tabletop and Foundry VTT are all supported). If you’re willing to sacrifice the tactile joys of rolling dice, you can hack at orcs and cast complex spells at the click of a mouse. I’ve enjoyed this experience immensely - so much that for D&D in particular, I’m not sure I’d want to go back to playing in person. Or if I did, maybe I’d encourage everyone to bring a tablet.

Final Thoughts

Online play, though thrust upon many of us by the pandemic, is far easier and more satisfying than I ever predicted it would be. It’s not quite the same experience as being in the room with your friends - but it has its own advantages. I’m playing regularly with a friend from University who lives in Stockholm, and others who are scattered across the UK. An in-person game just wouldn’t be practical.

If you happen to play D&D 5E (which, to be fair, is the biggest game on the market by a country mile), then you have access to a wealth of incredible tools to make online play easier than ever. If you run something less popular, or something you’ve bashed together yourself, then you’ll either need to forgo such luxuries or dive into building them yourself with tools like the Roll20 API.

For me, online roleplaying will have a future well beyond the covid age, though I must say, I look forward to being able to sit at the table with friends again, and create stories together in person.