Still searching for the perfect online roleplaying game? The lighter the better, I say. You can roll dice and move figurines on Roll20, but a conversational style of game is a lot easier and for my money more fun. That's one of the reasons I enjoyed running Gregor Vuga's Sagas of the Icelanders, which quite honestly is a work of genius. If you've read the sagas you'll know how perfectly it captures the spirit of them, and right now it's Pay What You Want on DriveThruRPG. Oh, and Gregor is giving half of the profits to the Red Cross while the pandemic continues.
Two other games with a similarly light touch when it comes to rules mechanics are, unsurprisingly, both Powered by the Apocalypse. First up I give you Tremulus, which spins Lovecraftian horror in an improv storytelling style. I have a conflicted relationship with HPL-based games in that, if you play them true to the spirit of the Cthulhu Mythos, the heroes can't win. Having said that, going mad, giving in to despair, and suffering inevitable defeat can also make for a cathartic experience.
Then there's Alas For The Awful Sea, which appears to be inspired by Melville, Conrad, Poe, and probably HPL again. You play a ship’s crew navigating the remote British Isles in the 19th century. There they face a world consumed with suspicion, sadness, and desperation. Hard to sum it up, but the designers Vee Hendro and Hayley Gordon say this:"Struggles for power have deadly consequences; mysterious disappearances plague the region; and those who seem human may not all be so. Amidst all this, the sea sends forth strange messages. Will you be the one to listen?"
If you liked The Lighthouse, that one's definitely for you.
I've been making some discoveries about playing online. Simple rules work best, but that was pretty obvious from the git-go. I'm also finding games run better when they're audio only. We have one game on Discord with eight players, and one on Zoom with five players. There's much more cross-chat in the latter, because any appearance in any player's room of a child, spouse, pet, pizza or whatever risks distracting several of the players into launching off on a separate conversation where they talk over everyone else. Lacking video, the Discord game is much more focussed. Players stay in character more and wait for each other to speak, so it's less of a hubbub as well as encouraging a more vivid mental picture of the adventure. There's a good reason they call this improvised radio theatre with dice.
Pop back tomorrow when we'll be jumping on the magic carpet for a trip back to the land of the Arabian Nights. Not just an adventure, oh no. Open sesame indeed, this is a full campaign complete with detailed maps of 8th century Baghdad. And whatever you're playing in these difficult days, and whether it's with voices only or facetime too -- stay safe.
It's funny how people can have completely different experiences and outlooks. I suppose that's why there are fans of very different games, books and movies. In my experience, I've seen no difference in online vs in person gaming with regards to complexity. I love having video feed of the players, because it's closer to sitting around the table with real people, and easier to make friends. We are visual beings, after all. And I've never heard role-play described as radio theater, but rather, as improv theater, which I always associate with a stage, thus visual. I truly dislike trying to play on Discord as an audio-only experience. I never feel as close to the other players, they're almost as distanced as words on a page. They always talk over each other precisely because there are no visual cues. And I can never tell what my surroundings are like, what my options are, or who is where in relation to me and exits and tactical positions. Never. It's extremely frustrating. Case in point, a game a few weeks ago with an encounter in a small cave used as a lair by a lich. I had absolutely no idea what the layout was. It was two weeks later when the GM shared the map of a small crescentL-Shaped space, and it was nothing like what I got from his verbal description. Absolutely nothing. While the encounter was almost a TPK. Had we had a graphic and tokens it would've been simple, and that's what our characters should've been able to do, because THEY could easily see their surroundings. So, to each their own, but my experience is 180 degrees different.
ReplyDeleteGood point. Every playing group's online experience is going to be different, and my examples are not scientific as the two groups consist of different players. Maybe some of the video group are just a bit ADHD. I ought to add that even in the audio game we often have Roll20 running in the background for visual aids (usually just quick sketches, though tokens are an option) as those times that everyone has a different mental picture can be very frustrating. I'm all for "theatre of the mind" but when things get highly tactical you do need some kind of map.
DeleteGamesome trivia: "Improvised radio theatre" was how the original 1970s RuneQuest book described roleplaying. (Trivia-squared: they actually said "improvisational".) I used to be puzzled by the radio part until I realized they were SCA members so were trying to draw a distinction with LARP. Nowadays, of course, Improvised Radio Theatre is an unmissable RPG podcast from Michael Cule and Roger Bell-West.
DUNGEONPUNK RPG would work well online.
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