Online gaming is old news, I know. But have you ever found yourself in dire need of some good old-fashioned D&D role-playing, but found your friends were not in reach and you hadn’t taken your dice when you moved abroad for uni? Well, I did.
So gather around as I tell you about my newest Dungeons & Dragons adventures, different means to play online across continents and oceans, and the magical world of Avani!
(DISCLAIMER: Avani and all associated names are copyrighted by Marie; she also provided most of the links you see in this post!)
How it happened
About a month or more ago, I was feeling a little depressed from the “all work and no play” situation that had arisen out of my university life. But lo and behold, I stumbled upon a fellow deviant artist’s journal post calling to arms all players and admirers of Dungeons & Dragons to play a campaign together, set in her own created fantastical world called Avani. Naturally, I immediately uttered a squeal of delight and confirmed that I was gonna do this!!!
Some weeks later, I met up with Marie to create my character through a join.me live session (you can chat and see the host’s PC/laptop screen) in a brilliant programme called HeroLab. Forget rolling up your stats and filling out that pesky character sheet; HeroLab does it all, using an internal virtual dice roller and calculating all the attack bonuses and feat effects for you! By the end, what you’re left with is a printable PDF sheet of your stats, possessions and animal companions. Really practical!
I should interject, at this point, that although I am new to online RPGs, I am no virgin to pen and paper role-playing. During the first and second year of my undergrad course at university, I was introduced to the RPGs Warhammer, Vampire: the Masquerade and ultimately Dungeons and Dragons by my ex-boyfriend, whose friends had been playing for a while. It was an amazing group, the people as well as their characters, and it’s still some of the best times of my life. It all ended sadly when the majority of them left uni and we didn’t see each other any more.
But anyways, even though by now I had forgotten most of the rules of D&D, that background experience had left me with a longing to play again.
Let me explain:
There is a certain beauty and excitement to imagining and birthing – with pen, pencil, brush, mouse or voice – a new character designed by you, a world of your own, with your rules and systems, filled with magic and exotic creatures.
For some time now, I had felt like I had lost that feeling. While I had been honing my writing skills via my course, I hadn’t been “creating.” But playing RPGs, even though it is a game that already has an existing world and rules, is much like writing a story. You create a character that can be you, can look like you or what you want to be, or it can be someone completely different; another gender, skin colour, hair, species. He or she can be a mage, a warrior, a hobbit, they can be good or evil – it is all up to you. I hope I don’t sound like I have a god-complex, but that kind of power is just intoxicating!
And not just that: playing the game is just as creative. Imagine sitting around a campfire and telling a story taking turns. Everyone has their own character and adds their viewpoint to the story that you’re experiencing together! That is role-playing.
Overcoming frontiers
The difference this time was that all of us were from different parts of the world. Most of the others live in North America, but me being over here in Wales and another girl living in Turkey did make it difficult at first to find a common time to play. We settled on two different sessions, one on Friday nights and one on Sunday evenings (as seen from my time zone: GMT).
Because we were all spread out, pen and paper D&D just wouldn’t work, so we had to figure out how to play online. Maybe some of you now say, “Of course, that’s how we play all the time!” but it was a completely NEW concept to me!
First we tried a downloadable (and free!) programme called Maptool, which looked really promising, but presented us with massive difficulties (because it just wouldn’t work), and thus our first session took place on AIM chat – and in our imagination.
Marie – our formidable Game Master (GM) – quickly came up with a new tool: Roll20. The best thing about it: no downloads necessary; it’s a web community, so all you need is create an account (also free) and join a campaign. It has a handy map tool, on which each player can either move around their sprite icon or draw X’s in various colours, as well as having a private chat window including a dice roller.
Roll20 is still in beta, and there are still a few kinks in it, but over all it is working quite well! What we tend to do is use the chat window on Roll20 for the in-game actions and speech, while discussing OOT (out of character) stuff on a separate AIM window.
This was originally posted on my film and TV blog Geek Girl and Proud. If you like this article you should check it out! I can also be found on Twitter @GwenDuenner. Please don’t reproduce the featured image without my permission.
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