On Trying Roll20

Playing tabletop games online through formats like Roll20 has intrigued me for some time.

By and large, this is due to what I would consider my number one problem as of late with gaming in my local area: Paizo and WOTC rule the realm. If it's not Pathfinder or 5e, it seems to be a hard sell on getting new people to give it a shot. I am sure there are a lot of private/home groups that play all kinds of other games, but from a perspective of mostly dealing with public/open games, it can be hard to indulge my interest in other games.

Back in 2012, when this blog was first active, there was a local gaming convention that started up called Forge. It was an excellent experience that had a pretty broad representation all across the sphere of gaming. I got to play DCC for the very first time, join in an excellent Labyrinth Lord game, be introduced to Savage Worlds and also met SFR and learned all about Dragon Dice. Those were only some of the highlights, but it was an excellent convention. Sure, they had a ton of tables for Pathfinder and D&D but there was plenty of other stuff too. Sadly, the con wound up being a one and done. I'm not sure of all the particulars, but they weren't able to keep it going.

Jump to today and we have a yearly gaming convention called Lexicon that to date I have never been to. While I'm happy to play board or card games, my #1 interest is in RPG's and every year their offerings amount to an endless sea of Pathfinder Society and 5e Adventurer's League and maybe a table here and there for "lesser" games. The schedule for this year went up and browsing through the RPG section it seems to be almost exclusively Society (Starfinder now included) and League games. The few that don't flag under those banners are just one-shot "unofficial" games.

I'm not sure why that is. Honestly, I suppose I should be doing something about it and volunteering to run games and offer up some more obscure selections. We're only a week or two out from Lexicon 2018 so perhaps that's an idea for next year. But it is nice to sometimes get to play the games you love, instead of running them. And that's really the rub, I suppose. As hard as it seems to be to sell people on trying something else, finding another person willing to run that game is a far greater task.

To date, Dungeon Crawl Classics is still my favorite Fantasy Roleplaying Game. Until two weeks ago, I had only played DCC two times since its launch. Once, in 2012, at Forge right around when the game launched (Doom of the Savage Kings ran by Dieter Zimmerman) and then participating in a one-shot playtest by Mark Bishop for his excellent Nebin Pendlebrook's Perilous Pantry. I have run DCC extensively, but as far as getting to experience the game as a player that's it.

So all that is to say recently I had been looking a lot at Roll20 and similar services and wondering if that might be an avenue to deal with my issue. So I managed to get in on a one-shot DCC funnel with the potential to roll on into an ongoing campaign. How was it?

My experience was mixed.

The adventure itself was fine. A little original adventure involving a crashed ship surrounded by eerie mist. The story wound up being a riff on Herbert West: Re-Animator and being such a big Lovecraft fan I got a lot of enjoyment out of the parallels.The Judge even name-dropped Freeport which is a setting I love. My little band of 3 guys, generated with the excellent Purple Sorcerer tool, had rolled up surprisingly well so I would have been happy carrying on with any of them. But then, of course, there must be some bad or I wouldn't have said mixed.

I must admit I haven't run DCC in about a year. I may be a little rusty on the rules, but the Judge was allowing us a Luck Check to roll over the body on our Level 0's. I'm pretty sure that's not a thing. As a result of our band of 15 only lost four members when it was all said and done. It hardly felt like the typical funnel as a result and even the Judge lamented that he was surprised we lost so few. Maybe I should have said something early on? It was my first experience so I really didn't want to be that guy coming in all "Um, actually..." and throwing down the rule book.

But that's a minor thing, right? I'm sure someone wanting a more survival heroic tone might even use that as a house rule and that's fine. There was some disconnect between a few of us players. In one room my Dwarven Chest-maker ran into an illusory trap depicting "the most beautiful woman we had ever seen" and was forced to make a Will Save. In sheer luck, I crit the roll. It was a really cool moment and riding on that I roleplayed it up having the Dwarf grunt and state that he had still seen better.

Another player chimed in "Yeah, he's probably gay" and this was followed by jaunty laughter all around from the other players and Judge. Not only did it steal the thunder of the moment, but it rubbed me the wrong way. It's definitely not the kind of comment that would be welcome at my table. I generally don't think of myself as a prude or really militant about any agenda. I try to get along with everybody, see both sides to any issue, make my own conclusion but still respect a differing opinion. We have a great player that pops in from time to time who is gay and at that moment I thought of him. How it would be if he had been at this Roll20 game. How might that make him feel?

So it wasn't cool in my book. I commented that it wasn't really funny, but we glossed on.

The biggest issue, to my mind, was the general flow of things. I know some people play with webcams and maybe that helps with this, but we were just using headsets and frequently had a problem with people talking over top of one another. Then, both would immediately start again trying to get through what they were saying. It was a bit of a disorganized chaos. I didn't get to say or do near as much as I wanted. I tended to defer to the other person planning to state my thing next, but then someone else would chime in and I was skipped over.

I'm a bit introverted, I know that. Running games is a thing that gets me out of my shell. Knowing that, when I run a game if I notice someone is being trampled over by more outspoken players I will make it a point to give them time to shine or try to reign in other people so they can get their bit in too. Dividing up loot was a nightmare of people talking over people and not paying attention to what had been taken or what was already there to take. I tried to help by typing up a list whenever there was loot and posting that to the game chat so the Judge wouldn't have to keep repeating it. As a result, none of my guys really acquired anything other than Padded Armor that we all received as a mercy sort of thing and the gear of my Squire when he went down during the final battle.

The Judge himself was pretty heavy into the online scene, it seemed. Our game ran a bit over time and we got the ending cut to just a "you killed the guy, you were successful" because he was scheduled to play in a different game and was going to be late for it. To be so flushed with great games you're excited for must be a great experience, but I felt that ours was cheapened by just sort of fizzling things out to break the game.

Maybe the Judge could have done more to organize that chaos? I will definitely keep trying on Roll20, but I am not so sure what to think after this first experience.

I'd really like to hear some other experiences and see if I just had a bad draw or if these are typical issues to online roleplaying.