I’ve been running a remote game on Roll20 for a few sessions and have found it really cumbersome. The players and I have decided to dispense with the maps altogether, going for a solely narrative adventure.
This started to beg the question as to why we’re using roll20 in the first place. Without the maps, it’s sort of a glorified web conference and dice roller tool. Sure it has character sheets, but this actually ends up being double work, since all our sheets are also on hero muster.
So this made me think about trying out discord for our games. Has anyone tried this? If so, any suggestions for a dice roller bot (which one does the OL discord use)? Any other tips?
Quite a few people are already doing that, and many more use Discord for voice anyway, because Roll20’s voice and video don’t work too well for many people. Honestly, if you want to get more answers and more advice from experienced people with that format, why don’t you just ask that on the our official Discord community server? I bet you’ll get more feddback there: https://discord.gg/2p9SUV3
It would work great the only reason to worry would be people cheating at dice rolls. If all players are fair then its not an issue just have everyone roll and tell what they get and its good.
Haven’t used it myself, but if you need a dice roller for multiple players this could be an option: https://rolz.org
Personally I use Roll20 for every game I’m running and even the ones where we physically meet. I bring along a 46" TV for the battlemap. One player logs into Roll20 and I move the other players around. Works for me.
I’ve been running a lot of Pathfinder and D&D 5e games, I did find it a bit annoying that the players was using Hero Lab and not Roll20 for their character sheet. I kind of like everything in one place.
I ran a game a couple months ago on Discord (created a server). General tips:
If you want to ‘lock down’ your server, turn off everything in the Everyone role in the server settings. Create a role with certain permissions on that you assign to your players. You can find a bunch of instructions on this by doing a Google search.
Setting up different channels helps a ton with organization
I used the Sidekick bot that @VanGo posted the link to above (and it’s the one that OL uses). I assigned it to only use the Roleplay channel that I set-up , so only had to track dice rolls in one channel. I trusted my players with their dice, so they were not required to use that.
Voice channels work great, and you can look at/post in other text channels as you talk.
I had my adventure notes and other things opened and ready to go on my PC beforehand, so I could just tab between things as I needed them.
There were riddles and some pictures PCs needed to see, so it was easy to post them in a channel.
Long as everyone is comfortable with theater of the mind style play, shouldn’t have a problem.
If you want to use video: I recently did a video conference on Discord, and that takes Accepting friend requests, activating a Private Message with one person, clicking the video button to start, and invite the rest (or something close to that). Again, stuff you can Google.
If you have any more specific questions, definitely follow what the very wise @VanGo said and ask in the Discord.
Thanks to everyone for all the feedback. Now my group is reverting and thinking they now want battlemats… we’ll see where we end up. Regardless, if I need more info, I’ll reach out on the discord group. I also look forward to hearing how @seasand 's game(s) go.