D&D: Five Ways To Play D&D Without Putting On Pants
Online tabletop games have come a long way in the last five years. Here are five of our favorite platforms for playing tabletop RPGs in cyberspace.
We live in the future. And I’m not just saying that because it’s the year 2020, but because we’re to a point where the term “cyberspace” feels dated, like something you’d read in a textbook written in 2009 about what life would be like in 2017. As they say though, the more things change, the more they stay the same. People are still gathering around to try and play RPGs and these days it’s as easy to play online as it is off. Even easier, since you can go to a game session without having to put on pants and leave your house. This is how we do it.
Roll 20
Roll20 is a fantastic platform that supports multiple systems. With more than five million registered users (a goal they recently hit), Roll20 has a lot to offer prospective players. If you’ve seen a livestreamed D&D game that isn’t Critical Role, you’ve probably seen Roll20 in action, even if you don’t know it. It supports video and text chat, as well as a digital map with a surprisingly robust array of tools you can use.
There’s a bit of a learning curve–the basic features are pretty easy to use, and the tools allow for some impressively complex setups, but that means there’s a lot you can do with the tools, and if you’ve never used a program like this before there’s a lot of layers and manipulation and various ways of presenting information to grasp before you’re really doing the cool stuff.
It’s worth the effort though, especially since Roll20 leans hard into the digital tabletop routine, doing things that would be hard to do on an analog map. With features like fog of war, custom token creation, the ability to create your own audio, and dynamic lighting all behind just a few clicks, Roll20 is robust. They constantly add new features and tune/update the old ones. Setting up an account is free (you will have to purchase your own digital content, like D&D books or modules though), so check ’em out today.
Fantasy Grounds
The other big name in virtual tabletops right now. Fantasy Grounds supports all the big name systems as well–and it’s not surprising that on whatever platform you choose, D&D is the number one game. Fantasy Grounds, as you can tell from the name, is built from the groundup for fantasy roleplay, and specifically for D&D. If you’re looking for that, FG is an excellent place to leap in.
Fantasy Grounds has a lot of automation, allowing you to get your game going with a lot less prep. If you’re looking to cook up some incredible scripts that can help get your game customized exactly the way you want, FG has got you covered.
As with Roll20 there’s more of a learning curve to newer players, especially DMs, as you learn how the map works and what you can do. But Fantasy Grounds is plenty capable of adapting and enhancing on the fly play.
Skype/Google Hangouts
You could probably also include Zoom in this category. This one’s basically any of the myriad videoconferencing apps that you’ve got at least three of and probably don’t realize. Most of them even have dice rollers either built in, or easily adaptable, so if you don’t trust Kevin to roll on camera, you can just plug your numbers into the chat.
They don’t have any of the bells and whistles of a virtual tabletop, but they do have the advantage of being super easy to both use and record from, if that’s your thing.
Forums
It might be the future, but if you want to kick it old school, there are still a surprising number of active play-by-post forums. We’ve used Roleplay Online, Role-Player.net and RPNation. They’re all about what you’d expect. The upsides are that it’s incredibly easy to run a game and find a variety of many different games to jump into. Most of them are probably some kind of game where everyone plays a god–those are weirdly popular for some reason.
The downside is these games take a long time to run through even the most basic things. They’re less for people looking to game fast and more for RPG distance runners if you can find a game that seems meant to last.
Discord
Finally Discord is a fantastic way to play games. It’s been hitting big as a voice and text chat, and it’s where most of the people who used to hang around bulletin boards have gone. There are some fantastic communities, and by and large they tend to be a little more constantly active than forums–there’s a lot of chat that happens.
The way we’ve seen them played, RPGs here tend to use the voice chat to run the game, while dice and the like are rolled using different bots in the text chat. As with the other programs, there are a number of customizable mods to make collating information a lot easier.
It can be hard to find people to play with, especially if you’re looking to stay inside. But give one of these programs a try and get your game on.
Happy Adventuring!
