The #1 sign your new online campaign is going to be a Banger

 

Around the holidays I worked on putting a new campaign together with all new voices and personalities. A painful process to be sure. I work very hard to try to vet and judge if a potential player will work out (and not be some lunatic, socially anxious snowflake, or LGBTQ plus individual with a chip on the shoulder- which all seems to be about 80 percent of potential players online). I have gotten pretty good at it. 

I stumbled upon a small group who had played together before, led by a young grad student who had run their previous campaign. That campaign did not reach a conclusion, and I did not get a solid reason why. Red flag number one. OK, cool. Grad student was super enthusiastic so I figured it just might work. His buddy he had been playing games with for years, a guy who was maybe at least 10 years older than him, showed up with him for a quick voice chat to talk about the campaign. The two ladies they had been playing with a while did not show up. Red flag two. But again, Grad student wowed me with his enthusiasm. 

Now, I want to say I normally avoid running for established groups. For a variety of reasons. They seem to have particular expectations, and it can automatically be an "us vs. him" situation. But I was lazy. I just wanted to get going without a ton of fishing for individual players. So I invited them into the Discord text chat. And here is where my doubts came in. 

It was the holidays and I wanted to wait till after the holidays, which would be maybe three weeks. No problem. But here is the rub. There was barely any chatter in the text chat. I might ask about characters, and might get a "oh, thinking of this or that." OK, no worries. They knew each other already. In most campaigns my players would be introducing themselves, mentioning character ideas, and maybe talking about the anime they liked. But hardly anything. Your chat should at least look something like this:

But hardly anything. I came across a young couple who wanted to play, and when they got in the chat they started the chatter. They hardly got a reply. I knew this was bad but went ahead and started the campaign. We had two games, sort of my "0.5" sessions (pretty much some casual doings and encounters in a tavern) with a little bit of action. It went fairly well, although the two ladies were mostly mute. The young couple were goers and tried their best to interact. After session two grad student (by that point I had realized he was gay and one of the "ladies" was trans, for what its worth) said he did not think it was working. So two wasted nights. Not just that, the couple said they liked my style, but that not only did they also see it as a waste of time, but that they had messaged the others in characters during the sessions to role play and stuff and were met with silence. They said that the experience with these others left such a bad taste that they were going to take a couple months off from gaming. Sheesh. 

So my advice is this: get new players into the text chat as soon as possible. Tell them to introduce themselves to each other and discuss character ideas. Then see what happens. If they are all over it, that is a good sign. Cherry on top is if they talk about nongame stuff and end a lot of sentences with exclamation points. You are probably good to go. 

My new group was like this. And not only that wanted to have side chats to talk in character between sessions. I was over the moon about this. Two games in and so far it seems all good. 

So again, get the text channel hopping. If it is quiet, consider asking if they are really into this. Or just abandon all together (maybe keeping one or two people you are more hopeful about) and get fishing and vetting in forums again. 

Cheers

Roll20 in-game chat makes me feel like a Twitch streamer

 

So, I think we are going on game 15 in my regular Wednesday night 5th ed game in Roll20. I could not be more pleased with how things are going. Despite almost everybody having more 5th ed and Roll20 experience than me, I have yet to lose a single player due to my shortcomings. I'd like to think its my old schoolish style and over 40 years of experience as a DM. But whatever it is I love this group. Good role players, respectful, friendly, funny, patient. It's all there. I may never have a group like this again, and it makes me want to get the most of it. 

One thing that is really awesome to me is the in-game chat box. I did not pay much attention to it for my first few games. But something it has come in really handy for is posting a spell or ability you are using, official text on the particulars. The player simply has to click on it in the digital character sheet and the spell or what not appears in the chat for me to look over. This along with the in-game compendium searcher has made it so I don't really need any books or paperwork at the table. And I use this as a learning tool as well. After a session I have one last beer (or three) and go over the chat box to bone up on the spells and things. 

And once I got in the habit of checking, I discovered something else the players are furtively doing there. They have an ongoing text chat during each session where they comment and discuss or make jokes on the current encounter or occurrence. You see, I'm too busy to always have that chat box open. When somebody makes a dice roll, I look quickly because that is where the modified number shows up. But I'm usually doing 5 things at once. 

But those chat comments. It's a special treat for me to go in after a game and see what the little dickens have been up to there. It's kind of a hoot, and a new thing I am experiencing, and extra pleasure, I never had in face-to-face games.

So, I'm not streaming, but this little feature makes me feel like I am. And it's yet another thing making me feel, more and more, that this is the format for me to DM in for good.