As the Coronavirus continues to demolish the economy and most social interaction, I am working to proactively protect our hobby and gaming efforts. To this end, although we have not yet stopped our current live games, I am putting together processes to migrate to an online format. Fortunately these days, online RPG tools are abundant and fairly solid.
We will be converting voice and chat to a Discord format – we used this previously for a Shadowrun campaign and it was rather successful. At the time, I was overly optimistic and opted for video conferencing – that wasn’t too useful. At this point, basic voice is all I need – something that works well with Discord.
Our game materials themselves will be going online with Fantasy Grounds Unity. I am already using the software for game management, so a shift here isn’t much of a transition, at least for myself. The real challenge will be the players, who in some cases may be technically challenged. In an effort to minimize the learning curve, we will be likely limiting the automation (at least at first). My choice of FG Unity is mainly driven by my licensing – thanks to the kickstarter, I have a full Unlimited license, allowing the players to participate without additional cost. The platform may be a bit unstable still (it is still in pre-release), but I expect as long as we avoid most of the advanced features, it won’t be a major issue.
Not sure yet how or if it will impact my video production capabilities, though it will certainly reduce the amount of video content I need to parse and filter.
