Looking at VTTs in 2024

 I just realized I already blew my commitment to blog twice a week this year in the first month! In my defense work has been a real bear with my time, but still.....oh well!

I've been looking at various VTTs lately with an eye toward one which is not so onerous and unpleasant to use. I've come to the conclusion that a big chunk of the problem with the VTT environment, at least when using it for gaming, is that the dialogue and conversations are forced into a mono-channel and it is inevitable that people will accidentally walk over one another. The person with the softest voice or the worst microphone will get steam rolled. The person who is quickest to dominate a conversation always has an advantage, one even greater than at a live table. The need to corral and wrangle becomes paramout for the GM.....something I find very tiring these days. It's tough, too, because if several players are all excited and trying to talk, it means they are quite engaged with the scenario and having a good time; but to me as a GM it has now turned into noise that is all incoming at the same volume and nigh impossible to parse out properly, leading to irritation and confusion.

I know how to handle this sort of thing at a live game table....but VTTs are a different bag of cats. To that end, I've been looking at a few different VTTs to see if any out there are more friendly to the dynamics of everyone sitting in one channel trying to talk, and (spoilers) the truth is not really, its a fundamental component of the state of video conferencing these days. Your only hope is that the players you have are well versed in web etiquette, a skill I think best learned from using web events for work and other more cordial environments.

That said, I have noticed some interesting things in studying certain VTTs in this quest. Here's my observations so far:

Roll20 has made huge strides

For better or worse, Roll20 is making a concerted effort to improve its platform, and the overall effect is making it (imo) the easiest and quickest way to get a game going with the least overall effort. Some of my favoritism toward Roll20 comes from having used it consistently for 4 years now, but the truth is, when I try another platform and it doesn't offer some fundamental feature that Roll20 has built in, that other platform stands out as inadequate as a result.

PlayRole.com has some problems

I found PlayRole last year and thought it was pretty neat, especially the way it focused on indie RPGs and unlocked tons of stuff I had already purchased from Exalted Funeral for me. Experiments with it proved successful, but when I finally decided to run a full campaign in January some unexpected setbacks hit. They lost the license for their provider service that let participants use audio, video and file sharing. That was possible to work around, though, as players could still log in to use Discord on the side for voice. I didn't have any file sharing issues so not sure what that was about, but I did run into an unexpected problem, which is how PlayRole handles dice rolls. It will show you a dice roll, but provides no context. I thought it might be due to the custom character sheet I was using, but I tried some other official sheets to other games to see how they works, and it was the same every time. As a result, when I called for rolls from multiple players it could get a tad tedious tracking things and parsing it out. The PC format also proved a bit cumbersome with heavy scrolling. We had a good time, but that was despite the UI and not because of it. This is a shame....I was really excited with my use of it last year but the reality shines home once you try the VTT with a more complex system (and admittedly, Mothership is not that complex).

Alchemy is out there

I don't know much about this yet, but I do know if I try anything with it I will experiment with Mork Borg first. It looks really neat, and it does interesting things making the UI add to immersion with fonts and style. However, in messing around with the free Mork Borg it was a bit unclear to me exactly how a game would shake out of the approach Alchemy is using, which is a bit concerning. 

Shard Tabletop dominates 5E based gaming

I haven't run a game there yet, but I've spent close to a year as a player in a 5E game using Kobold Press books in Shard Tabletop, and I am seriously impressed with how it handles the experience. It has a couple minor issues (such as no easy way to see your PC sheet in one viewing) but that is made up for by convenient tabs to go where you need to quickly. The player experience is great, but I haven't yet committed to running anything so can't speak on that side of things....yet. I predict that Kobold Press will make this the gaming VTT for Tales of the Valiant, and if so then I will give it a fair shot once that game is out. Meanwhile, the only downside to Shard is that while it can import stuff for use from standard D&D 5E, its a bit opaque to me as to how its done, at least partially because I don't do D&D Beyond, I guess? 

Foundry is still out there

I really want to figure Foundry out, but I also really wish Foundry didn't require me to have to "figure it out," and I don't know what to do about that. I've managed to create a campaign on it and populate some zones, but it has weird scaling issues and I then can't really figure out where to go from there....it feels to me like Foundry is a good choice for gamers who are also more technically minded and maybe come from pursuits and careers that lend to the kind of approach this platform demands, such as programming or engineering or something; but I just want something that "works" and I can't quite figure out how to do that with Foundry (or can't find the time investment I need to go through loads of arcane tutorials that may already be out of date, take your pick).

So yeah....for now, for me at least, Roll20 is still top dog. But I am keen on trying Shard Tabletop down the road when it hopefully gets full Tales of the Valiant support. We'll see! And I am very interested in trying to figure out how Alchemy is supposed to work. I keep popping back in to Foundry, too. Maybe one day it will surprise me with an overall improvement on the user experience. 

Deathbat's 2023 Best and Worst in Tabletop Gaming (and VTT)

 I got to try a variety of different new RPGs this year which was nice....I didn't stick to my usual barrel of tried-and-true regular games entirely, and as a result some interesting gems such as Mork Borg and Vaesen rose to the surface. I did a lot of collecting and reading this year, but much of it was focused on indie zine RPGs (see that series I have temporarily been ignoring!) and I managed to get aquainted with an entire subset of the hobby that I consider to be a movement toward hyper-focused, art zine style minimalist RPGs with a goal toward simple but effective rules and exotic, creative settings. This style of RPG is essentially a reproach to the modern obsession with giant books, huge campaigns, lavish color paintings for art and big price tags. I also got heavily in to collecting and reading the many offerings of Swedish gaming giant Free League Publishing, which relies on its own special brand of game system (the Year Zero Engine) to build various RPGs. 

What I didn't do this year was make a clean break from D&D though I did do so, fairly decisively, with Pathfinder 2E around --I want to say March?-- of this year. An inter-player conflict and a generally negative response toward the way Pathfinder 2E plays (using Roll20) from about half the players left me with a really bad taste in my mouth for the whole experience, which was made worse by the fact that I as a GM was really enjoying the system from the GM perspective. I subsequently got to be a player in another game, and while I did enjoy it, I found the excess tedium , of the mechanical gravitas of PF2E less to my liking as a player. Now that the new books are out, I am considering a re-entry, but I am also a bit gunshy.....and I know that choosing Pathfinder again may mean some players simply won't show. 

Anyway, here's my take on the Best and Worst for 2023!

RPG of the Year for 2023: Basic Roleplaying System

The new edition of BRP (5th edition) brings lots of minor tweaks and clarifications and a tighter focus, while still containing all the content of prior editions and the framework for any number of BRP powered genre adventures. It does not incorporate the Call of Cthulhu 7E changes as such, so that's about the only issue one might have with it (if you love the 7E changes, that is), though it does remain compatible and you could easily mesh the two iteratons together with minimal or no effort (as I have already done). So this is my Book of the Year overall!

Best RPG Discovery of 2023: Mork Borg

Sure its been out for a while, but Mork Borg was new to me! Sort of....I think I got the RPG a year or two ago, but found it perplexing as to full intent and set it aside. Following the OGL kerfuffle in January I decided to start exploring other RPGs (and simpler ones following the March meltdown as I call it), and Mork Borg rapidly grew to the #1 place on my list as I was able to finally grokk its deceptive emergent complexity out of a simple mechanical premise, and its elaborate yet deliberately obscure setting. Mork Borg may or may not be an ideal system for long term gaming, but it is most definitely a game you can pick up and play at any time and have fun with (as long as you enjoy brutal, grimdark Swede-punk eschatonic nightmare worlds, that is!)

Worst RPG Trend of 2023: Eternally Delayed Books 

There's a BattleZoo Book that was supposed to release months ago (EDIT: literally hours after writing this I got a notice the book "Strange & Unusual" is shipping today, so I guess this one is off the list). There's An Esper Genesis book that's like three years or more past due now. I'm still waiting for the Mothership 1E boxed set and it may not be out until March or later. For my own purposes, I've cut back on backing Kickstarters. By the time the books arrive I am often completely disinterested in the game at that point, having played and finished with it, and the new product is not enough to engender new interest. For various reason 2023 has felt like a tipping point for me: I am done with wondering if or when these products will ever manifest, time to stop pre-ordering or backing these uncertainties once and for all.

In a sense this issue has been around for many years and is as old as Kickstarter, but with one exception all of the delayed books I am waiting on are pre-orders or an ordinary sort, so I guess for me at least 2023 is the year this issue hammered in to the old noggin that its a bad idea.

Best RPG Style of 2023: The Zine RPG

I've spent a lot of time blogging about it this year, so it is no surprise that I think the new style of RPG fostered over the last few years has finally become its own cottage industry and now holds it place as a special subset of gaming in contrast to more mainstream RPGs. The focus on creativity, artistic exoticism, minimalist design and a very conscious effort to foster ad hoc play styles are all fairly unique to this new style of RPG, and those elements which are not unique still get realized in new and unique ways.

Worst Flub of 2023: Wizards of the Coast's OGL Kerfuffle

I won't belabor the issue, but WotC's attempt to destroy the OGL and force third party publishers into draconian contracts where they get a cut of the take backfired and caused the core supporters and fandom to lose trust in WotC. While the giant can no doubt continue with a broader casual fanbase, it will be interesting to see how this impacts them next year when the next edition of D&D arrives, ready to push people into WotC's online D&D Beyond playspace, located just west of micrtransaction hell, I am sure. What we're seeing here (I think) is the idea that D&D as an RPG may now be transcendent to RPGs as a hobby...the hobby will continue on and find new corners and darlings, while D&D itself becomes more, just, "D&D the hobby" and very occasionally a D&Der might be tempted into seeing what the whole other "tabletop are-pee-gee" hobby is all about. Honestly? It's kind of already like that, but the really interesting things is going to be whether or not the concept space of D&D Beyond and a focus on online microtransaction-based VTT gaming can sustain in a hobby who's key appeal has traditionally been that you can socialize around a table. Maybe, in the end, this just further bifurcates the hobby.

Best VTT Environment of 2023: PlayRole

I have to say that Role20 has done a lot to improve this year, so its a good VTT to play with, but my accidental discovery of PlayRole.com was rather profound, and our experimenting with it has proved to me that it is not only a viable place to run games, but preferential to my style of play. We're about to start a full fledged Mothership game tomorrow using PlayRole, so I expect to have a lot more to say about it as we go forward, but my current experiments with OSE, Mork Borg, Dead Mall and UVG has so far been rather satisfactory. 

I'm out of "Worsts" so is one more "Best" to ponder:

Best Revision of 2023: Pathfinder 2E V2    

Not much to say here, other than the new books (Player Core and GM Core) are considerably better organized and laid out, and I really appreciate that. The color scheme is nicer on the eyes, the focus on a new player experience is better, and the minor changes (Mainly extracting OGL content) are non-invasive for the most part. It is enough to tempt me back to trying Pathinder 2E again even though I've had a string of unfortunate incidents with it leading up to March when I abandoned the system entirely due to disgruntled player issues.   

I'll mention a runner-up: Swords & Wizardry Complete was revised by Mythmere Games (and is also back to publishing it), and the revision is very nice indeed! It's mostly the familiar system, but a bit more exposition and some minor but relevant additions make for an even more complete 0 edition retro experience.

2024 Expectations

So for 2024, what do I foresee? 

I'm focused on trying out more of these cool games I have read and discovered in 2023. I want to try out the Mork Borg spin-offs (CY_Borg, Death in Space, Vast Grimm and Pirate Borg) if opportunity presents itself. I want to use Liminal Horror to run The Bureau module, and Runecairn (or regular Cairn!) look fascinating.

I am 100% on board for 2024 with a not-too-distant BRP powered supers game, and I want to play a straight up Open Quest 3 game, especially now that Open Quest Dungeons is out. I am ready for ducks and mallards alike, because I still want to run Dragonbane and am disappointed the chance never presented itself in 2023. I would like to try the Alien RPG and Blade Runner RPG as well, but we'll see; I have never been as good at running IP-property-based games as I have more original fare. Most importantly though I plan to run a ton of Mothership and Traveller 2E, and I predict 2024 will be a big year for me when it comes to science fiction RPGs. We'll see!

I also want to chill out on collecting next year. I did a pretty good job this year, overall, but probably not by volume (I still bought as many books as ever, just many are smaller zine RPG books). I still need to reduce my overall collection, or my descendants will be cursing me in the future with the mess I leave behind. 

I may not get another chance to post before 2024, so see you all in the New Year!