I, like many others, have been forced by the current situation to re-evaluate how my games are played. I current run/play in pathfinder 1e and D&D 5e campaigns that have been played entirely in person with pen/paper character sheets and hand-drawn battlemats.
We are investigating the move to online play instead. Likely using a combination of Roll20 and Discord but this question is intended to be digital platform agnostic unless it has significant bearing on the answer.
Specifically I am looking for advice on what parts of my DM preparations need to be modified, extended, added or removed in comparison to in-person play.
Typical preparations for me look like:
- World Building / Adventure Planning: Large scale worldbuilding in Onenote. Places, people, adventure hooks and lore. Often I am months or even years ahead of my campaign in this area.
- Session Planning: On a session level I usually go on fairly light on detailed planning. Some stats or details for NPCs and creatures they might encounter in this region. Occasional write-ups of set pieces for specific situations.
- Encounter Building: I typically build my encounters on the fly. Free handing my battlemat based on the current environment and then choosing appropriate stats for the monsters and NPC.
I have found this style of lots of world prep, little specific session prep, allows me to run a very sandboxed world where I can be ready for pretty much anything my party can throw at me with minimal fuss. However I'm not sure how well it will adapt to online play.
Some things that I am concerned about:
- Creating encounters on the fly may be more difficult with digital tools. Do I need to pre-make more encounters and maps to keep the game flowing?
- Decreased immersion due to lack of visuals. Should I prepare visuals for NPCs or environments to help maintain immersion?
- Other limitations I haven't even thought of that may arise during the session and be difficult to adapt to without disrupting gameplay.
Best Answer
Unfortunately, It does. In almost every way. Because each tool you choose will be chosen to replace one or more of the functions you otherwise have in real life. And we all role-play just a little differently than each other.
Theatre of the Mind
How 'Theatre of the Mind' are your games? Do you play with no miniatures or maps at all? Do you pull out the minis just when things get thick? Do you map and mini even the tavern scenes no matter how non-combat role-play heavy they may be?
If you don't need minis on maps... you honestly don't need a VTT (Virtual Table Top). You'd be fine with Discord, you can send "hand-outs" to the group, including maps. You will almost definitely want to use a voice chat channel (but not necessarily, you could type everything).
If your players are experienced, you can even describe the combat and handle the minis yourself, and only once-in-awhile fire a picture of the battle situation to them.
In those above cases... your prep time almost doesn't change. As with all options... YOU need to explore the tools and understand them, but once you're comfortable it should feel basically the same come game time. As the game will play out virtually the same, your prep time will also be virtually the same. Perhaps a few minutes for you to 'digitize' your otherwise physical materials.
Minis and Grids
If you use minis and grids... you're going to want a VTT. You can do it other ways, but you will be fighting an uphill battle.
As far as how this effects your prep-time for games; Once you're familiar with whatever tool you're using, it goes rather quickly. If you want a number... maybe 10% more time importing assets and setting permissions for what player's get to see, what they get to see later on, and what they'll never get to see. These tools have been designed by gamers and they know what we need and don't need in our way.
Your instincts are correct, though. It's your preference for winging-it on the encounters that could be an issue. Your players will either need something to do while you set up something from scratch, or YOU need to pre-spend that time by having a few environments and maybe a few stacks of baddies ready to go. If you do that, you'll be putting in literally minutes extra on prep... but you will save each and every one of your players the same number of minutes waiting.
But, these VTTs usually do several things your in-person table doesn't do. Like handling line-of-sight, vision angles and distance accounting for lighting, walls and elevation. These additional perks are NOT mandatory. If you don't use them, you don't add any time to your prep. If you want to use them (and they're pretty cool) it will cost you prep-time. Again, it's hard to say how much because you need to play with them and decide how much you want of each of those things. But I'll say, some basic perks can cost you an hour before a game. In depth fog-of-war, actual walls baked into your maps, invisible traps waiting to be flagged as visible (and painful)... you could spend several hours building a dungeon for your players.
The fact is, though, some time is going to be 'lost' while you familiarize yourself with the platform. That's unavoidable. And some time will be spent telling your players how to use their ends of the tools. And your patience will likely be tested when you have to tell them for the 18th time what they need to do to roll a Dex Save with Advantage. But these things will pass, and it will become comfortable for everyone, and it will just be the new table you play your RPGs around.
BONUS
I know, you didn't ask, but someone will. What tools should I use? There's arguments for all of them... I'm not gonna get into that.
Start with Discord for your voice and text chat.
If you need a VTT: (can also replace Discord for chats, if you'd like)
If you need character and material management:
If you're using Discord, you'll likely want a dice roller: