Remote Play - AAR and Thoughts

[Battle Brush Sigur]

Two days ago I got to play a game again! After having partaken in a game at Virtual Lard Cpt.Shandy was eager to try playing over Discord. And so we did. Here's my little battle report and general thoughts on the subject:

https://www.tabletopstories.net/language/en/2020/12/remote-gaming/



Hope you enjoy the article and have a nice weekend!

[Unlucky General]

I was interested to read your 'through the spy-glass' experience of remote controlling your armies. Would you say it tends to put you more in the general's seat?

[Battle Brush Sigur]

I was interested to read your 'through the spy-glass' experience of remote controlling your armies. Would you say it tends to put you more in the general's seat?

It's an odd feeling. Not hugely impactful on the game, but at some points I caught myself feeling even less able to impact the game than I feel when I got the figures right in front of me. There's another layer of detachment between you and the game, which gave me the idea that it might be a bit more like looking at a flank 1500m away through a spyglass rather than having the action right in front of you.

I'm sure there's a lot of annoying (to the players) shenannigans to be done here. For instance we could never see the number on the  small shock markers next to the units. We asked every now and then and tried to keep track, but at some points I didn't quite know if a unit had 1 or 3 shock. Stuff like that. Let's say a rules set which uses 'wounds' or a specific amount of morale damage for units to break, which usually makes things very predictable, but in remote play it would be very easy to keep this information hidden from a player, so they never quite know when the unit will break. Of course many rules sets model that anyway, but the way the player's possibilities of receiving information can be messed with by use of an umpire already, but also via messing with the camera. Not sure it would make the game more 'fun', but this is stuff which struck me as being somewhat unique to this way of online play.

Of course I also immediately thought of limiting the vision on the camera with a sort of slit template for tanker games, but I couldn't think of a way to meaningfully implement that in a game.

[fred]

We’ve played loads of games over video since March. I’ve hosted far more than I have played in - so this is probably mainly from a host / umpire perspective.

Early on we had lots of thoughts about doing clever things with the camera, but we have ended up stripping back the games and making them smaller to make them more remote player friendly. We’ve found 2 or 3 people seems best, either 2 remote player and an umpire, or one local player and one remote player. We have played a few multi-player games but these can end up with a lot of waiting around. We use Google meet mainly, but it certainly doesn’t handle multiple voice streams at the same time, which means that too many people speaking at once is a problem.

We’ve certainly found the problem with not knowing the number of wounds on units - we tend to use small d6 for this, but have swapped this to using a separate marker for each wound. Also with smaller scale figures it can be hard to tell the sides apart - differences in basing or using different wound markers can help with this.

Most of the games we play don’t require too much accuracy or precision in movement which certainly helps. But at times it can be hard to understand quite what the player wants their troops to do, but generally it works pretty well. Also rules that have command uncertainty help, as the players already except a degree of friction in what is happening.

If I want to play a computer game, I will play a computer game. But there is something different and more about playing a miniatures game, even if it is over a video link. I’m not sure I can see the attraction of setting up something like a virtual table top to play a miniatures game but as a computer game - seems to loose the benefits of both media.

I have to say I have generally enjoyed hosting games, more than playing them. But a lot of the ones I have played have been with a lot of players, and lot of switching of rules, but there have been some good ones. As the host you do need to have figures for both sides, but as a group we have done some sending of armies on holidays, to ensure that the host has enough troops in one place!

[Battle Brush Sigur]

Thanks for your insights!

Yeah, there is gimmicky stuff to do, but I guess 90% of games will be interesting enough running them over the internet without any special effects.

I've run into software which only allows one person at a time to talk, and I guess it's useful for a professional environment, but not helpful for gaming. Hence Discord. I've been using it before for video gaming and Dungeons&Dragons, and it works nicely.

If I want to play a computer game, I will play a computer game. But there is something different and more about playing a miniatures game, even if it is over a video link. I’m not sure I can see the attraction of setting up something like a virtual table top to play a miniatures game but as a computer game - seems to loose the benefits of both media.

My thoughts exactly.


I like the fact that you're sending armies to the host so you can play. Good stuff.