FFOL - East Africa WW1 - Remote gaming

[flatpack]

So we still have the pandemic, so how do we game ?
I’ve seen other people game remotely, so we are going to give it a go, for the first time tomorrow morning.
We’ll use Fistful of Lead, as we know the rules quite well.
I’ve bought webcams to film from both ends of the table, and I’ve made markers to put next to the figures, so that people can identify their own units.
We will use Discord software to allow us to get together.

We’ll have a couple of German and British units, encountering each other on the table.
The lads will play out the game, and I will be moving their figures and rolling their dice.
Let’s see how it goes, as it’s been months ago that we played our last game. In fact it was in the summer, and it was outside.

AAR will be posted here, along with and issues we encounter, playing a game this way.

Here is the layout for the game. All centred on the railway station.






Fingers crossed.

[Atheling]

Looks like a fab set up so it ought to be a fun game 

[vodkafan]

Good luck lads! 

[Plynkes]

That table layout is a beaut! Hope it goes well.

[SJWi]

Flat pack, I’ve run Zoom games for my mates every week since March. Mainly To the Strongest plus Black Seas and 2FL’s “What a Tanker”.

 I act as umpire rolling most dice or drawing chits.

 What I have found interesting is that the players don’t have “perfect situational awareness” as they do being in the room. They sometimes find it frustrating but I think it actually more realistic.

 Enjoy the game and I look forward to reading an AAR.

[Diablo Jon]

Great looking table 

[flatpack]

Thanks for the nice comments.
Thank you for the advise on remote gaming.
Zoom could be another option, if we have problems.

[Dr DeAth]

Great looking table 

[OSHIROmodels]

Looks good 

[Westbury]

Layout looks great Bob and your effort is much appreciated.
Looking forward to playing but at the same time apprehensive of the technology my success rate has been pretty abysmal so far 

[fred]

Looks a good table - we have done remote gaming most weeks for ages now

We have the players roll their own dice and for FFoL draw their own cards. Keeps them involved!

We have found that having a slightly simplified terrain setup can help - as sometimes it can be hard to tell figures from small pieces of scatter terrain. But you can see how that plays - certainly markers to help with identifying the different players figures is good.

There can be the odd time where people need a bit of help in understanding what is where - but these are fairly infrequent. By having the host / umpire do all the measuring it helps remove a lot of the fiddling and checking with moves and ranges!

One bit that can take the players a while to get the hang of is giving instructions to the umpire on movement - especially with 2 cameras, as its not always clear which one they are looking at, so left and right are really confusing. If your buildings have names (church, canteen, station, it can help)

Have fun!

[BillK]

Your table absolutely looks the part.
Are the buildings scratchbuilts, manufacturers' models, model railroad kits?
(Particularly like the train station wand wonder about it.)
The water tower is an absolute must in the scenarion!
20mm or 28mm?
Looking forward to the AAR(s).

[italwars]

It’s interesting and since I read on Perry Brother s FB their report about a remote battle that I would like to have a try ...my only and not  minor issue is that I do not know neither I like too much about mentioned dedicated softwares such as zoom ecc...I’m only able to use Whattsap, I own an IPhone (with Face Time of course but my mates don t) and I bought a tripod and a duck neck stand...so only one camera (my phone) at time ...could it be sufficient for a start ?

[flatpack]

The game is 28mm.
All buildings are commercially available from Sarrisa including the railway station.
I’ve added “corrugated metal” roofs to the buildings, as they are originally Russian buildings with wooden roofs. I thinks that’s more realistic for the African area.
I like the idea of identifying the buildings so that players can say which way they want their figures to move, so I’m just about to add labels to the rooftops of the buildings.
With ref to the chap with just his iPhone as a camera, and not using the zoom or Discord software.....I don’t really know the answer. Maybe I’ll find out more myself when we play the game tomorrow.

[fred]

It’s interesting and since I read on Perry Brother s FB their report about a remote battle that I would like to have a try ...my only and not  minor issue is that I do not know neither I like too much about mentioned dedicated softwares such as zoom ecc...I’m only able to use Whattsap, I own an IPhone (with Face Time of course but my mates don t) and I bought a tripod and a duck neck stand...so only one camera (my phone) at time ...could it be sufficient for a start ?

Yes.
An iPhone with a stand or tripod will be fine. It’s the camera that matters for the host. For the players a tablet or computer is better to give them a bigger screen.

Zoom seems to be a lot better now than it was 6-9 mths ago. Google Meet is another good option - especially if you already have a google / gmail account.

As the host all you need to do is position the camera in a good place to cover most of the table - we have moved to a lot of 4’x4’ games as it works better on camera than 6x4’. The occasional move of the camera to give a different angle can be useful.

We have occasionally used more than 1 camera, but it rarely seems more the effort, and gets in the way of the host running the game - the host has quite enough to do moving figures around!