Roleplaying Online

I have loved roleplaying games since playing Dungeons and Dragons followed by seemingly the whole of the TSR catalog in the early 1980s. Since then I have played many editions of D&D and Call of Cthulhu, alternated playing Rolemaster and Fantasy Hero, Champions and Mutants and Masterminds, I’ve played more humorous games like Paranoia and Toon, and more serious games like Vampire the Masquerade. I love roleplaying games for the stories, for the experiences, and for getting to have fun with my friends.

Even before the pandemic, with many friends spread across the country, the urge to play these games online was there. I played in a D&D campaign on a virtual tabletop in 2017. It was fun. The campaign was interesting, the players were good folks, but the technology didn’t feel like it was up to the task. Either some feature didn’t work, or things were not intuitive, or a feature that should have existed did not.

That online campaign dwindled away, but with Stranger Things airing a lot of people got interested in playing D&D, either through nostalgia for us old-time players or curiosity for new players. Soon I was playing in or running two D&D campaigns each week. These were all in-person and it wasn’t always convenient to get people together but that was the best way to play at the time.

Then the pandemic came. At first the campaigns just went on hiatus. Maybe it would just be a couple months, or so people thought. As the pandemic stretched on, we decided to play online. After all at that point, just playing at all felt like a victory over despair. At first we tried virtual tabletops, but again the technology wasn’t there, or at least, did not work for us. We switched to Zoom or Google Hangouts and played without a map or visual positioning in sort of a theater of the mind. This didn’t allow for much in the way of tactics. Games that depended on positioning sort of suffered, but again it was mostly social and the important thing was to play. And in a silver lining I started up a campaign with people from my oldest gaming group, the people who introduced me to the hobby way back when. We could play together despite being on the other side of the country.

Playing D&D Fifth Edition, it didn’t matter too much that we had sacrificed positioning on a map as most of combat is just two opponents hitting one another until one falls.

That gaming group and I are now playing Draw Steel, the fantasy roleplaying game from MCDM. We are still playing online, but instead of theater of the mind we are playing on The Codex, the virtual table top made specifically for Draw Steel. In Draw Steel positioning really matters. The combat encounters are more dynamic. Characters are more likely to move and attack. Players are also more likely to take actions that help their teammates, and being in the proper position to accomplish that is important. And then there is the fun of smacking monsters into things: dungeon walls, other monsters, or pushing them off a cliff… the cathartic joy of this is kind of amazing.

I am happy to report that the technology needed to support fun, tactical gameplay has arrived. The technology developed to support this specific game is a big part of why it works so well. I feel a lot less like we’re having to fudge things to make them work with the platform than we had to do with other games on other virtual table tops I’ve tried. The platform here enhances the experience. It also helps to teach the game both for the players and for the director. If ever one is confused, one can just look at the options they have available and the text is there to explain things. Also, I have as director, just clicked on things to see what happens, and most often it tends to work out to something that challenges the players in an unexpected and entertaining way.

I am still planning to play Draw Steel in person because I think the experience of gathering players around the table is still preferable to voice chat, but definitely for playing with people who live far away or can’t come to the table, The Codex is an excellent option.

If you’re looking for a fun roleplaying game, I recommend Draw Steel. If you want to play it online, The Codex works great.