So I’ve made no secret on this blog of my interest in gaming. And how its been something that I’ve picked back up over the past year. And I have to say the one positive that came out of the many changes COVID-19 has caused in our families life is how much we’ve embraced gaming.
About 18 months ago, I joined a small group of friends and we decided to take a stab at gaming more. And we started with Dungeons and Dragons, and playing a game night once a month.
Now it started out great, I will admit we had a lot of fun. But the hardest part was organizing everything. From scheduling with everyone’s busy schedule, to location, child care, etc. Which honestly was a pretty difficult, coordinating the schedules of 8 adults all of which have kids.
When COVID-19 hit, we all found ourselves stuck at home, and everyone’s plans dropped. And honestly it took our monthly game night, and made it a weekly game, and its been really great. We’ve gotten much closer as friends, and honestly it gave all of us something to look forward to every week.
So that being said, we did it by taking our game and going virtual with it. And for this post I thought I would share the setup and how we took our game virtual. You don’t have to be playing dungeons and dragons, but its a great way to reconnect with people. A great side note is that we had a friend, who work took away from our area, who we used to see once a year, I now see him and game with him every Saturday, and have for the past 3 months.
Break out the Digital Tools:
For our team, we really started using the following tools to help make our game go digital and be as much fun as it was in person:
- DND Beyond – This one to be fair we were using before the pandemic. But its become more important than before. We track our character sheets here.
- Roll20 – We started using Roll20 to handle the digital game board. This is a great tool for managing your games and letting things play out on maps.
- Facebook Messenger – We use this to handle the video calls, and honestly did because of familiarity of other members of our group. And things have worked pretty well, especially with Facebook rooms.
- Discord – We leverage this tool to consolidate our chat during the game, and it’s been great. My players are able to talk, share handouts, or have direct conversations with me directly during the game.
- OneNote – We created a shared notebook, where the players share their notes with each other to their benefit.
As I mentioned it’s been really helpful to be able to find new ways to connect as we deal with the uncertainty, and I definitely recommend stepping out of your comfort zone and finding news ways to engage, even in this crazy new world.
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