August 18: What innovation could RPG groups gain the most benefit from?
I have to say the biggest innovations in recent years have been the online virtual tabletop games. I use Roll 20, but I hear that there are other options out there too--each with their own pluses and minuses. In this post I'll try to make this one interesting but the short version is that Roll 20 is the next best thing to a live table and anyone who wants to game and has an internet connection should give it a shot. Eventually, you will find a group. The service is very easy to use on the player end. I haven't run my own game yet, but I plan to at some point and I'm currently watching the Dawn Forged Cast video tutorials on how to set up a campaign. If you are a DM and can run the software, you will be spoiled for players. The long version of my history with Roll 20 I submit to you below.
I hope I'm not contradicting my earlier blog post, but at approximately age 27 I had to give up the RPGs. It was sad, but between gaming and night shift work I felt that I would never be able to get a girlfriend let alone get married. So, I dropped the hobby. I put my energy into winning the heart of a girl...and I did get married at age 29...just barely beating out my self-imposed sell by date of 30. We kicked around as newlyweds for a year or so with me still working the dead end jobs, and the wife looking for work. Eventually, we decided that I should go back to school. So, I worked part-time and went to school full-time including summers and I never got to game at all. Including internships it took me roughly five years to earn a Bachelor's in Secondary English Education. Finally, I was able to start gaming again with my old friends and....nope! I had to find a job. We were right in the middle of the so-called 'great recession' and I couldn't find a thing. I was very nearly going to keep working at my old movie theater job only now with a degree. Luckily, I was watching a show called 'Locked Up Abroad' and this episode was about an American teacher who taught English overseas and was locked up for selling hashish. I figured if some druggy could get a job teaching abroad that maybe I could too. That's how I found myself overseas, I taught my first class at age 35 in Taiwan where I stayed for one year. Afterwards I moved to the United Arab Emirates where I have been teaching for the last six years. Unfortunately, I still had no one close to game with. As I covered in an earlier question, this eventually led to me seeking out Roll 20.
I hope I'm not contradicting my earlier blog post, but at approximately age 27 I had to give up the RPGs. It was sad, but between gaming and night shift work I felt that I would never be able to get a girlfriend let alone get married. So, I dropped the hobby. I put my energy into winning the heart of a girl...and I did get married at age 29...just barely beating out my self-imposed sell by date of 30. We kicked around as newlyweds for a year or so with me still working the dead end jobs, and the wife looking for work. Eventually, we decided that I should go back to school. So, I worked part-time and went to school full-time including summers and I never got to game at all. Including internships it took me roughly five years to earn a Bachelor's in Secondary English Education. Finally, I was able to start gaming again with my old friends and....nope! I had to find a job. We were right in the middle of the so-called 'great recession' and I couldn't find a thing. I was very nearly going to keep working at my old movie theater job only now with a degree. Luckily, I was watching a show called 'Locked Up Abroad' and this episode was about an American teacher who taught English overseas and was locked up for selling hashish. I figured if some druggy could get a job teaching abroad that maybe I could too. That's how I found myself overseas, I taught my first class at age 35 in Taiwan where I stayed for one year. Afterwards I moved to the United Arab Emirates where I have been teaching for the last six years. Unfortunately, I still had no one close to game with. As I covered in an earlier question, this eventually led to me seeking out Roll 20.
The first time I tried Roll 20 was with a 13th Age one shot. I enjoyed it and wanted a regular group to play with. I started playing with a regular group that ran OSRIC. I played with them for a few months leading to the release of 5E. The DM and his partner just didn't want to run anymore, so we disbanded. I hooked up with a second group--the one that ran the Ravenloft NXT conversion--and I stuck with them for over a year. It also had co-DMs but when John Sun left the group ran on fumes and got flakier and flakier. I find that to be one of the drawbacks to using the online system. It's a lot easier to opt out of a session when you don't really know your online pals personally. After breaking up with the second group I stayed offline for over a year, but I eventually landed in my current group--flaky as ever, but as long as they don't disband I'll stick with them. I have played so many games online and met so many different people that I find it hard to imagine that the gaming community went so long without it.
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