What do You Need for a D&D Session Online

You all enter the doorway at the back of the chamber. This dungeon had given you and your companions many challenges. You’d almost lost McGregor in the first room and as you descended lower, each level became harder.

In this last chamber, you’d expended all your magical energy just trying to put this pit fiend down. You look back at the demon, already its body is starting to turn to sludgy black ichor. You turn and follow your friends.

You all walk down a long stone hallway and enter a very small room. In the room there is a single stone dais on which rests a very strange object. There’s what looks like a box with a round pane of glass on one side on a stand inches above a slab of something grey with square pellets on it. As you get closer, you see the pellets all have a single character on them. They’re arranged in some sort of grid pattern. You reach out and touch one. You hear a click. Instantly, the glass pane on the box lights up and you see moving particles of black and white and you hear a faint buzzing. You reach your hands toward the glass pain and you feel energy dancing on the surface. You touch the screen and flash!

You open your eyes and find yourself surrounded by numbers and lines of light. You are in a very strange place that seems all angles and lines. There is nothing organic here. Instead of dirt, you stand on what feels like a mix between glass and metal and off in the distance you see the large gathered lights of a city at night. 

What would you like to do?

Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM. I’m your host Justin Lewis and together you and I are going to explore how to tell better stories while you DM a session of Dungeons and Dragons 5e.

Have you ever wanted to play D&D with people but you were separated by time and space….?

Well as far as the time thing goes, can’t really help you. I’m fresh out of Tardis’ and Delorians.

But the nice thing about living in the technological age is that distance is relative. 

You can now play D&D online with your friends or family, or complete strangers.

But what do you need to play a session online? What a great question. Let’s dig in.

1. Video conferencing tool

Aside from the basic essentials of needing a story and players, you need a medium through which you can all communicate. Obviously you can use free options like Zoom, Skype, or Google Hangout. Honestly, you could play just over the phone (but your minutes will probably go way over your monthly budget). I wouldn’t recommend playing over the phone because having that visual component is so easy, affordable and just really nice! If you are looking for just a video connection tool, I would say Zoom or Google Hangout, but the drawbacks are that you can’t do them for really long sessions. So my next recommendation would be a platform.

1. Platform

After a video conferencing tool, the next thing to have would be a platform that syncs together all the players and everything that’s going on. I prefer Roll20. It allows you to use Video as you play and it also syncs the rolls of all the players and adds a lot of cool features that the DM can use. I am not affiliated with them but I really like what they do.

1. Visuals

The next thing I would say you need is visuals. When I say need here, I more mean “it’s really easy to add and it’s free so you’d be really stupid and lazy not to add it.”  The point is there are so many free options out there that taking the time to make your sessions better takes just that time. For visuals again you can literally google cool maps and stuff and then slap that into a word doc or paint and have your players tell you where to move shapes that represent them. Obviously you can always use theater of the mind, but I personally love to look for tools to help immerse my players.

1. Music

After visuals, the next thing to think about is audio. Because everyone is already in front a screen, adding cool audio effects is nice and honestly a lot easier than doing it at the table because you as the DM are already on the computer. If you get really into it you can look for voice changing softwares to help make each of your NPC’s unique. I really like how Mark Hulmes did this on High Roller’s Aeirois because it really made you get the feeling of the NPC’s.

1. A strong internet connection.

The biggest drawback to playing online is that you are at the mercy of your internet speeds. Said another way, you never have to wait for the other players at the table to buffer when you are playing in person. So, to get the best experience while playing D&D online, you gotta look for ways to improve your internet speeds. You also need to help your players when they have troubles. Sometimes your players just can’t make it happen and you have to be ready as a DM for that. 

Those are all the things I think you absolutely need or are at least free for the most part so there’s really no excuse for not doing them. Obviously you can look into getting a microphone or a webcam if you want to do this more often, but that’s going to cost you some money. I realize that you are spending tons of money as it is on this hobby so hopefully we can give you some great tips that don’t break the bank.

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Thanks for listening to today’s episode. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions or suggestions for the show on Instagram @geronimolevis and we’ll chat there.

Come back next week for another amazing show. 

Until then, let’s go ahead and roll initiative.

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