After a hiatus while our schedules would not sync up we finally got our virtual Thursday night group back together. We have been playing for much of the last two years, a number of different role playing games, but we always seem to settle back into our old reliable Dungeons and Dragons 3.5.
I ran a campaign before when we weren’t all locked in our houses using the new at the time 5.0 DnD system, and while it had its advantages we decided to go back to 3.5 for future games. There have been myriad online discussions as to which is better (almost all agree 4.0 was a miss) but for us old guys, we are very familiar and comfortable with the 3.5 system.
The pre-pandemic 5.0 in person campaign I ran had 5 players and it ended only because we stopped getting together, although we had play tested the system enough to know that we like 3.5 better. It was a home brew game (meaning I made up all the content) and I thought it was pretty enjoyable.
Along came covid and we stopped playing for awhile and then those of us comfortable with technology started playing online. This had advantages: no commuting, tech resources, ability for non-local players to get involved (we had a player from Portland, Oregon and another from Wales). But it had disadvantages as well: voice communications limited to one person at a time, limited “side” conversations and interpersonal talks, the virtual playing surface was never like the IRL playing surface (we use roll20 and discord).
I had decided I would not run another game until we could all get together again, but my creativity was being wasted as I was generating binders of ideas, full first through twentieth level campaigns that might never be played. So enough was enough and I decided to jump in and run a virtual game. We started last Thursday. Although I have a full home brew campaign ready to go, this is a combinations of pre-generated scenarios and some unique content. Only three players are in the game so far which made the online voice communication better, but the party in the game that much weaker (anyone free on Thursday nights? Email me!).
All things being equal I’d rather be running a game in a real room, with folks gathered around a nice big table, books and dice as far as the eye can see. Maybe that will happen again this summer, but for now we will stick the the virtual environment. I will keep you posted as to how it is going.