Voice Communications for Virtual Tabletops
When we decided to try using Fantasy Grounds to restart my old D&D campaign, we started with a bunch of demo sessions. We wanted to kick the tires and see how it went. The whole idea of playing virtually seemed new and strange, and we weren’t sure how well we would like it.
During these sessions we had a phone call going with the other player. This was enormously helpful, both to get the initial setup complete, and during the actual game play.
That prompted us to give some thought to how we could have an audio connection for our full-fledged game. Our cell plan didn’t have enough minutes (this was the early 2000’s). Our landline (see, early 2000’s) charged extra for conference calls. We needed another solution.
Researching solutions
None of us had used any voice-over-IP (VOIP) software before, though I was aware it existed. It was time for a crash course. I asked some video gamer co-workers about it, and they recommended Ventrilo. It allowed you to set up a free server with eight connections, so I decided to give it a try.
One of my players was willing to help me play around with it, so we set aside some time one evening to do a test-drive. I would host Fantasy Grounds, and he would host Ventrilo. Setting it up didn’t turn out to be too hard, and soon we were chatting away.
Learning some lessons
The “testing” (chattering with an old friend for an hour or two) did teach us a few lessons. First, we found that we were better off using the push-to-talk mode than the voice-activated mode. Using it with Vent in voice-activated mode was quite frustrating: only about half of the things I said got through. Push-to-talk mode worked much better.
Secondly, we learned about the lag time between saying something and anyone else hearing it. This was painfully apparent on our end, because my wife and I were each connected to the chat via our own computer, but we were sitting in the same room. The resulting “echo effect” was quite annoying. We decided that since she had a laptop and I had a desktop, my wife would play from another room. That also ensured that she couldn’t see my screen, which was important too.
The third lesson was that we would want headsets rather than using speakers and a fixed microphone. Whenever I moved my head around to look at a reference book I would become very quiet. Someone would complain, so I would increase the gain to get the volume back to normal. Then I would face the screen again and become VERY LOUD. I should have realized this, since I had been on a student radio show back in high school. In my defense I will note that it had been quite a long time ago, and I had forgotten just how critical microphone placement could be. A headset solved the problem nicely.
Then and now
A few years back we switched to a program called Teamspeak. We had been having more and more trouble with Ventrilo, and a lot of the people on the Fantasy Grounds forums were recommending Teamspeak instead. It too allows you to set up your computer as a server for free, for a limited number of connections. Setup was simple, and voice quality was excellent. I even managed to set it up so I could play sound effects at key times in the games, but that’s a discussion for another time. Overall it has worked quite well for us.
Overall we have found that having voice chat is really helpful in re-creating the tabletop atmosphere in a virtual setting. I can definitely see a case for running a text-chat only game, but since we were coming from a physical tabletop where talking was the norm, it made sense to use a VOIP solution. In addition to the in-game utility, it’s helpful to have two channels of communication available when someone is having technical difficulties. If they have a problem with voice, they can report it in the FG chat, and if they have a problem with FG they can report it with voice.
That’s about all I have to say about voice chat. Next time around I’ll talk about converting materials from a pen-and-paper campaign to a digital one.
Thanks for reading!
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