The Old Man and the VTT (Part II)

You may recall that, at the end of last year, I expressed some dissatisfaction with the Foundry virtual tabletop that I was using for my weekly Barrett's Raiders Twilight: 2000 campaign. Though extremely powerful in its functionality, it was also unwieldy and poorly documented, leading to a great deal of frustration on my part. Nevertheless, I decided to continue to use it in the hopes that, over time, I'd grow more adept at using it to its full potential. After all, a great deal of effort had obviously gone into the creation and development of both the Foundry and the Twilight: 2000 add-on module and I wanted to give them both a fair shake. 

A couple of sessions ago, as the characters prepared to infiltrate Baranów Sandomierski Castle, I finally reached the limit of my patience with the VTT. I won't waste time with a summary of all the issues I encountered during that session. I will only say that they were sufficient that I seriously considered abandoning the campaign entirely. Before I took such a rash step, however, I spoke to my players about my frustrations and discovered that they largely felt similarly about the situation. Since everyone was enjoying the campaign, we simply decided to abandon the use of the VTT for future sessions, opting instead for simple sketch maps on a Jamboard rather than anything more elaborate (this is what I've done in my House of Worms campaign for years now).

I know that many people, even people as ancient as myself, regularly make use of virtual tabletops with great success and that their enjoyment of games is greatly enhanced by them. I'm sincerely happy for such people. For myself, though, the opposite has largely been the case. Over the years that I've played online, I have never found an elaborate VTT to offer any significant benefit beyond the storage of character sheets and as a dice roller in games that use funky dice (as Twilight: 2000's current edition does). Most of the time, the VTT worked against my enjoyment of play, in large part because of how arcane they were to operate. 

I certainly understand the theoretical appeal of a virtual tabletop. As its name suggests, it's an attempt to emulate the look and feel of playing in person while seated around a common table. As I've said repeatedly on this blog over the years, playing in person is the ideal way to play a roleplaying game and, until the last decade or so, I never even considered playing any other way. That's why I'm sympathetic to the intention behind VTTs and why, in my naivete, I have attempted to make use of them in my online games. None, in my experience anyway, have come close to bringing an online game any closer to being an in person game. If anything, what they have done is make it all the more plain that I am not playing a game face-to-face. They've made it all feel like a clunky, analog video game and what's the point in that?

I've often commented that one of the few unalloyed goods that the Internet has given us is the ability to connect with people all over the globe who share our interests. I've made many wonderful friends over the years because of the Internet, most of whom I'd never have met otherwise. I'm deeply grateful for that. Yet, even as Internet technology has improved, it has still not improved enough that I feel as if a virtual tabletop is a good option for playing a RPG with friends. If refereeing the House of Worms campaign over the last eight years has taught me anything – and it's taught me a lot – it's that simple is best. The online experience can never replicate, let alone replace, being there in the flesh, rolling actual dice with your friends, of course, but the fewer layers of mediation between you and your friends, the closer you come to it. That's why I'm giving up on the Foundry for Barrett's Raiders and going as bare bones as possible. In retrospect, that's probably what I should have done from the beginning.