Playing Online Tabletop - Some Observations and Best Practices

28 Jan, 2025

For the last year or so, I've been playing a lot of online adventure games. There have been some really cool moments, and some fumbles. I wanted to make this blogpost to lay out some of my own best practices for running games, in the hopes that it maybe helps someone who otherwise wouldn't attempt it start to play in or run a game!

The Type of Games I play

The purpose of this section is to give you an understanding of the context in which I play games so that my advice doesn't come off strangely or in opposition to your experience; this is my context and experience.

With only a few exceptions, normally the types of games I run are either hexcrawls focused around exploration or the typical OSR style dungeon crawl that is a core part of this style of play. While running, games range from 3-6 players (with a record of 8 in one session!) and we typically play without cameras, opting for voice-only sessions alongside a whiteboard application (TLDraw is my personal favorite, but Discord has its own functional whiteboard app embedded within the voice channel itself and Excalidraw and Miro are other popular options) and usually a group spreadsheet (this is something we just started doing recently and it's been very helpful). Most players in my games tend to be other referees, and usually we're playing some OD&D or B/X derived system.

Mechanics of the Session

The fated enemy of any VOIP game is crosstalk. This is my particular enemy, since I speak with a cadence that predisposes me to being spoken over/interrupted in voice calls. Contrast this with a normal in-person game, where this crosstalk issue is reduced via no latency, facial expressions, gestures, etc. While I'm sure a video feed helps alleviate some of this crosstalk, in my own experience it's been a negligible difference, since many players end up playing with folks on a separate continent (our weekly Wolves Upon the Coast game has players located in 4 continents!) so latency is still a problem.

To combat this, we've started prioritizing the voice channel for direct statements of action (dictating actions in combat, travel procedures, etc.) and trying whenever possible to let the referee have as much speaking time as possible. Any additional conversation happens in a text channel, which moves pretty fast and contains clarifying questions, expressions of agreement/disagreement that would risk interrupting the action in the voice chat, and way too many GIFs that are related to the situation at hand. The banter and silliness of playing these games is a big part of why I enjoy it, so the text chat serves as a nice middle ground between getting my japes and jokes in while still moving the game along at a nice pace.

Generally, I like to have an in-session text channel (for dice rolls, character roleplay, the above japes jabs and jokes) and then a slower-moving out-of-session channel for scheduling, out of game discussion, downtime procedures, etc.

With larger groups, this practice becomes much more necessary (and helps speed up play immensely) to facilitate games in a timely manner. Roles like calling, mapping, quartermastering and turn-tracking have all also been handy, although I think personally these don't make as much a difference on the speed of play as they do the cognitive load of the referee, which is out of scope for this post.

Some folks really like to roleplay, get into a chracter and inhabit their mind during their sessions. While this is absolutely a valid preference, in large groups online this becomes very difficult, in part due to crosstalk and partly because most microphones and noise-reduction software isn't prepared for Gorelash's Guttural Guffaws and Gabbing. "Wet" voices with lots of excesss air and saliva, raspy voices with a lot of prominent vocal fry, and whispering tends to do really poorly on most microphones¹. Accents, the speed and cadence at which people talk, and inflection come through fine, though, and there's a lot of wiggle room within those parameters for some memorable voices. ONe of my most memorable characters in a voice game was an NPC bird man called Tawny Owl, who extended the last syllable of every sentence he spoke and lowered his pitch at the same time (say "Shoe", drag out the "oo" sound, and lower the pitch to get a rough idea of how this sounds). If you like doing voices, pick one that comes through nicely.

For the most part, our groups don't use many voices, instead opting for the occasional quip or quote in the in-session text channel to convey a channel's speaking voice. The referee being the priority speaker over the VOIP channel, has more leeway to speak in character, but for my own style I narrate largely in 3rd person so it usually isn't something that comes up often.

The Game itself

I think large groups or online groups in general benefit a lot from very well-defined procedures to fall back on for most tasks. Stuff like well-defined downtime procedures, exploration procedures, and dungeon-crawling procedures work pretty well.

For dungeon crawlling proceedures in particular, I think there are two routes to go for navigating online/large group play:

The first is smooshing all the characters into a "Dungeon Clique" which is controlled primarily by the caller with occasional input from the rest of the players. This is probably the faster of the two rolls and leads to more coordinated, singularly focused play. The clear downside to this is that sometimes a player's individual agency can be pretty limited, which can feel pretty bad! Maintaining a space where this doesn't happen is part of the "soft skills" of running games and is outside the scope of this blogpost.

The second is doing a sort of "always on" initiative thing, like Shadowdark is known for. I've played in this system a few times, and it's somewhat promising for a few reasons. The individual initiative of the characters ensures that everyone gets a chance to act, so no one is left out like the quieter folks might be in the previous approach. The downside, which has prevented me from trying to implement this at my own tables, is that sometimes too much autonomy can really stymie the speed of play. If everyone is united on their goals and decisive, it's probably pretty indistinguishable from the previous method in terms of speed of play. In my experience, it quickly splits the party into a few different groups doing different things or one person licking the drywall for several minutes while everyone else tries to play the game.

The Number One Tip to Play Games That Always Works

None of the above observations or best practices will do shit if you don't have a group of mature people who have empathy. Selfishness, lack of empathy, and the inability to be a team player will slow down any play to a halt, online or meatspace. As a referee, pick your players well! As a player, don't be a meanie! You've got it in you, I promise.