Odds & Ends #01 - Digital D&D

No matter where you work, COVID has probably changed what your typical day looks like.  People are wearing masks, businesses have set up Plexiglas barriers between customers and workers, and many of us who used to go to offices every day are now working from our dining rooms or garages or wherever we can find power and in some way limit distractions (I have one co-worker who is set up in their laundry room, another in a small storage room underneath the stairs).  If you are an office worker, you’ve probably also spent way more time on Skype, Teams, and/or Zoom than you ever thought possible.  Zoom in particular seems to have exploded into consciousness as not only a work tool but also a way to have happy hour with your friends or let the kids chat with the grandparents.

 

Zoom was the clear option for us when we decided to start our D&D 5e campaign.  Since the five of us are spread across four households and three states it was the only practical option.  Besides, back in the day (i.e. the 1980s) when I played we didn’t do a lot with grids or miniatures – everything was simply described to the players and we talked it out.  Hell, just getting a game together was a logistical feat when we only had land lines and no drivers licenses.  Little did I realize how cool it would be to play via Zoom, and that’s a testament to our DM Tristen.

 

Tristen has some young kids, which means he has the typical assortment of kid stuff at his house.  And he has taken full advantage, building set pieces out of Legos and assigning each of us our own Funko doll so we can consistently see where we are on his layout at any time.  Throw in an assortment of other Funkos, animal figurines, and Harry Potter characters and he can lay out scenarios and provide us with visual perspective.  By adding a second webcam to his arsenal he can keeps himself in the window while also displaying the scene, which also helped us stay connected. 

 

At the end of our very first session, back when we were all baby 1^st level characters struggling with being ambushed by four goblins, we took the below screen shot photo.  If our adventuring party has a family photo on the wall (or more precisely a tapestry) at Tresndar Manor, which we took over after clearing the town of Phandalin of the Redbrands gang, it would look like this.  The figures, standing on a can of tuna and starting with the bearded one and going clockwise, are Kent, Katla, Donyxn, and Almont.  Their players along the bottom windows are, from left to right, Holly (Katla), Jeff (Almont), Andy (Kent), and Norberto (Donyxn).  Our trusty DM Tristen is not shown here because this is when he still had his lame one-web-cam setup.  If you’re wondering about the can of tuna, it was a prop being used by Tristen in one of his set-pieces to hold something up.  We’re a pretty low budget operation that all shop at Costco, and we don’t apologize for that.

 

This group of friends has a weird backstory.  In brief, Holly and I have been together since high school and Norberto has been our friend that entire time.  I met Tristen about 15 years ago when I sat in on his hiring interview (I asked him one question – “Do you have an experience with Microsoft Access?”).  Andy is a friend of Tristen’s who we met maybe 10 years ago.  Here’s the really strange part – the five of us, while all having spent a lot of time together in various combinations, have never all been in the same location together in the United States.  In fact, the only place that the five of us have been together in person is Iceland.  Three times, when we all went to Reykjavik for the Iceland Airwaves music festival.  This trips me out to no end.  We’ve been together in groups of four plenty of times in the US, but never all five of us.  

 

Anyway… back to the world of Zoom D&D.  Below you can see one of our more recent encounters.  This is the battle outside the Black Antlers tavern described in Session #02.  The two red heads in the middle are the minotaurs who went to bait the spined devils, with the spined devils and building arrayed around them (including flying devils on clear plastic stands!).  The building in the foreground is the tavern, which at that time contained all the characters and the rest of the minotaurs.

 

The point here is that this doesn’t need to be fancy.  It just needs to be fun.  And Zoom makes it easy to spend three hours with your friends adventuring, solving puzzles, and fighting evil.  And having some beers and cocktails, and trying to get through this COVID thing intact.  Because right now that’s about all any of us really want.  You can do this!