Tag ttrpg

A few months on StartPlaying.Games

whitebeard 1 Comment

I’ve been listing my online games on the player-GM-match platform StartPlaying since last year. Here’s how it’s gone so far.

StartPlaying calls itself “the largest online platform for players to find tapletop roleplaying games” and for the GM it provides a bunch of services – you get a nice profile page, a simple way to schedule and price sessions, a review system, a messaging system to communicate with players and they take care of all the billing/charging too.

I’m pretty pleased with how these services all work together – I don’t think the UI is much to write home about but it’s improved in useful ways over the past year and I don’t see any reason why that wouldn’t continue. They take a cut of billings. That’s very reasonable. It all works nicely.

A few things I’ve been impressed with – it handles timezones well so I can list things in my local timezone and avoid some of the confusion with players around the world. And recently they’ve released calendar subscription which is great for sharing my listing times with my partner or automating my upcoming games posts.

For players I think it works well – you can sign up and find a campaign pretty easily and expect a good experience and there are a good variety of systems , styles and settings to choose from.

None of these things matter though as a GM, if it can’t deliver the players to you.

I guess I’m in an odd situation – I schedule games when my kids are in school, which means mornings GMT. This is a reasonable evening time in Australia but sucks for the UK and Europe – people seem to have proper jobs to go to – and only extreme nighthawks can make it from the States. I’ve managed to get a couple of games off the ground and all my players have come from my marketing efforts off-site. I’ll write about those another time. But the site itself really hasn’t delivered the amount of players I need to make a success of things.

The discord is full of GMs happy to critique your profile or your adventure listings to encourage sign-ups and there are helpful webinars run by the company on best practices for listings. Call me cynical, but the advice feels a bit SEO-like: ‘here are some things that gave results for me by luck, dressed up as hard advice you should follow’. What worked for one GM twelve months ago to build their audience is as close to anecdote and as far from data as I can imagine.

I’d really like to see some more analytics. I want to know how many people viewed my listings on the site, how many clicked through, how many moved on to read my profile, how many went on to book a different GM. All so I can to try to figure out what point they decided against signing up and tweak accordingly. That way I could make a stab at a few adjustments and more importantly I could monitor behaviour after making changes to see if there’s an effect.

Right now, I’m only guessing that there aren’t many people looking in my games’ timeslot. I have no idea perhaps there are hundreds that just don’t want what I’m selling or are turned off by something I say in my profile. I have no way to tell. Pretty sure the over-confident advice-givers on discord have no way to tell either!

I’d also like to see a better matchmaking service for GM seat-swapping – this is when another GM joins your game to make up the numbers and you recriprocate for them. There’s a discord channel – but it didn’t work at all for me. Approaching GMs directly had a much better result. If games take a while to fill with players, it’s essential that I can offer a decent game to the first couple that show up.

I’m going to stick with StartPlaying for now. As I say, the services it provides all work well enough together an do make my life easier but I’m left having to do the marketing myself, and somewhat in the dark. I think I would prefer a different balance – I’d be happy with less developed GM services if the marketing was slick and it delivered players to me.

If you do want to try out StartPlaying, as a player, using this referral link gives me a little kickback when you book your first game: https://startplaying.games/referral/ckrxv8ebu2dfvbopkbp96htc0

Campaign report: Rime of the Frostmaiden: session #3

whitebeard Leave a comment

It’s always been hard to travel between the Ten Towns – the bitter cold and the harsh landscape testing the hardiest of adventurers. Lately though, with Auril’s chill magic shrouding the land, it’s deadly. The ferry routes from Easthaven to Caer-Konig and Caer-Dineval have long ceded to the frozen lake. Dogsleds overland are the only way to make passage across the tundra.

Three adventurers gather in the Northlook tavern in Bryn Shander, each waiting for a guide to take them north to Caer-Konig. It’s a seven hour journey overland – too much for a single leg. They’ve arranged a rest stop in Caer-Dineval, a little over four hours away.

Lucas, a red-skinned teifling warlock, is juggling a number of leads, all pointing north. A missing youth from Targos who left the town suddenly in the company of teiflings heading for a castle somewhere. Caer-Dineval maybe. A dog, Boy, now his loyal companion, searching for his master thought lost in an expedition to Kelvin’s Cairn. And, rumours of an abandoned wizard’s tower and a guide who can take a party there from Caer-Konig.

Eifira Galaran, a barbarian elf, seeking only to get to the furthest place away. Away from what? Just away.

And Veomileana, a short-statured Goliath wizard, with a secret agenda. Perhaps he too searches for the tower. Perhaps not.

Their guide arrives, Nebmara, from Farfrozen Adventures. Their dogs are fed and waiting and they encourage the party to leave rightways. “We should easily make Dineval by night-fall. If we don’t run into trouble…”

Two hours into the journey and all is quiet. Veomileana and Nebmara handling the cold as if they were born to it. The elf, Elfira, clearly suffering the effects of exhaustion. She’ll be fine holding that great axe of hers, but she’s slow to move and clumsy with the cold.

Something on the road ahead. Keen eyes pick out a large white cat and two smaller ones, not kittens but not yet fully grown. They’re feeding on another animal – carrion or prey, no-one can tell. Circle of life. They’ve not seen the party.

“The dogs won’t be able to take the sled overland – we need to clear this road.” Neb isn’t phased which gives everyone confidence. Eifira strolls forward, no attempt at silence, readying that great axe for the fight. The cats hiss and bridle, showing sharp claws and even sharper teeth.

It’s over quickly. Eifira, consumed by the anger that barbarians have learned to channel, dispatching the mother and one of the cubs. Veomileana stays on the sidelines firing bonfires towards the cat and sending his familar, a small owl, in again and again to distract the cats. Lucas is pounced on by the smaller of the cats but shields the attack with a flash of magic. Nebmara stays back at the sled, causing any creature that comes near the dogs to flee with dissonant magic whispers in their heads. Occasionally Neb shouts encouragement to the others – lacing their words with a sliver of bardic magic.

In the frozen north, nothing is wasted. The cats’ bodies will provide for other animals here, the adventurers take the pelts. Prized for their thickness, they’ll do to keep someone warm in this arctic hell.

They’re an hour or so from Caer-Dineval, their first stop, when the small lantern Lucas has strapped to his belt starts glowing. It was given to him by an academic in Targos who’s hunting for the mythical Chingwa spirits of the north. It glows when they are near. Persuading the party to stop, he fashions a quick pull-trap from a box, stick and string and puts it on the road ahead. Cutlery that he ‘borrowed’ from an inn set inside as bait. The party wait, and wait. The elf again feeling the effects of the cold. “Enough” says the Goliath, “I’m going to send my owl up to search for these creatures. We can’t wait here forever”.

The owl circles, spotting some odd stones to the North East. The party heads to investigate. “Not a good idea,” says Nebmara “I’m staying with the dogs.” They search, the cold wracking their bodies, but nothing. Returning to the sled they set off again towards Caer-Dineval, what passes for night now approaching and the temperature dropping fast. As they pass the trap, keen eyes notice that the cutlery is gone and there are what could be tiny footprints around it.

The tower of Caer-Dineval in sight, a bloodcurdling howl comes from the tundra and then another. Two terrifying creatures break forth – these are the fables yetis that the Reghed talk of. There’s no way they can fight these, not in their exhausted state. “Faster, faster,” says Nebmara, urging the dogsled forward – the last push before the town walls. It’s a bumpy ride, everyone hanging on for dear life. Neb loses their grip. They’re thrown from the sled towards the terrifying, charging beasts.

Suddenly, their familiar, a large orange owl is there. Catching them in a practiced manner and lifting them high out of the yeti’s grasp. The yetis turn to follow the flying creature. “Keep the dogs” Neb shouts to the adventurers “they weren’t mine anyway.” As they are carried away, chased by the terrors of the snow, keen eyes would see their whole appearance change as some kind of magic gets dispelled. Who was this person? Were they even the guide we were expecting?

Three exhausted adventurers arrive finally at the gates of Caer-Dineval. The frozen lake below them, the old castle high on the bluff ahead. It’s always been hard to travel between the Ten Towns.

How I use Avrae

whitebeard Leave a comment

Avrae is a very capable D&D discord bot made by DnDBeyond. It’s complicated. In the spirit of ‘complex tools, used simply’ I want to share how I use it when I’m GMing a game.

I have a go-to set of 10 or so commands that I can remember and that I use. I’ve tried to use more of it in the past but my brain has been full for a long time and I can’t pick up these tools like I used to. As always, you may conclude differently. This is what I do, not what I think you should do.

Setting up Avrae

Most of the time, if you’re playing with me, you won’t know that I’m using Avrae. I have a separate channel in discord that I use to talk to the bot. This has a couple of useful side-effects – I can use it to look up stuff and make rolls without the players seeing and I get a convenient history in that channel of all the avrae commands I’ve used in the game.

I’ve tried introducing avrae to players by having it available out in our #gameplay channel but I’ve found that even if you’re playing with someone who can make it sing like a stradivarius, you’ll still get a lot of autogenerated noise, especially when mistakes are made. And I’ve found that at least one player will be sat there wondering what the hell is going on.

I have avrae connected to my DnDBeyond account – I’m guessing I did this by following the invite process on their site but it’s so long ago I don’t really remember.

Importing characters

Before every game, I update avrae:

!update

And then I import any new characters using the URL of their character id:

!import  https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/[character_id]

Creating character tokens

!char list

will give you a list of available characters

!char [name]

will let you switch the current character that commands in avrae run against. I usually just use a the first few letters of a character’s name to run this command. If it’s ambiguous, avrae’ll give you a list of characters to choose from.

!token -border none

will give you a nice round token for the character with no branding. I use owlbear rodeo and can usually just drag that token into the game.

!portrait
Calista Brelladora

this will give you a square portrait if you want to stamp the token in a different way.

Creating monster tokens

I have two ways that I use to make monster tokens. You can create a nice round token – but unfortunately you can’t remove the DnDBeyond branding . I guarantee one of your players will ask what that big ‘B’ is for.

!token [monster name]
Goblin

Or you can get the image for a monster:

!monimage [monster name]
Goblin

I tend to use the round tokens if I’m on a navigation map – say a map of a village or of an area. The full images I use on combat maps.

Making rolls

The dice syntax is really powerful. I don’t use it – I just use it for simple rolls. Again, my brain is full and I worry that if I learned the whole dice syntax I’d have to forsake some other knowledge that might be more useful. For simple rolls like this, it avoids having to do maths:

!roll 2d20+4

Making random names

This is really useful when you’ve invented an NPC and someone asks for their name. Do not hesitate when asked, run this and then say the name as if you had it all along.

!randname [optional race]

Getting rules and stats information

There are plenty of lookup commands that bring back 5e rules and other information. These are the ones I tend to use. Especially the condition rules for some reason.

!monster goblin
!condition grappled
!spell mage hand

Er… that’s it

And those are all the commands I use. I know it’s a much richer tool – there are more commands and the commands I’ve shown here have more options. But this is what I do. I find them very powerful on their own and also empowering. You might find the same.

One last thing, Avrae encourages you to type !help. Do not be scared if you do this – so much stuff appears and it’s really difficult to know where to start. When you’re comfortable running a few commands and using the basics in-game, then you can look into the abyss run the help command safely.