Playing live via Facebook, Zoom, other "video conference"

[Kurgan]

Do you have the purchased Zoom or the free one that ends after a few hours? Just wondering for everyones sake if the free one can do everything needed for this, or if people would need the purchased version.

So maybe not! It looks as if you can, at least at the moment, play a whole game with just the free version of Zoom. OBS is free too.

Even so if you find the limits there are easy work arounds

[Bareheaded Warrior]

WOW, we could all get together and host some YeOldeInn remote Quest sessions, especially during this pandemic.

Only slight catch that I could see is by the time we had debated and agree on a ruleset to use, this pandemic and possibly the next one will be over!

[Kurgan]

I think there's still a hard limit of 100 participants (let's be real though, we're talking about a game intended for 5 players, but I guess you could have spectators too), but even a small gathering would be pretty cool. I agree about the houserules.

I could see it being general agreement on NA or EU rules, and then whoever is Zargon/Morcar makes the call, but then somebody could refuse to play I guess.

My rule of honor is that when someone else is the GM I abide by their rules... as a player I can raise an objection, but the GM is the "judge" and makes the final call.

Finding 2-5 people to agree on a set of rules doesn't sound insurmountable.

[Kurgan]

Played again last night... had some issues with OBS not recognizing one of my usb webcams, which was annoying, so I had to manually switch between cameras in Zoom (or have a big generic placeholder graphic in place of one of them). Since OBS is free I guess I can't complain other than to point out it was working fine last time!

Still, played another 2 hour game (2 computers) with the free version and no warnings or hiccups of any kind from the system. I see several pages saying they basically have removed limits for holidays, but maybe have secretly removed them for other cases as well (2 computers always had the 24 hour limit). When you can't switch back and forth on the fly its harder... though the GM had a smartphone so he could just point the phone at the board whenever it was needed... the trouble with a smart phone is needing to keep it plugged in since most people's batteries get drained fast running streaming video like that for a couple hours.

[Anderas]

I'd like to participate as test, once... could you give me a heads up next time?
Maybe if your party is full already, I just watch you playing to get a feel for how it goes.

[Kurgan]

I would be willing to try it out this weekend, unless that's too soon, actually. Sent you a pm...

[Kurgan]

It explicitly says that Basic (Free) Zoom is unlimited due to the global pandemic, so there!

[iKarith]

Google Meet is also free to use, at the cost of it being Google with all the privacy implications that provides. (Although Zoom routes US traffic through China for some reason, so pick your privacy poison…) I'm gonna have to wait a week or so before I can play (I'll NEED my own set to follow along) … it'll be my first game in almost 10 years(!)

Might be fun to get other people who haven't played in a very long time (or ever) for a campaign aimed at bringing them back up to speed.

[Kurgan]

I love to play and I wouldn't mind being part of someone's game. Let me know what times you're free if you want to do it and PM me your email, etc. If you don't want to play me specifically that's fine, but I recommend it. It's a blast!