Hi Chris,

Thanks for the kind words. Since I’ve been somewhat removed from anyone in my old gaming group for some time, most of my playing has been remote. The Discord game you refer to is actually run by a fellow from Canada and Discord was kind of the common app everyone had that allows voice chat and screen-sharing. There are other venues (Owlbear Rodeo, any of the VTTs such as DemiPlane or Roll20 that provide similar features), but Discord is free or relatively inexpensive and its easy to spin up a custom server for games.

The screen-sharing feature of Discord is particularly useful because it allows the GM to see the dice rolls and share information immediately with all of the players. One of the things I’ll be adding to a scenario I’m working up will be a collection of Leaflet-based maps that I can display on the screen to the players, but that’s a work in progress right now.

As far as the experience, the game I was in with the Traveller Roleplaying League was as close to being in person as one might get when everyone is hundreds or thousands of miles apart. Nice people, the game was interesting (until I got pulled away due to an overabundance of work and travel), and we all got along well. Lots of jokes too.

I’ve done Zoom games as well, but Discord seems to be where I find a lot of people these days.

Best regards,

Chuck

> On Jul 21, 2025, at 9:00 AM, Christopher Sean Hilton <xxxxxx@vindaloo.com> wrote:
>
> Charles,
>
> Thanks for your great article on Obsidian. I touched on the fact that I wrote a similar
> system, I didn't know about Obsidian at the time, for managing my own cambpaign notes.
>
>  **Q:** _I do wonder how many people are doing a campaign "remotely"?_
>
> By _"remotely"_ I mean that the players "meet" in Discord, Slack, Zoom, or some other video
> conferencing app. I'm in my early sixties and today, my players all live very far
> apart. Getting together in person would be difficult. When I started a new campaign in 2020
> with my old players, we choose Slack as a our video conferencing tool. My decision was based
> on the facts that:
>
> * A player and I were familiar with Slack since we ran it for work.
>
> * A paid slack plan is reasonably cheap I had 3 players and I think that I was paying <
>  $30.00 / month. For that Slack kept all of our notes which we entered into a shared
>  session chat, so long as we kept on paying
>
> * Support is pretty common. You can come from nearly any platform and it would just work. I
>  would actually say that the minimum platform that I would recommend would be an iPad +
>  keyboard for someone who wanted to take notes.
>
> * At the time I was learning how to write custom Slack apps.
>
> Charles, I'd love to hear more about your experience. If I read your article correctly, you
> chose Discord. Long story short, when my son was in his mid teens, I thought that he was
> spending too much time playing computer video games like Fortnight. I offered to run
> a traditional, play in person, Traveller campaign for a few sessions and then hand it off to
> them to run themselves to get them started. A month and half later, he and his friends
> started a D&D campaign that ran for ten years on Discord. This took them from sophomores in
> High School to early in their careers after college.
>
> One of my take away's here is that there seems to be an opportunity in a remote game to
> incorporate a lot of referee's aids to make life simpler.
>
>
> In any case, thanks for the article. **Q:** I wonder if a general discussion of "remote"
> playing might be helpful? I know that I've talked about it "IRL" to several role players
> who've been trying to figure out how to keep a game going.
>
>
> --
> Chris
>
>      __o          "All I was trying to do was get home from work."
>    _`\<,_           -Rosa Parks
> ___(*)/_(*)____.___o____..___..o...________ooO..._____________________
> Christopher Sean Hilton                    [chris/at/vindaloo/dot/com]