I recently restarted a long-running Dungeons and Dragons game that I started as Dungeon Master back in the days of lockdown during the Covid-19 crisis. We started it on Zoom and I've kept it that way as it allows the far flung family and some pals to join in. It's a great way to spend an evening every month catching up and creating a story together.
Being online, I've come up with a few ways to try and compensate for the lack of the full tabletop experience. One of the tricks is to create token graphics for the characters and place them on a map in a graphics program. You need a lightweight but capable program to run alongside Zoom while you share your screen and I've found that Affinity Designer works pretty well. However the upgrade deal to the new version is not very good. So I might try something opensource instead. A vector program works well because you can mask out parts of the map that have not yet been visited and then reveal them as you go. You need the layers to do this.
So here are some screenshots and graphics that I've used. I create unique characters with DAZ Studio and scan the monsters in from D&D monster cards. The next stage will be graphics to establish the scenes and I already have Zoom backgrounds to set the story.
Now all we need to do is see if we can all get along to the new Chris Pine Dungeons and Dragons movie. 😊
