Tabletop Role-Playing and the Internet, Part 1: A Usable Setup

My gaming group has been getting together nearly every week for about four years now. There are four of us, one of which is on the other side of the continent. This situation has presented us with many technical challenges when trying to run a table-top RPG like Dungeons & Dragons, d20 Modern, or Call of Cthulhu.

The image below shows our current hardware arrangement. Take a look at it and I'll explain each of the numbered components. Be aware that this setup has evolved over time, through trial-and-error with a hodge-podge of elements. Basically we used what we had, pooling our resources; no doubt the arrangement and technologies can be improved upon (the subject of a future article).



1) Webcam: iSight - Since the laptop we use for videoconferencing is a PowerBook (see #2 below), we use an iSight camera to facilitate communication with our remote player.

2) Laptop: Macintosh PowerBook G4 Aluminum - Braced atop a snare stand, this laptop is running only iChat, maximized to full screen. So it's just like Player 3 is sitting there at the end of the table.

3) Desktop: Sony VAIO Pentium 4 with Windows XP - This machine runs tabletop gaming software so everyone can see the same map in real-time. The software we use is called Gametable. This computer acts as the host (Player 3 and the GM's computers are clients) for Gametable. Players 1 and 2 share this computer, and usually there's a web browser open to various reference pages relevant to the current game.

4) Music & Sound Speakers - Pretty self-explanatory. The GM plays music and sounds through these speakers. They should be situated so that Player 3 can hear them clearly.

5) Videoconferencing Speakers - Speakers for the audio output from the videoconferencing laptop. Players 1 and 2 should be able to clearly hear them.

6) Table - A horizontal planar surface with four perpendicular supports usually works fairly well.

7) Keyboard - Pretty basic. The one we use is wired; a wireless one would be ideal.

8) Mouse - Same deal: it's a wired mouse; wireless would be better. On occasion we've used two mice--one for Player 1 and one for Player 2--but I'm not convinced that's a better arrangement.

9) Mixer - Four channel Behringer: one channel for music, another for sound effects and voices. Levels can all be adjusted on the fly.

10) Music Device - We use an iPod. When I GM, I try to have a playlist two to three hours in duration for each session. Sometimes I logically separate the "fighting" tracks from the other, more ambient pieces (either through genre or naming or order in playlist).

11) Laptop - Macintosh PowerBook G4 Titanium. 867MHz, 512MB RAM. Kind of an out-dated machine, but still very useful. I play sound files through the Finder or iTunes, anything else (like voices [research.att.com]) through a web-based app.