Coronavirus Ruining Your Gaming?
Right now a lot is happening in the world as it relates to this pandemic. Here in Michigan we have a few confirmed cases and the stores are running out of cleaning supplies, toilet paper, and other things. While I am not afraid of this from my own personal health standpoint I am worried financially as I am someone who works in sales. I worry about the economic impact of it all and I am sure some of you feel the same way. One thing that I also have some concerns about is my in person gaming as well. I play or run a few games in person right now. There is a real concern about upcoming gaming conventions like GenCon, GrandCon, and Nerdarchy the Convention as well. In this post I want to discuss some potential solutions though. So fear not and get your game on!
If you have in person games planned and have concerns about gas money or maybe someone is sick in your gaming group consider one of the online gaming tools like Roll20, or Fantasy Grounds. I personally don’t use either right now but have used Roll20 in the past. Both can be great for your gaming needs if you use miniatures in your gaming. Pair these up with something else free like Discord or Skype and you should be all set for a great night of gaming.
Some of you may even have some sort of conference call software like Zoom or Skype. Discord can be used as well. If you are ok with just playing theater of the mind and not using any miniatures these will be perfect as well. If however you want to use miniatures you can still lay out a map on the table and miniatures. Now this may be a bit more difficult because one person now has to control all movements but it should be manageable. I recommend playing a little bit more loose with the rules than normal if doing this. You can still have an amazing night of gaming doing it this way. In fact I play theater of the mind for all of my online games currently.
I personally use Zoom ($15 a month I think) and it works great. One of the nice things is you can share your screen too which is perfect if you want some sort of visual representation of NPCs, monsters, and anything else. This has been great for my groups and I can’t recommend it enough.
The last thing is if any of these gaming conventions do cancel then lets do something about it. Lets take to the internet and run online games. Let us stream more games than ever before! Your plans to go out to a concert or sporting event cancelled? Watch someone stream their game. Go on and stream your own games. Lets take this terrible sickness and focus on positive things we can do. 2020 is a great time for gaming so lets make it a great year.
We here at Master The Game hope that everyone takes this seriously. Don’t be afraid but take proper precautions right now. We can stamp this thing out if we do what we need to.
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Hope to see you soon. Game On!