Tools/techniques for optimal tabletop gaming with one remote user

Question

A member of our group has moved to Dallas and we're involving them in the game using Skype. The rest of us are sitting around a table. We have one laptop being used to show the player, and usually one or two other guys have a laptop and/or smartphone they're using to take notes. We use a battlemat from time to time and a whiteboard for names, initiatives, and diagrams. What can we do to make this work better (not step on the remote player and have that player able to see/understand/etc what's going on)?

There is a previous question, What tools or strategies have you found useful when not all players can be in the same physical space?, that is largely useless to me because the majority of the tips there require everyone to be online (or for you to have some big projector setup). I am not interested in virtual tabletops, because the whole group is there in person and most don't have computers. I want ways to plug the one remote guy into our real game, not plug us all into a computer game.

We're not likely to spend thousands of dollars on projectors or whatnot, but small buys like "a second webcam" or "a remote mike" are a possibility. Heck, we have skype on one or two of the phones, we could plug them into the same call I reckon. Anyway, what have people done successfully for this use case?

Edit: Our solution we've been using for a while now is Skype on a dedicated laptop with integral webcam at the end of the table with a high quality standalone mike (Blue Snowball). We take pictures of the GM's whiteboard with cellphone cameras and send those along to the remote member; we also sometimes use a corkboard.me to share detailed text/pics. Not painless but works OK.

Answer 1

We arrived at this situation from the other direction (everyone used laptops, one remotely) but I hope our solution may prove helpful even though it does involve a virtual table.

After the DM found a 19" monitor for 99 bucks he set up his laptop with the monitor in a dual monitor setup.

We used Maptool with Skype,

• The DM ran the session on his laptop screen
• He ran a generic player session displayed on the monitor screen
• The remote player connected to the Maptool session as usual.

The rest of us were able to put away our laptops and focus as a group on the one monitor when needed. We went back and forth as to whether having a dedicated person drive the player moves locally was best or passing around the keyboard/mouse.

This was with D&D 3.x, which is a pretty heavyweight game in terms of tactical movement so I imagine it would work well with most any game where precise positioning is less important.

The time to prepare and setup encounters can vary widely. It is quite easy to get sucked into creating the "perfect" map and spend hours and hours tweaking things. If that sort of thing appeals to you, great! However, I had to learn to cut some corner.

1. Use Maptool to create the maps. Using another program to create the maps and then importing them means you have to learn to use two programs and work with them both. The basic maptool drawing support is pretty good.
2. For encounters that don't need a specific layout of terrain use tiling. There are many free images you can import to maptool. Set it for tiling and you have a large assortment of different outdoor areas just be moving the displayed area a bit.
3. There are many adventures fully converted to Maptool. Download and use their maps even if you don't want to use the module. Some of the user contributed content on the Maptool forums is of very high quality.

Answer 2

Our table has had to remote in one player every so often, and our setup is pretty simple - all you need is a webcam (preferably at each end, but only really necessary at the "game" side), a set of speakers, and your choice of software (we usually use either Google Chat or Skype).

Webcam points at the remote user, and at the map/board at the table. The rest of the table can see the remote player (which gives the "telepresence"), and the remote player can see what's going on. (Nominate a player to handle moving the camera around if needed.

Beyond that, presuming you trust the player to roll his own dice, you're golden. (If he didn't bring dice or there are trust issues, you get someone at the table to roll for you.)

Things to watch for: - a spotty connection can make this very annoying - it's easy to lose what's going on if you lose voice for a few seconds. - you want a decent webcam for the table (or a nice long USB cable so they can fly you around). - I find that it works best for ranged characters (where positioning doesn't have to be as precise) more than melee/tanks (where you really need to know what's going on). - Nominate someone at the table (probably Camera Guy) to handle the details of moving. For instance, I'll say "OK, I want a shot at (monster)", but let the local guy put me in the specific spot. (Again, because even with a good camera it can be hard to see all the detail.)

All in all, it's the next-best thing to actually being there.