Lockdowns and Dragons

 Today while scrolling down my newsfeed an article by Julian Price discussing the increasing role of video games in people’s social lives caught my eye and after reading through it, I believe that this is a topic that is also relevant to Dungeons and Dragons especially for those stuck in lockdown during the current pandemic.

 

Julian throughout his article discusses how since the beginning of the pandemic increasing amounts of people are turning towards the digital worlds provided by video games instead of social media to catch up with friends, family and even go on virtual dates (Although I can’t say that I personally would encourage the latter). Many of the people interviewed for the article even went on to talk about their proposed improvements in mental health brought about by the social and escapist elements of online gaming.

 

So now you’re probably thinking how does this relate to D&D? Well although I’m lucky enough to currently live in an area that isn’t in lockdown when I was, online D&D was one of if not the only things that kept me sane. Now I know that at least within the group that I used to play in, the idea of online D&D was hated more than even the worst ‘murderhobo’ but after experiencing it we all realised it was no where near as bad as we had all thought. While I still understand that the voice delay, shoddy camera qualities, and awkward apps of online D&D do to a degree degrade the experience it still serves as a great opportunity to catchup with your usual group or even finally coax friends and family into a game (because as a result of the pandemic I’m sure you, your friends and your family have a lot more free time). Also bringing this back to the article by Julian I can personally attest to the fact that online gaming in this case online D&D did benefit me personally by helping me maintain communication with many of my friends some of which didn’t even play D&D pre pandemic. Before I move on to talking about the many options for playing D&D online, I encourage you to read the linked article by MarieAlfonsi Shelanski that discusses in decent depth the story of a group that has begun to play D&D to socialize throughout the pandemic.  

 

To play D&D online your gonna need at the bare minimum a platform to communicate either through text or video (preferably with camera sharing capabilities) and if you plan to do combat, a way to share the live battle map to the group. My recommendations for communication would be either Discord or Zoom as they both have video/audio capabilities and discord especially allows for many ways to organize and automate parts of the experience such as dice rolling. Meanwhile my recommendation for showing your battle maps would be Roll20 as its free option that can do all the basics which is all you should really need unless you plan on playing online long term in which case you could always upgrade to the premium version of Roll20.

 

So, to end off I would recommend even those skeptical of online D&D to at least give it ago as it can still be a lot of fun while also helping to at least fend off that all to common sense of isolation brought by the current lockdowns.