I wrote about this as well on the 11 April: https://theexceptioncatcher.com/blog/2020/04/games-that-you-...
There are more games there that you can play.
How to play board games online with your friends
131–140 of 215 posts
Re: How to play board games online with your friends
#132I've been working on a vtt for DND5E for the past couple of years. You can text/video chat, create characters, maps and all of the essentials! Please take a look! https://imetatroll.com If you really like what I am doing, I have a twitter account and a patreon account. Thanks!
I just tried it out and it was really hard to get started. I couldn't figure out how to edit a game board and there was really little guidance around what to do, like a step 1, step 2, step 3. I had no idea what an "Encounter" sized board was, for example.
And the icon buttons were hard to use. I had to hover over them to see what they did and it wasn't easy. Maybe use a tooltip library for those (like tippy.js) or just have the text next to the icons — this would be much more usable.
Also, a quick getting started video overview would be awesome. I wasn't sure how to edit a board or see it in perspective.
I really like the general interface and feel of it thought. Felt old school and like it's own little world. I was also impressed that you have video and audio chat built in — really, really cool. I hope it gets easier to use, because I think I'd want to try it more!
Re: How to play board games online with your friends
#133Tabletopia is another online service for this. They seem to have quite an extensive library.
Good call. I initially left it out because it felt too close to TTS. How does it compare?
We've played a couple of games in both TTS and Tabletopia. Neither became a favourite.
Superficially they are indeed very similar, you're getting a 3D simulated world with the board game in it, and then a clumsy way to interact with that world.
We did not find (not sure if any exist) rules enforcement implementations for Tabeltopia. Every game we tried we had to understand and enforce any rules, and the physics engine is arguably an obstacle rather than assistance as it neatly allows you to drop cards where they can't go, flip cards you shouldn't see, resize counters or accidentally stack them when that's not useful....
Big upside to Tabletopia: It runs in browser. If a person in your group has a company laptop that's locked down to do Office and so on, chances are it can't run Steam (and so TTS isn't possible) but it can run Chrome and thus Tabletopia works.
Definitely the biggest contrast is to BGA. BGA is the place to go if you want rules enforcement and aren't happy to stick with one game you all enjoy. But you won't get any of the mechanical joy if that's important to you. If you actually enjoy making change with monopoly money, BGA discards that because their rules enforcement just turns the amount of money (cows, glory, mana, whatever) into a number instead. Little wooden cubes become small red squares on the screen that appear exactly where the designer put them, you can't balance them or line them up how you want, because that isn't part of the game rules.
Personally I am now spending several hours every single week on a variety of games at BGA and maybe one session of TTS Gloomhaven if we can face it.
To me video conferencing isn't essential. We usually run a Hangout for live games, but in practice you care mostly about the voices. It's satisfying to hear another player say "Aw, I wanted that" when you take away an option you suspected they wanted, and it's easy to say "Sorry, Jenny is screaming, back in five" and put the headset down compared to having to type all that with a child screaming.
Re: How to play board games online with your friends
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a pretty good hypothesis. I honestly don't know. The reason I've preferred purple and (dark) blue is that they only require two properties to have a monopoly, so you can get monopolies sooner. It might be confirmation bias on my part, but my memory is that when I get these monopolies early it often prevents people from developing the orange properties. But like I said, I honestly don't know. You're probably ri…
I suspect that it depends on the play style of your opponents. A lot of people are too hesitant to trade in order to gain monopolies for multiple people early on. I've seen it play out this way with multiple parties not having monopoly and one party having one on Blue (or even purple in one case) and absolutely refusing to trade out of fear that it might help someone else. The results are inevitable at that point.
We always played with a house rule that trades are not allowed until all properties have been purchased.
Re: How to play board games online with your friends
#135A few friends and I invented a board game several years ago and we all thought this pandemic time would be a great opportunity to get back into it. I set up a real time board game maker online, called DoomGrid[0]. It's very basic and just uses Firebase to sync a bunch of game objects across everyone's game board. We also published the rules for our invented game recently[1] (warning, only 70% complete). We've now spe…
Had you looked into using https://boardgame.io/ for doing state management?
Re: How to play board games online with your friends
#136After watching an attempt to make Scrabble work [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaXo_i3ktwM ], I was thinking what games could work via a webcam if all players have the game. Thinking of games I've played recently, Dominion would work. Ticket to Ride wouldn't. On the Underground would, 1960 Making of a President wouldn't. Normal Settlers wouldn't, but the junior version of Settlers would The key thing is not drawin…
The River (by Days of Wonder) is a worker/resource game that can work since there's limited private information that originates as public.
Re: How to play board games online with your friends
#137Austin has a local board game Meetup group that's shifted entirely to Tabletop Simulator during this time. It's great and definitely maintains the best feeling of playing a physical board game. I'm surprised that the author didn't mention the hundreds of games that you can download for free in the Steam Workshop as mods. Not all of them work flawlessly, so you have to test things out beforehand. However, the almost u…
I've been looking at moving to Austin and love board games. Unfortunately with everything canceled I can't currently use Meetup to check out the scene. Would you mind talking a little bit about what the board game scene is normally like in the area?
Re: How to play board games online with your friends
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm kinda surprised by all the hate on Monopoly. It's a great game for learning. It teaches you to take risks early and slowly lower your risk tolerance over time to let your existing assets appreciate. It teaches you that the best values are at the extremes of real estate: you want to be either a luxury condo owner or a slum lord. It teaches you that capitalism isn't fair, because good strategy and hard work don't p…
Most people play a modified version of the game, without the auctioning of property, and with additional money put into the game when landing on Free Parking. Most also play they game as children. Without auctioning, and with the money from Free Parking, the game lasts longer, and is frustrating for the losing players -- particularly for children, who have to tolerate the gloating of the winning child. It might be ed…
IMO the version on the Nintendo Entertainment System (yes, the really old Nintendo) is the best Monopoly, because it plays by vanilla rules and takes care of all the bookkeeping, auction-running, and setup for you. Plays fast. Few enough buttons even non-gamers or kids new to gaming can keep up.
Plus I think you can play it multiplayer online with modern emulators, which is relevant to the current situation.
I wouldn't consider entirely replacing most board games with a video game version but for Monopoly I'd make an exception. Play the one on the NES.
[EDIT] a crucial factor might be that there's no hidden or secret information in Monopoly, so it converts to all-playing-on-one-screen better than a lot of board games would.
Re: How to play board games online with your friends
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
How are you guys managing the video? Is it peer to peer or is it being routed and encoded in a server first? Codenames needs at least four players to start, if it's p2p, have you noticed any lag or bandwidth problems?
Hey nice to meet another Polish dude! We use Twilio's Video SDK and their P2P rooms. This works fine for most users on desktops and good internet. When I play with friends in CA (I'm in NY), I don't experience any serious issues. Sometimes there's feedback when a user has their speakers blasting. Many of our users experience problems on mobile when there are a lot of players in the room. We're thinking about switchin…
How much do you guys spend per month on the Twilio API if you don't mind me asking? We are currently running our site on an ovh server for $5 a month with no problems since we don't have a crazy amount of users.
Re: How to play board games online with your friends
#140A few friends and I invented a board game several years ago and we all thought this pandemic time would be a great opportunity to get back into it. I set up a real time board game maker online, called DoomGrid[0]. It's very basic and just uses Firebase to sync a bunch of game objects across everyone's game board. We also published the rules for our invented game recently[1] (warning, only 70% complete). We've now spe…
Had you looked into using https://boardgame.io/ for doing state management?
I prefer having more freedom than a turn-based system provides — the the setup I currently have is actually super simple, but I'll look into this for the next turn-based game I make.