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How to play board games online with your friends

masilotti.com

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Re: How to play board games online with your friends

#151

Post by Splendor »

phlamb wrote: post #148
Splendor wrote: post #119

Has anyone found an easy solution for video chats with virtual games? I've tried Hangouts, Meet, Discord, and Zoom but they all seemed incomplete for my requirements. My requirements: - Host can share their screen and video camera at the same time without having to join the meeting from two different devices - Desktop audio and host's audio can be heard by everyone on the call - Gallery view in video chat so everyone…

I found Skype to be the easiest to use with these requirements. I hosted a Jackbox game and was able to share my screen (and game audio), my webcam (albeit in a smaller view than normal), and could see everyone in a gallery view.

Thanks. I'll give it a shot.

Re: How to play board games online with your friends

#152

Post by afro88 »

My dad is in his late 70s, not good with technology and likes to play scrabble. We used to play a game every week on the weekend. So I thought now would be a good time to download an app to each of our ipads and play online during lockdown.

So as it turns out, there is no good easy clean online scrabble game. They're all horrifyingly gamified, "social" with lots of bots and fake accounts (one with bonus forced facebook login) and full of ads to trick you into downloading other things. All features that my poor non-techy dad would get confused and put off by. I was amazed.

So does anyone know of a good simple clean way to play scrabble remotely?

Re: How to play board games online with your friends

#153

Post by Torwald »

afro88 wrote: post #152

My dad is in his late 70s, not good with technology and likes to play scrabble. We used to play a game every week on the weekend. So I thought now would be a good time to download an app to each of our ipads and play online during lockdown. So as it turns out, there is no good easy clean online scrabble game. They're all horrifyingly gamified, "social" with lots of bots and fake accounts (one with bonus forced facebo…

you could create board in google docs spreadsheet and create stack of letters via script maybe browser plugin if needed.

Re: How to play board games online with your friends

#154

Post by joemasilotti »

afro88 wrote: post #152

My dad is in his late 70s, not good with technology and likes to play scrabble. We used to play a game every week on the weekend. So I thought now would be a good time to download an app to each of our ipads and play online during lockdown. So as it turns out, there is no good easy clean online scrabble game. They're all horrifyingly gamified, "social" with lots of bots and fake accounts (one with bonus forced facebo…

It's kind of sad, to be honest. The official Scrabble app does exactly what you want, but only for pass-and-play. (At least it did a few years ago when I played.)

I wonder if you could set up the game at your house, physically, with a camera pointed bird's eye view. He wouldn't be able to move his pieces, but he might be able to communicate via a video chat?

Re: How to play board games online with your friends

#155

Post by dmoy »

joemasilotti wrote: post #33
iso1631 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We played Monopoly, and had good success" Unlikely. What a tedious game

Apparently almost everyone is playing with the same "house rules" that make the game awful. Free parking is not a rule and just makes the game go longer. Not automatically putting up unpurchased properties for auction is also a big rule to miss.

I've played monopoly strictly by the rules and it ends up being equally terrible as any house rules imo.

Perhaps even worse, once you get someone who drops in with the hyper optimized bleed-everyone-to-death-with-no-hotels strategy. (Or worse, 2+ people with this strategy, because they it becomes a neverending game of trying to block all monopolies)

I'll agree though, playing without the auction rule is super slow and boring.

Maybe stock rules with infinite houses, I haven't tried that before.

Re: How to play board games online with your friends

#156

Post by Torwald »

kerkeslager wrote: post #39
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #3

I was hoping this was going to be how to modify boardgames to play with friends via webcam. We played Monopoly, and had good success - one board, setup a ghost player for the remote people. Remote people used parts of a set to keep track of their money and properties. Later several hours. >In my experience, Zoom is the most consistent service and works on almost any device. One person in your group will need a paid s…

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…

^this shouldn't be downvoted

Re: How to play board games online with your friends

#157

Post by RockIslandLine »

bluetidepro wrote: post #13

> In my experience, Zoom is the most consistent service and works on almost any device. One person in your group will need a paid subscription if you want to host an event longer than 40 minutes. Have to disagree on this, Discord has been a FAR better solution for my group of friends and I with our online game nights. We tried Zoom, Discord, Google Meet/Hangouts, and Discord has, by far, been the best UI/UX/clarity/q…

Yeah, discord is pretty bad, but it's better than Zoom.

Re: How to play board games online with your friends

#158

Post by astura »

iso1631 wrote: post #4
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #3

I was hoping this was going to be how to modify boardgames to play with friends via webcam. We played Monopoly, and had good success - one board, setup a ghost player for the remote people. Remote people used parts of a set to keep track of their money and properties. Later several hours. >In my experience, Zoom is the most consistent service and works on almost any device. One person in your group will need a paid s…

"We played Monopoly, and had good success" Unlikely. What a tedious game

The people who like Monopoly really love it and everyone else would rather play pretty much anything else.

Re: How to play board games online with your friends

#159

Post by j2bax »

mariusz331 wrote: post #143
j2bax wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure which country you are in, or if you care at all but you might want to avoid using trademarked game titles like Boggle to avoid any legal disputes. Perhaps a subtle nod like Bogly or something would be enough to let people know the general game...

Thank you! We'll definitely look into changing the names to avoid legal issues.

Yeah man, really impressed with your simple yet effective implementation. Played a quick game of Boggle with a work mate of mine to test it out. Worked quick and seamlessly! Can't wait to see what other games you get on there.

Re: How to play board games online with your friends

#160

Post by [deleted] »

afro88 wrote: post #152

My dad is in his late 70s, not good with technology and likes to play scrabble. We used to play a game every week on the weekend. So I thought now would be a good time to download an app to each of our ipads and play online during lockdown. So as it turns out, there is no good easy clean online scrabble game. They're all horrifyingly gamified, "social" with lots of bots and fake accounts (one with bonus forced facebo…

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