#pdfsheets | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

discord5e-blog · 7 years ago

Text

D&D Play-By-Post via Discord

This blog is intended to document how I setup and DM a play-by-post (PBP) Dungeons and Dragons game on Discord. To my knowledge there is no readily available website or document that gives you any step by step instructions; so this blog is to help an aspiring DM learn the lessons I did through trial and error. There is no right or wrong way to do what I am attempting, this is just to share what has worked for my gaming circle. As the old adage goes, your mileage may vary.

Why would you want to run a PBP game you might ask? Being a middle age tech professional with little free time, I find being able to get together with like-minded friends who are married with children a near impossible task. When I was looking for a way to supplement our monthly live session game night, I started searching for alternative means to play the game of Dungeons and Dragons with my friends without actually having to do so in person. This led to my discovery of the Play-By-Post genre of gaming (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play-by-post_role-playing_game). The format harkens back to the gameplay of the bulletin board style Multi-User Dungeon ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD ) game format that I recall from the mid 1990’s when the internet was just coming to into my consciousness. Back then I did not think much of it as I was into console video gaming, reading fantasy text based adventures simply was not something I was into.

Fast forward 25 years and the advent of the internet and the release of Dungeons of Dragons Fifth Edition (5e) has pulled me into the the world of online dungeon mastering. The PBP format of play has numerous advantages which appeals to me: - ability to play/post at leisure from anywhere at anytime - it’s free With high availability in this current age of mobile phones and constant internet connectivity; I am able to post and read what players are doing in real time just as easy as it is to check someone’s Facebook status or read an email. In fact, I have even managed to DM a game in real time from the drive thru lane of McDonald’s even.

Great, so what do I need to get started?

The essential requirements: - Download the mobile/desktop application and register a free account http://discordapp.com - Avrae D&D Discord Bot http://invite.avrae.io/ - a willingness to learn command syntax

The Avrae bot is what makes this all possible; the developer has taken great effort to engineer an automated server bot which handles all in-game mechanics which include dice rolling, character sheet management, in-game references, battle initiative tracker, and more.I cannot say enough good things about this ingenious bit of code, sadly there is not much information on the web besides the homepage mentioned above. The true wealth of knowledge and information lies in the game’s dedicated support server (http://support.avrae.io/) once you have connected to Discord and joined.

High Level Overview for Setting up your own Discord PBP server:

Create a server once you have logged into Discord 1. Invite Avare Bot to join your server 2. Fill out and import character data sheets:

The 3 Ways to do this are: !gsheet - this uses Google Sheets to import character data !pdfsheet - this imports character data from fillable pdf form

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/2iyydv/5th_edition_editable_pdf_character_sheets

!beyond - this imports character data specific to pdf’s from https://www.dndbeyond.com/

I find all three methods have their use. For me, !gsheet is the most flexible of the three methods as it allows for lots of customization and the ability to work from the cloud. However for less tech savvy users, I have found it easier just to point someone to fill a pdf form and have them upload themselves. It really depends on how much work you or your users are willing to do. Once you do this a few times, it becomes rather easy and second nature; fortunately your players will only need to do this once during initial setup.

3. Create a game channel in Discord and start using the bot This is where things start to get fun as you begin to realize all the features the Avrae bot has to facilitate and actual game of Dungeons and Dragons in a chat based format. The full documentation can be found using the !help command or by visiting the bot command homepage (http://avrae.io/commands).

4. Basic Avrae Commands

For brevity’s sake, here is a list of the essential commands that I find are needed to run a basic game of Dungeons and Dragons on Discord.

!roll - rolls dice in xdy format.!r xdy !check - performs an ability check roll !save - performs a save roll !cast - casts a spell from character’s spell list !attack - performs an attack from character’s attack list !game - performs in-game functions (eg. status, longrest, shortrest, spellbook) !char - character selection !help - gets help for any given command !monster - looks up data for any official documented monster in 5e !spell - looks up data for any official documented spell in 5e !item - looks up data for any official documented item in 5e

Each of these commands has an even deeper list of options which are documented in the bot’s online help. The commands mentioned above are what I find myself typing most often to play an actual game. Dungeons and Dragons is a role playing game at the heart of it, yet there are game mechanics which make up how one plays. Dice rolls are the most important aspect of the game. Fortunately Avrae does all this for us using a rather intuitive command line syntax. For example, if one needs to roll a d20 die, it’s as simple as typing: !r 1d20 Need to roll 4d6, no problem. Just type: !r 4d6. Once I given the 2 minute intro tutorial to my players, they picked it up pretty easy after the first day or two. Dice modifiers are supported, even advantage and disadvantage: Examples: !r 1d20 + 6 adds 6 to roll total !r 1d20 adv rolls with advantage !r 1d20 dis rolls with disadvantage !r 1d20 -b 1d4 adds a bonus d4 roll This is just the basics of dice rolling, but it’s enough to get the job done when the game calls for a roll of the dice. 5. DM Basics The subject of Dungeon Mastering is a topic that has been written about since the game’s debut in late 1970’s. I am not an expert nor do I claim to be one when it comes to DMing, in fact my first foray into DMing was this experiment in PBP on Discord. I have found the internet to have endless amounts of articles and user forums dedicated to the subject, so I will not focus too much on how to DM. Rather, the purpose of this blog is to share how I have run my PBP game in this format. As this blog evolves, I will probably look to include my experiences and share what worked and didn’t work in the scheme of things. As of this entry, I have run an improvised campaign which ran for 8+ weeks straight to very positive reviews from my players. I am on hiatus while a friend takes over DM duties and I assume the role of player. I can say that this gaming format has filled a void that would not be possible without the technology and features provided by Discord and Avrae.

0 notes