Player Suggestion to GM's

I'm sure most of you GM's already do, but a suggestion from a player here. When posting in the "Looking for Group" game announcements, please indicate what form of audio and/or video source you're using for your game. example: Skype, Teamspeak, Google Hangouts, or Roll20. I personally don't use Skype because I had some issues with it before on a computer. So my limits currently are Roll20 and/or Google Hangouts. This saves everyone's time and if you use "Skype" , that tells me no problem, keep searching. I'm sure its frustrating as a GM to be set up and when the game starts, there's an issue with the audio source compatibility and you lose a player. A quick sentence such as: (example) "We will be using Roll 20 for audio only" suffices for all involved.

As an addendum, players with restrictions such as yours seeking to join a campaign which doesn't state this outright should ask. Any GM who doesn't answer your query probably aren't worth playing with anyway. =P

@ Brian: Yes ,agreed, a player definitely can query and ask "what form of audio/video are you going to use, and advise of their limitations etc" but, if its in the game description already, then that saves a step too.lol.

Players or GM's also --- put your availability and limitations / requirements on your Roll20 Profile also. You can add on your profile, "I prefer Roll20 for audio"... "I do / do-not use a webcam", etc.

@ Gold: Just updated my profile based on your suggestion. Thanks for the input!

In my recruitment posts and campaign descriptions, I put if I use audio or text and include what type of audio I will use also.

Thanks Pat S....like everything else, some do and some don't....it just helps to cut down the time for all parties involved if one knows what's exected upfront.

Good advice. Im going to being posting for a game soon, I will keep this in mind. Thanks.

As a fairly new user, are there advantages to running AV in Roll20 or Google Hangout or Skype?

PinkRose said: As a fairly new user, are there advantages to running AV in Roll20 or Google Hangout or Skype? It is mostly preference for some but for others their computer won't work with the webrtc on roll20, they hate skype, or some other reason. There is no true advantage to any of them. Just use the one that works best for you and your group.

Seems the most common used are : Roll 20's, Google Hangouts, Skype, or Teamspeak. Anyone have any experience with the Teamspeak ? A lot of people talk good about it, but I've never tried it.

Teamspeak is kind of like Mumble, meaning you have different channels that you can pull people to, you can assign hotkeys to whispering a person (audio), you can adjust the volume of individual people for yourself only by rightlicking on them etc. (incredibly useful), you can configure it in a way that turns down the volume of the other players while the GM is speaking, you can configure your own Teanspeak to use voice activation (and config the sensitivity!) or use push to talk if you so desire etc. etc. Basically, it has a lot of options, but most people will already love it for adjustable volume sliders as well as mic configuration. There are free/public servers for it that people can use, but I suppose most roleplaying groups have their own. My group f.e. uses an old Server that was originally set up for raiding purposes :) Personally I would never go back to Skype simply because of the lacking audio quality, background noise a lot of the time and no way to pull a player into another channel for a minute to tell them they saw something or heard something etc. that is going to be a big reveal for the others (or that they might not want to share at all for one reason or another, heh). ...but yeah, overall its a matter of preference.

@ Mouse...Thank you for the detailed information. I'll try to get my DM to consider it. Seems like a "perfect" solution for RPG's.

I posted a survey thread regarding voice software, and it became very clear to me that while Skype and Google were both very popular, Teamspeak had ONLY positive comments. I've changed over to it as my preferred voice, and it is about as perfect as it gets. It is very low latency, and low bandwidth--two very excellent qualities to have in an audio software. It can take some work to set up your own free server, but a youtube video can help you get past that one-time hurdle. I highly recommend it to anyone currently using Skype and having any kind of bandwidth or connection issues whatsoever.

Is teamspeak mobile friendly? I know I can get skype on my tablet and phone but will teamspeak get installed on it.

@ Quintus: Thank you for the informtion, all I've seen on TS is positive comments also.

We use Team Speak for the GMA coffee hours it seems to work pretty well, we have a couple of people dropped in the course of the call, but the sound quality is good. On the other hand, in additions to four fingers and a thumb, Skype works pretty well, we have some dropouts and a light buzz once in a while. I find players from Canada and California have the most problems with Skype. The Tokbox seems to work extremely well if there are no apples in the group, but that may be from the apple owners insistence on using Safari. All of them become unstable if anyone is using XP, but XP also means a pretty old machine as well. Bottom line is, you are not going to marry the system, play around with a few of them and see what works best for you.

This thread is no longer about Roll20, but about external audio applications. Closing it as Off-Topic.