Asynchronus DND game play mode.

Dnd has become so hard to play now days because of our heavily laboured schedules . It's extremely hard to plan sessions around even 4 people including the DM, and honestly DND really helped me with my mental health and i know i am not the only one, plus i made friends here that i will always remember them even if we never speak again from all over the world. So i was thinking, what if there was a site like roll20 that can have an Asynchronus DND game play mode ? What is that? It's pretty much the same as DND but not everyone has to be online at the same time of the day. The DM or an Assistant of the DM compose the next session just like they would normally, but with an extra step, instead of telling players the story, and playing along on a call, they will either write it down, or voice record it for a better expirience, each round or step of the adventure, players decide what to do, how to do it etc. throughout the day by voting on choices that are either open or closed (dm's choice). that means that a closed choice vote will have only the options the dm provides, and an open choice vote can have options added by the players. once decided, the dm then proceeeds with the next step of the adventure and choice selection.  Example: Let's say that the party is playing the classic  curse of strahd adventure,  The Dm prepares all they have to prepare, then turns on Asynchronus game mode , a window pops up that he can add text, pictures, votes, and more.  The Dm then writes the first steps of the adventure: "You find yourselves in the tavern, surrounded by all sorts of blablabla" uploads relative pictures if they want, can reveal tokens and other items from the main game as well. And then adds a vote "How do you proceed/ what do you do?" marks a checkbox that a player can only tick 2 things, writes a few options but leaves the vote open for the players to write their own things. Then the DM presses Send . The game sends a notification or an Email or something to the players (i don't know if there is an android or iphone app, but that would also be extremely helpful), they can respond to it whenever they have some time, they enter the site, chose their vote, or can ask the dm questions through the roll20 chat before they decide, like "Hey, are there any dwarves in the tavern? i wanna drink with them" . The Dm replies at their earliest convinience. Also the players can reply with voice messages too if they wish so.  This could take days for sure and yes it has kinks, but it's designed to be for people that really just don't have 2-3 hours set on a specific day to play, and instead they can spare 30 minutes spread through a day or 2 hours spread through a week. Obviously this is also not the same as a full on real time party, but yea. and even then, Asynchronus mode can be turned off if the party manages to find a common time and play normally! Also "Show previous move", don't know if that exists but it would be a great help on this mode if it does, to show the movement of the tokes. I did a quick search for such a game play mode being suggested here and there doesn't seem to be any here. For me this is an important mode mostly because it's inclusive , and it helps people that really need (yes need) to play.  I deeply hope you guys will consider creating this mode. thank you for taking the time to read this. Leon Black. 

So, Play by Post?

Hey Leon, that's a nice write-up of a fancy idea. I understand the ideas. I'll give this a +1 vote. Some parts of your idea are certainly novel ideas that would be new features to Roll20.  However I would say try playing asynchronous DND on Roll20 now, with the Features that we have, it is very playable. As it is. This is currently possible, and some groups do it.  Have you ever played asynchronus DND, let's say anywhere else before Roll20?  Traditionally going back to 1970's and 1980's, it was Play-By-Post aka Play-by-Mail. Later in the 1990's it became Play-By-Post (on BBS or forums). The DM would send the scenario description out by mail, and the players would write-back with their actions. Everything was text, unless ocassionally someone draw a map or draw a picture.  What we have on Roll20 today accomodates everything that PbP ever did, plus much more.  With Roll20's current feature set the DM can write, type, map, and illustrate a scenario, using the Text chat room and the map Page in Roll20. If the GM really wants to, they can record their Voice, upload it to Roll20 Jukebox, and use "Play on Load" to have that voice-file play when the Players open the page. Voice-wise, if that doesn't work, or if the DM wants more sophisticated voice action, a Roll20 Pro subscriber DM can use API Mods to put "Play/Pause/Stop" buttons on the Page so that players can click to listen to the Voice file.  The Players of Roll20 can log-in at any time, 24 hours a day, without the GM present. (This is a leading-feature of Roll20, since it is website based, unlike some other VTT that require the DM to run a server and have the server turned-on for players to log in the game).  The players can respond their actions in text chat. They can move their token on map. (No there is not really a good way to Replay a token's past movements in roll20, so it would be advisable for the asynchronus group to instruct the Players to use the Roll20 Line-Drawing tool to draw a persistent line showing their token's past movement, and the GM can erase that Line once they have seen/approved it).  So, upon close examination of Leon's suggestion, I find that the parts of the idea that are novel and missing from current-Roll20 feature set are: A pop-up box asking Players their next action A voting or poll feature (perhaps with "open choice" as a fill-in-the-blank poll option)

Other than the inclusion of the VTT, this sounds a lot like how we used to play on some RPG web forums and (way back!) on the RPGAMES forum on Compuserve . The GM would post a description of the environment, then each player would post a description of their actions. When all players had posted (this could take anywhere from hours to days, depending on how busy people were) the GM would post the results. It was fun, but it could take anywhere from weeks to months  to play out an encounter. I think I remember one game where it took us about four years real-time to play out about two weeks of in-game time. Edit: Gold beat me to it :)

i haven't played in two years here so apparently some things have changed XD i did not know it was a think in the past, i've never played in any other site other than here in general online, and i guess yes it's already pretty close to what i was saying :P thank you for the replies

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