In the real world, the one where I play Dungeons & Dragons, there is a debate going on about returning to playing in person. Prior to the Great Plague, we would meet up at Geek Retreat or in the back room of a pub to roll dice and explore the stranger recesses of our minds through the medium of a role playing game. All that stopped when the plague struck - the pubs were shut and Geek Retreat retreated into its shell (there to pray that, soon - please gods soon - they could reopen and hopefully not go bust).
The playing of Dungeons & Dragons migrated online. There were already plenty of tools and resources available for playing games online, the Discord platform provided a text, video and audio space for gaming, and various *virtual table tops* (VTTs) came into their own. D&D had already seen the creation of D&D Beyond as an online resource and all the game resources - books, modules, character creation and dice - could be found there. We began playing, then playing and chatting, then playing some more using these online spaces and resources (indeed folk also made use of Zoom and Teams and Google to play games). It worked fine, especially as a lot of gamers were literally cooped up at home on furlough.
But now the pubs are open, Geek Retreat is again filled with people playing games of all sorts and there's no need to carry on playing online is there? Just as everyone is going to go back to working in the office, we'll all be wandering down to the local games space there to play D&D (or indeed other games that had also migrated online). Thing is it's just not so simple.
Firstly there are people who remain concerned about the risk of catching the virus (not everyone is super healthy) and such people want to make absolutely sure everything is OK out there - you and I considering things to be safe probably isn't a good enough argument. Slowly such folk are returning to the world outside the house but if you've spent best part of 18 months fretting about catching a virus that might kill you a bit of hesitancy is understandable.
Next there are those who find online to be a better place all round. This isn't about being anti-social but rather that gaming online benefits from the development of online tools for game creation, the ability to make use of the vast resource of the worldwide web in creating your games, and the chance to be more flexible about location and time. It may seem a bit *teenage basement dweller* but there's a lot to be said for online systems when some folk are less comfortable with the "Theatre of the Mind" or with building real world game spaces Blue Peter-style from cardboard, sticky tape and washing up liquid bottles (or in the enthusiastic embracing of technology that gaming always features, using 3D printers). There's also the whole parallel hobby of making and painting *minis* that a lot of players, pre-plague shied away from.
I get the sense, however, that most players want to get back to playing in person. There's something different about the rolling of dice, the chat has a different dynamic, and the occasion is somehow more friendly and engaging when you're sat together round a table. Just as some argue how a meeting face-to-face gives a richer and more granular outcome than one on Zoom, so an in-person D&D game feels to have more nuance, engagement and variation than one held online. And this is despite the creative advantages we've gained from playing online.
Just as we'll see new ways of working emerging from the work-from-home experiment forced on us by the Great Plague, so we'll see new practices emerge in role playing games. The first of these will be, given the ubiquity of phones and tablets, the use of online tools during in person games. The resources of D&D Beyond don't exclude rolling real dice but they do make for tidier (and probably more accurate) character sheets and a swifter access to rules, items and spells. Alongside this there's no reason why, especially if you're playing at home rather than in a pub or gaming cafe, you can't use aspects of the VTT using a TV monitor.
In campaign settings the game is enhanced by having on-line and in-person melded - chat (text or audio), moderated by a DM, can help develop player characters and move the game forward more smoothly than in the pre-pandemic world of every downtime action by players being roleplayed in real time during game sessions.
To be serious for a minute, this exploration of how my D&D campaign might evolve is important to the debate about whether we should go back to the office or stay working from home. Truth be told, framing the issue as a simple binary choice - you play in person or you play online - doesn't make sense. Both environments add to the game experience so we want both to continue. The same goes for the work environment. Dragging everyone back to the office because you think they're all skiving (perhaps by playing D&D, who knows) sounds like the smack of firm management but, in doing this, you might well be throwing valuable babies out the window with the bath water.
Anyway, I'll be playing online on Friday, in person on Monday and who knows on Wednesday. There's also an in person alternate Sunday game to enjoy. And I can log into a Discord channel to share jokes, banter and interminable debates about what the RAW means for polymorph (or similar). This sort of melded gaming is where we're headed and I hoping it will add even more fun to a game that was already great fun.
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