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Hi all!

I was wondering if anyone had any experiences to share about including a remote player in their game.

I have at least one friend very interested in exploring, but he is out of state from the rest of my gaming group. I am considering ways to be able to include him, mostly around having a big laptop with Skype or Zoom running.

If anyone has tried something like that in the past, I'd love to hear how well it worked. What equipment did you use? Did the remote player feel involved at all times? Was it easy to make sure they could understand the tile layout, etc.? Did the non-remote players remember to include the remote players in the discussion, or did they sometimes forget in the heat of the moment? Et cetera.

Thanks!

I'd say your remote player needs at least 2 views :
- The general view where you can see everyone around the table to interact as a player. That's the easy part, just set up the laptop like a player
- A view from above to clearly see the board to not be the 5th wheel in your adventuring group

If you can setup a second camera (and your software supports it) above the game table that's probably ideal since he'd see you guys pointing at elements live.

Otherwise you can probably send pics taken from above with your smartphone (through the same chat app or another one that will work on his computer) when you reveal a new card (or something changes in his hand) to give him an updated view of the area where the new card is. Should be quick to do and he'll probably be better at you at spotting details seeing how he'll have a close look to all tiles !

Thanks for the reply! The second camera idea is awesome. I think we might be able to swing that; I have geeky friends with photography and video chops.

If you can find several cameras, here is another idea (used by Kamille in his Let's play videos (FR)) :
- You make different settings (view on players + geographic view + zoom in + ...)
- You switch between views in live (I guess you'll need software that creates a single stream for Skype)

I haven't done this with The 7th Continent (missed the kickstarters so hoping for some to appear in the shop!) but I have done a test run for a remote game of an LCG. I registered two accounts on Skype and set up the laptop facing me on one account. I then called the 2nd account on the ipad (which was propped up on a stack of books) to provide a view of the table. Then I was able to add my friend to the call so he could see both my cameras and I could see him. You need to mute one of the microphones in your set-up to avoid feedback, but otherwise it seemed to work surprisingly well! Good luck!

Hey ! Nice tip !!