Dogby

I've been exclusively playing RPGs online for the last two years with the exception of getting some games in at conventions, so I think I can help out!

To answer the solo RPG question - here's a list I curate of every solo TTRPG game on itch.io. At present time, there are over 400 games. These range from more traditional RPG experiences like Ironsworn to journaling games and well, there's a lot in between. There's a lot of good stuff here and a lot of it is free: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZfYBDXEB1VVWY27f5LNELZk-3nBca7R1Il1OrbZ1P1M/edit#gid=796671279

I'm going to be one of "those people" and also answer: "find a different game". D&D isn't the only game out there and there are better options, ESPECIALLY if your friends are more into the roleplaying and storytelling aspects of things. I don't mean to trash D&D at all and I've played in several very long D&D campaigns on Roll20, I'm just kind of burned out on it. Like your friends, I prefer the roleplaying aspect of things too and so I tried to find games that work better in that space.

I'm in a community online that plays a lot of what are considered "story games" (most running in the Powered By The Apocalypse ruleset) and for those we just use a shared Google Sheet for character info and then we use an online diceroller for rolling dice. We usually use something like Zoom or Streamyard for video/voice chat, but you can also use Discord or whatever other option you like. Since you mentioned World of Darkness, I'd suggest checking out Urban Shadows as a good PbtA game that can very easily be run from a Google Sheet.

If you do want to stick to Roll20, there's some good storygames available on their marketplace that you can check out! A few recommendations:

1) For The Queen: This is a GM-less card-based game where you basically just take turns answering story prompts on cards. The game depicts a group escorting their queen to a foreign land, and the story prompts kind of let you just tell the story along the way. You can roleplay it out as much as possible and really flesh things out quite a bit, and a game can be started and finished in 2 hours which games being shorter or longer depending on player count.

2) Zombie World (core and deluxe): This is a Powered By The Apocalypse game that uses a deck of cards instead of dice. The gist of the game is very much like your stereotypical zombie movie - you have an enclave you need to protect, there are zombies, you're trying to survive. This one does require a GM and is better in multiple sessions as there's some work needed for character creation to create relationships and backstory for the characters and the enclave. I played in a multi-part session of ZW a couple years ago and it was one of my favorite RPG experiences ever.

3) Fall of Magic is another interesting game that tells the story of a world where magic is dying, and you (the players) have to escort the Magus to the realm where magic was born. 2-4 players and you can play one session or many. I always found this to be better as a multi-session game because I like to complete the story, but it works as a one-shot if you want to do it that way. This is a very rules-light story game and character creation is pretty simple.

Please let me know if you have any questions - getting players into online RPGs is kind of one of my favorite things!

I've been around since like, forever. September 2008, according to my profile. And yeah, echoing several people who have already said it - the crew just didn't seem like they were having fun. I listened to the first couple of podcasts and then just stopped. The short form videos just didn't hit well for me, the longer videos were good.

I feel like there's just too many people on staff to do anything focused, everyone has such varied tastes because there's so many people. I'd rather see them all make their own lists, do a point-based aggregate of that and have a podcast talking about the results. Spend the rest of the time making cool video content. I've always come to this site for the entertaining video content and it was a bummer to not see much of that this year.

At this point, the thing I look forward to most for GOTY-time is the yearly "Austin Walker teaches the GB East crew an indie RPG" Beastcast episode... and like, that's kind of a bummer to have my most anticipated content be focused on someone who's not even part of the site anymore. Maybe it means my tastes have changed! That's fine too, it's just a weird feeling.

You're pretty tough on W and Gaim... both were amazing. I'm trying to watch through OOO now and it's alright but I think my biggest gripe is that it isn't W.

at first I read that potential movie title as "Submarine: Dirty Girl", as if Dirty Girl was the subtitle. I was less excited once I noticed it was not