Using Trello as a virtual tabletop for RPGs

Inspired by this blog  I thought I’d try using Trello as a virtual tabletop. 

I’ve played a few games on Roll20, but I find that while it suits combat-oriented systems (like D&D) well, it’s not so good for something more abstract like Fate. Perhaps my three biggest criticisms of Roll20 are:

• The players can’t collaborate as much as I would like to.
• I can’t easily go back and see previous scenes and maps—only the GM can move me.
• I can’t easily see other players character sheets—at least not without having a zillion pop-ups.

So I thought I’d give Trello a spin.

What the heck is Trello?

Trello is a “a web-based Kanban-style list-making application”. It’s a productivity app, used to organise work. Essentially you create lists (categories) into which you put cards (your tasks).

You can click on the cards to see more detail (such as more text, checklists and so on).

And you can use it for RPGs.

The player's Trello board for Achtung! Cthulhu

Setting up Trello

I’ve just used Trello for my Fate Accelerated game of Achtung! Cthulhu. (I've discussed Achtung! Cthulhu before.) Here’s how I used it: 

• First, I created a GM board. This had everything on it that I needed – the background, locations, foes, NPCs and any pregens. (I normally run one-shots, and I’ve usually prepared pregens.)
• For my Achtung! Cthulhu game, I created these lists: Game admin; Current scene/clues; A list for each PC; NPCs; Locations; Clues; Foes
• I populated each list with individual cards. So the locations list had the various locations that I think will be needed, along with a photograph and a short description. NPCs included a photograph and their stats.
• For Fate Accelerated characters, I broke down the various parts of the character sheet into different cards – each aspect was its own card, approaches are a card, stunts are on another card, fate points are on another. That way all the character info can be seen by everyone.

But that board was just for me.

I then created a duplicate of that board for the players. I deleted the cards I didn’t want them to see (yet), leaving them with the opening situation and the characters. (And blank lists for locations, clues and foes.)

A Trello card - a Liminal foe

How did it work in practice?

I made the player board public, so the players could all see it without needing a Trello account. Unfortunately, without an account the players couldn’t edit the cards and make their own changes. It wasn’t a problem for a one-shot, but for an ongoing campaign I would encourage my players to create a free Trello account.

During play, as the players met a new NPC, or encountered a foe, I copied cards from my GM board (which I had open as a separate tab) over to the player board. That worked fine, and all the players had all the information in front of them.

I would have liked to see them create their own cards to make notes with, but as they didn’t have accounts that didn’t happen. Maybe another time.

But what about maps?

One thing that I don’t like about Roll20 that I didn’t mention above, is its assumption that you will use a map.

Now, when I run a tabletop game, I use maps sparingly. I don’t use miniatures and so Roll20 is overkill. In fact, Roll20 encourages the kind of games I don’t enjoy playing (ie, a miniatures boardgame).

An aside: I’ve noticed that I’ve used Roll20 so much lately—usually as a player, once as a GM—that I’ve started to become brainwashed into thinking that when I run an RPG online I must have maps. And that’s not true. Before I used Roll20 so much, I was perfectly happy running a game using nothing more than a Googledoc.

So in my Achtung! Cthulhu game, I set up a Google Jamboard (their virtual whiteboard) that we could use for a map. We used it a bit, but I found it awkward swapping between Trello and the Jamboard. Next time I’ll see if I can run the game without a map. I’ll keep the Jamboard as a backup if I need it, but I’ll try not to use it. 

Downsides

As with any VTT, you can spend longer prettifying Trello (and Roll20) than you will actually spend playing the game. We spent about four hours playing through my Achtung! Cthulhu mission, and I’m sure I spent at least as long as that populating the boards ready for play.

(And that doesn’t count the time spent writing the mission in the first place—although this was its second time through, so I don’t count that.)

I justify this by telling myself that I’ll run the game again. And I will—it’s the game I’m running for Furnace this year. But I also enjoyed prettifying Trello and adding bling, which is odd because I don’t do that when I’m running at the table. 

My next Trello game

I’m not 100% sold on Trello yet. I like it a lot, but I suspect I won’t get full value out of it until the players can also contribute. But I’ve only tried it the once, and I’m going to use it for my next game: Liminal.

Liminal on Trello

Update: Three months later and I’m using Trello for my Liminal campaign. I’ve got the hang of it now – we use Discord for chat (with the Dice Maiden bot for dice rolling), and most of the action happens around the Trello board.

Some further thoughts:

• Unlike my Achtung! Cthulhu board, for the Liminal characters are single cards on a “PCs” List. That reduces the amount of space they take up, which is better for the locations, NPCs and so on.
• Enabling players to update the cards is great – I’ve found that they’ve found pictures for NPCs and added other great embellishments.
• My GM board has evolved a bit. I originally imagined that I’d have all the NPCs, locations, etc on it, and then copy them to the player board. But I’ve found it’s better to move (rather than copy) the cards as that reduces the clutter.
• I’ve found using checklists in a card really useful for countdown clocks, or to remind me of the various encounters and incidents I have planned for a session. You can have multiple checklists in a single card, which is really handy.

While I’m finding Trello great for a campaign, it might be more than I need for a one-shot or single scenario. I’m still exploring though.

Liminal stat blocks

Recently I wrote that I don’t run published adventures, and I promised myself I would run some before the year is out. I backed Paul Mitchener’s Liminal on Kickstarter in 2018, and I now have a small handful of scenarios to run with it.

I’ve started with Prodigal Son, and follow on with The Haunting (featuring some of the same characters) if that’s a success. However, I’m finding Liminal’s stat blocks a bit frustrating.

Vampire stat blocks

The first encounter is a battle with two vampires, and their stat block looks like this:

So first off, there are two vampires. So we should have Vamp #1 and Vamp #2. At the very least, the stat block for Endurance should be repeated (as that’s the only bit that’s going to count).

Second, how tough are these vampires? What’s the unmodified Challenge Roll to hit a vampire in melee? Or shoot one? Or dodge their attack? And is the Brawny damage bonus already included (I assume yes, but it’s not clear).

I appreciate that once you’ve mastered the system then it’s obvious, but for anyone learning the game (and this is an introductory scenario) then it’s a nightmare. So here’s what I’ve added to make the stat blocks easier to use:

• Initiative modifier: +4 (Awareness and Quick Reflexes)
• CL to beat vampires in melee: 13 (Base 8 + Melee 3 + Quick Reflexes)
• CL to beat vampires in ranged combat: 13 (Base 8 + Athletics 3 + Quick Reflexes)
• CL to avoid taking melee damage from vampires: 11 (Base 8 + Melee)

These two vampires are tough! Unless the PCs have a powerful werewolf with them (such as Stephen Dunstan, one of the pregenerated characters) I can see a lot of Will being spent in that encounter to take the two vampires out.

My revised this stat block looks like:

Two Vampires

• Drive: Thirst for blood
• Physical Skills: Athletics 3, Awareness 2, Melee Combat 3
• Mental Skills: Education 2
• Social Skills: Rhetoric 1, Taunt 3
• Traits: 
• Brawny (+2 damage, +2 athletics for feats of strength)
• Night Sight
• Rapid Healing (Weakness: Silver)
• Quick Reflexes (+2 initiative, +2 to any defence, spend 1 Will to make an extra action before anyone else)
• Limitations:
• Weakened by Sunlight (-1 to all rolls)
• Vulnerability (Garlic, Mirrors—extra 2 damage, requires 2 Will to face)
• Obliged (to Ariadne, see below)
• Endurance: 
• Vampire #1: 11
• Vampire #2: 11
• Will:
• Vampire #1: 8
• Vampire #2: 8
• Damage (inc all bonuses): d6+3 (natural weapons or silver knife)
• Initiative modifier: +4 (Awareness and Quick Reflexes)
• CL to beat vampires in melee: 13 (Base 8 + Melee 3 + Quick Reflexes)
• CL to beat vampires in ranged combat: 13 (Base 8 + Athletics 3 + Quick Reflexes)
• CL to avoid taking melee damage from vampires: 11 (Base 8 + Melee)

As well as adding the extra sections, I’ve also provided brief mechanical effects of the traits and limitations so I don’t have to look everything up in the heat of the moment.

PC stat blocks

Similarly, PC stat blocks look like this:

This is Stephen Dunstan, Liminal’s pregen werewolf.

It’s not clear from this (unless you’re an expert) how tough Stephen really is. He’s a werewolf, but is he tough enough to take on the two vampires above?

So I’ve added this:

• Initiative modifier: +2
• Attack modifiers: +3 (+2 if in Rage, +2 if in wolf form) Melee / +0 Ranged
• Defence modifiers: +3 (+2 if in Rage, +2 if in wolf form) Melee / +2 Ranged
• Damage modifier: +2 (+2 Rage)

I’ve not expanded on the mechanical impacts of traits and limitations, but that’s because I will include their full description on the character sheets.

(Stephen will need to go into wolf form (and Rage) to have any chance against the two vampires. If he does that then he will only need to roll 6+ to hit them and 4+ to block their attacks.)

Summary

So those two changes make the vampire NPCs much easier for me to run, and hopefully will make the PC easier for the character to run.

Update: Following a successful run of Prodigal Son I changed the stat blocks as I found providing the different challenge levels slightly less intuitive than simply turning them into a modifier. That changes the vampires to:

• Attack modifier (melee only): +3 (Melee 3)
• Defence modifier (melee): +5 (Melee 3 + Quick Reflexes)
Defence modifier (ranged): +5 (Athletics 3 + Quick Reflexes)

This is also simpler when you have NPCs or monsters attacking each other—it’s easier to see who has the advantage.

Why I roleplay

I’ve recently played in a few very average tabletop roleplaying games, sessions where if I was completely honest, I wasn’t enjoying myself. That has led me to think about what I like about roleplaying, and how I can make sure I get more of it.

RPGs - some better than others

The bad games

So here’s a quick description of some of those games.

• The one that was a string of battles: A Marvel Heroic Roleplaying one-shot which was basically three interconnected battles.  No miniatures, but not enough table banter either.
• The one that was a miniatures game: A mini-campaign using D&D5e, where we had to clear out three caverns of baddies. Basically, a series of fights. (I’ve noted before that when combat starts D&D 5e basically becomes a boardgame. I like boardgames, but not when I’m roleplaying.)
• The one that was a sandbox: A Lamentations of the Flame Princess one-shot where we (the players) poked the scenery with sticks to find the adventure.
• The one that was a simulation: A mini-campaign which was brilliantly internally logical, but was actually rather boring, had little plot and created no interesting decisions.
• The one where I played the wrong character: My only experience of Symbaroum, and the GM put lots of characters on the table for us to choose from. I chose unwisely—as my character’s skills did not suit the planned adventure.

So I clearly don’t like combat. And I’m not that keen on sandboxes—especially in one shots. I like to see a plot.

The good games

And to balance it, some of the good games:

• The one where I felt I was in a movie: Set in the world of Werewolf: the Apocalpyse, but using Fate Accelerated, this one-shot really felt like we were in a movie – complete with cut scenes, montage and a spectacular climax.
• The one where we talked to each other: One of the striking things about my only experience of Hillfolk is how often the players conversed with each other rather than the GM. I like games with lots of in-character chit-chat and banter.
• The one-shot that became a mini-campaign: An unpromising Shadow of the Demon Lord one-shot that became a short mini-campaign filled with memorable player characters.
• The one-shot with the clues in plain sight: An investigative one-shot set in the near future with an alien invasion – and a key plot point was on the table in front of us from the very start but we didn’t realise until part way through.

(And if you think it’s all GM related, there are two GMs on both of these lists …)

So in summary

I like dramatic plots that mean something to the characters, interlinked characters with backstory, characters that suit the scenario, and interesting decisions.

I don’t like pointless combat, playing a boardgame instead of roleplaying, boring sandboxes, and characters who don’t fit the scenario.

I don’t mind combat in my roleplaying games, but as long as it’s combat with a purpose.

An aside: It frequently amazes me that roleplaying caters for such a wide range of tastes. I don’t enjoy the system mastery that comes with dedicating yourself to something like D&D 5e—but some do. I have little time for character advancement or levels. I don’t like getting the miniatures out. I don’t particularly enjoy fantasy settings. But others do, and that’s great. But it’s probably best if I don’t join their games (and maybe they wouldn’t enjoy mine).

What do I like when I roleplay? #1: A Plot

So I like a good plot in my roleplaying – and frankly much of the time that can be summarised as: “a bad guy with a goal” (as Fate Accelerated puts it). That need not mean simple stories - even plots as complex as Masks of Nyarlathotep or The Lord of the Rings can be summarised as a bad guy with a goal.

Inevitably I’m less keen on sandboxes where it’s up to me to decide what’s important. I’m sure there’s a point where the sandbox absolutely rocks – but I don’t have the patience to get there.

What do I like when I roleplay? #2: Characters must be important

This may seem like an obvious thing to say – but the characters need to be key to the story. If the characters don’t care about the plot, why should they engage? They also need to have skills relevant to the upcoming session.

Unfortunately it’s all too common to sit down at a one-shot and be presented with a bunch of pre-generated characters that look like they’ve been taken from the rulebook, with little or no attempt to tie them into the story.

What do I like when I roleplay? #3: Players that talk to each other as characters

I can often tell how good a one-shot will be within 10 minutes of starting. That’s because the best one-shots always spend at least 20 minutes creating good bonds between the characters. If you dive in without creating that, then you just have a bunch of strangers at the table.

That’s why I like the bonds/strings/history in the PtbA games, Hillfolk character creation, and why I spent time trying to create DramaAspects. (I now use a combination of PbtA’s bonds and Galileo Games’ Backstory Cards.)

When the player characters have strong backstories and bonds, then they start with a shared history which makes it easier for them to talk in character.

Is that really it?

And that’s it. I don’t mind which system I play—I have my favourites but I’ll play anything if someone can tell me which dice to roll. In fact, I don’t mind if we don’t roll dice—I find that often happens in my games.

As long as I’m playing someone that matters in a story with a plot with plenty of in-character chat, then I’m happy.  I’m not sure why I don’t get that as often as I do.

Freeforms

It turns out that what I am looking for in a tabletop roleplaying session, I get in a freeform. Plot—check. Characters tie to plot—check. Players talking to each other—check.

When I started thinking about what I like (and dislike) in tabletop roleplaying I didn’t imagine that I’d end up comparing them to freeforms. But maybe that was inevitable. 

Although I had a fifteen-year hiatus from tabletop roleplaying, I never fully left the hobby as I was playing (and running, writing and publishing) freeforms instead.

I don’t know whether my love of freeforms influenced what I like in my tabletop games, or whether I love freeforms because they feature all the things I like—I suspect it’s somewhere in between.

What next?

Now that I have worked this out, I wonder if I can use it to my advantage and use it to improve my enjoyment of the games I am playing in. 

In particular, I shall try to I talk more often to other characters rather than to the GM. I’m sure I’ll still have to put up with boardgame like combat and sandbox games – but hopefully I’ll enjoy them more.

Revisiting some old friends

I’ve been spending some of this time in lockdown taking the opportunity to re-read some of the books that have been on my bookshelves for a long, long time. Some of these I bought when I was at school - the newest here was published in 1992.

The Bug Wars, Robert Asprin

I originally bought this at school, but I’m not sure why I kept it. This is the NEL edition published in 1980, with a great Rodney Matthews cover. (I have no doubt that it was the cover that caught my eye.) 

I was 15 when I first read it. Amazingly, it isn’t awful. It’s a not too demanding tale of a race of giant lizards waging war on giant insects. But that’s about it.

Lunar Descent, Allen Steele

Originally published in 1991 and set in 2024 in a lunar mining base. This is proper hard science fiction with proper hard NASA-ish technology and science. 

But being published in 1991 it misses the internet and what’s going on with computers. So key documents are faxed, the moonbase sound system uses a wobbly cassette (not even a CD!) and there’s no sign of tablets, ebooks, email, social media or anything that would actually be present if actually set in 2024.  But the overall story is still great - blue-collar workers on the moon. 

Of the five books here, this is the most recent and also the thickest (probably because it almost certainly wasn’t written on a typewriter).

The Goblin Reservation, Clifford D Simak

Simak was once one of my favourite SF authors, and I remember this tale fondly - it has teleportation, sinister wheeled aliens, trolls, goblins, a sabre-toothed tiger, a neanderthal, Shakespeare, a ghost, time travel, and a crystal planet. Some nice ideas - wheeled hive-insect aliens, a crystal planet that (somehow) came from the universe before ours (this is a big-bang > big-crunch > big bang universe). But it hasn’t aged well and I won’t be keeping it.

This copy is 1987 (originally published in 1968), so I may well have been at university when I read it.

Interestingly, the characterisation feels very different to more modern fiction. Everyone is pretty much decent - the only true villains are the alien Wheelers. There is only one murder, and that happens before the book starts (and is committed by the Wheelers). I’ve noticed this with other early SF books in this list - characters seem to be more decent than in modern fiction. That may just be the changing tastes - I’m not sure.

Monument, Lloyd Biggle Jr

Monument is one of my favourite novels from my youth. I remember being drawn to the striking Tim White cover in Woolworths, but I didn’t buy it then. I eventually picked a copy up in Exeter’s Read & Return bookshop for 60p (I know this because of the stamp in the front of the book).

Monument is the story of Cerne Obrien’s plan to save the paradise world of Langri from greedy developers, and ends with a striking court case. It’s still very readable, and while the style has dated the overall concepts haven’t.

The characters are stronger in Monument than they are in The Goblin Reservation, but the same general decency of the characters remains. While there is corporate corruption in Monument, the government bodies (typically scout and naval captains) are decent men (mostly men!) and abide by the law.

A Wreath of Stars, Bob Shaw

70p of 1976 SF goodness, A Wreath of Stars is set in the far future - 1993! Set in an unstable African state of Barandi, it involves an anti-neutrino planet detected using the newly developed magniluct lenses. The planet misses Earth, but disturbs the orbit of an anti-neutrino planet hiding inside the Earth.

This is classic Bob Shaw - he takes an idea (magniluct lenses and anti-neutrinos) and then runs with it. He does the same in Orbitsville (a Dyson sphere), Other Days, Other Eyes (slow glass) and others. It’s a bit dated now (inevitably), and has a slightly odd, wistful ending that always leaves me feeling a bit melancholy.

In terms of technology, A Wreath of Stars has a moon colony (briefly mentioned), the magniluct lenses that drive the plot. But it’s 1993 and so the lack of laptops, tablets and mobile phones isn’t an issue.

My edition was published in 1978, but I think I read it in the early 80s. I saw Bob Shaw at the 1987 Worldcon in Brighton. He was giving one of his “serious scientific” talks, and I can’t remember laughing so much in a long time.

(A Wreath of Stars is also the name of David Langford’s 1996 obituary for Bob.) 

To keep or not?

I’m keeping Lunar Descent, Monument and A Wreath of Stars. Maybe I’ll read them again in the future. 

The Bug Wars and The Goblin Reservation haven’t aged so well and are off to the charity shop.

Free RPG stuff

I’ve been playing with Google Sites recently and I’ve put together a small site with pdf downloads of short adventures for Fate, Call of Cthulhu and other games.

You can find it here: www.stevehatherley.com.

My New Tales of Terror blog brims with creepy ideas for horror RPGs.

And while I’m here, I shouldn’t forget Freeform Games (my games business with Mo Holkar) and Great Murder Mystery Games (a related murder mystery games site).

Running published RPG adventures. Or not.

I've been thinking about RPGs and I've noticed that I mostly run my own adventures. And when I say mostly, I mean almost exclusively. And certainly, since I came back to roleplaying from the wilderness, they have all been my own adventures.

An aside: I'm fairly late to the awesomeness that is John Harper’s Lady Blackbird. But the second thing I thought was "How can I do something similar?" Not "I want to run this," but instead how can I make my own copy... (My first thought was "I want to play this.") Thinking about it now, that seems a bit odd. But it's clear that my desire to run my own stuff is clearly deeply ingrained.

So which published adventures have I run?

I've had a good think about this, and the only published adventures I can ever remember running are:

• Annic Nova
• Murder on Arcturus Station
• Chamax Plague

And I think that's it - three Traveller adventures. I can't remember running any published Call of Cthulhu scenarios. I played in a couple, but all I can remember of my own scenarios is stuff that I created myself. (I may have run The Haunting - I can't remember. I have memories of that as a game, but I can't remember if I was a player or the Keeper.)

Making it my own

While Annic Nova didn't require any Referee input, I still added a rival band of adventurers to add some conflict. (Otherwise it's just wandering around some empty rooms.)

The other two adventures are interesting in that they both require some Referee input.

• Murder on Arcturus Station is a murder mystery - but it gives you the suspects with motives, and lets you decide who the culprit was.
• The Chamax Plague is an Alien/Aliens scenario - a crashed ship with a strange alien beasty to hunt. But the adventure gives you the deckplans and explains the creature's biology and lets you decide where the creature is hiding.

Early DIY Traveller scenarios

That's a common theme among many of the early Traveller scenarios - the idea that the Referee will do some of the work to turn it into a full adventure for the players (see Kinunir, Twilight's Peak or Leviathan). Similarly, one of the most popular features of the GDW in-house magazine (Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society) were the Amber Zones - short adventure seeds that required a fair bit of work (or improvisation) before hitting the table.

Over time Traveller's scenarios became more precise and structured. But I have fonder memories for the early scenarios that required me to put some effort in. (The sunk-cost fallacy may be at work here, making me value those scenarios more precisely because I put the effort in.)

The effort I put into those early Traveller scenarios did mean that I owned them, and probably led me to creating my own scenarios (as it turns out to be really easy).

Another aside: Thinking about, most of the games I've played have been created by the GM. I don't remember playing through many published scenarios. My sample size is very small though and I've no idea which is more common though - creating your own or using published adventures.

So why buy adventures?

I am aware of the hypocrisy in writing RPG adventures (and having some published) but only ever running my own, however. But of all gaming material, I prefer to read adventures - partly for ideas, but also because they give a clear demonstration of how a game is meant to be played. (One of the challenges I find with PbTA games like Urban Shadows is that I can't visualise how they are meant to be played.)

But yes - why buy adventures if you're never going to run them? Because they're chock full of ideas to steal and often they're a pleasure to read.

(That approach was one of the drives that led to Tales of Terror, as I explain here.) 

A new goal for 2020

So now that I've identified this blind spot, I'm going to try and run a couple of published scenarios before the year is out.

Things I'm enjoying - The Road to Somewhere and Patrick Willem

More things that I'm enjoying. (Or have enjoyed recently, as it's been a while since I've done one of these.)


Patrick Willem

I’ve been enjoying Patrick Willem’s YouTube videos. I’m not a natural movie critic, but I like how he analyses movies - he’s both a movie and a fan. His Paddington review is delightful, and I like his thoughts on Alien Covenant as well (he is more positive about it than I was). He also has quite a lot to say on Star Wars.



The Road to Somewhere by David Goodhart.

I read this in January, on the approach to our formal exit of the EU (and before coronavirus changed everything). The Road to Somewhere argues that Britain is now split into Somewheres (who identify strongly with where they are from) and Anywheres (who are more mobile and identify less with where they are from).

This short video explains it better than I can:



So Somewheres outnumber Anywheres, but the Anywheres have dominated politics for years. And with Brexit, the Somewheres found their voice.

I had a few thoughts on reading this:

• Somewheres and Anywheres cross party and class lines, but sometimes that doesn’t come over clearly in The Road to Somewhere and it sometimes feels a bit class-centric.
• Somewhere/Anywhere is obviously a spectrum. I’m more Anywhere than Somewhere, but I’m not an extreme Anywhere.
• Like my brother and sister, I went away to university. While I moved to Yorkshire in 1990 and pretty much stayed here, they’ve lived in various parts of the world. Right now, we’re all over 200 miles from where we grew up.
• During my first term at university, I went home for a weekend. It was very strange. Even though I had only been gone for five weeks, there seemed to be a huge gulf between me and those who had stayed. I didn’t do it again.
• You can see the Somewhere/Anywhere divide in the strangest of places. Take hot-desking. That’s a very Anywhere thing, but I much prefer to have my own home desk, surrounded by people I know.. Which is much more Somewhere. (Although I've now been working from home for eight weeks and as I expect to continue doing so even when coronavirus is past, having a home desk in the office may be a luxury that I have to give up.)

Having read The Road to Somewhere, I've started seeing the Somewhere/Anywhere divide in all sorts of places.