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This last month, I wrapped up a year and a half long Pathfinder campaign on our Twitch channel. Throughout the experience, which is comprised of over 120 hours of footage, I have learned a lot about streaming a roleplaying game on Twitch. My hope today is to pass on a chunk of these discoveries to you. Streaming tabletop games on Twitch is incredibly popular, especially for the basics like Dungeons and Dragons, but there is current noticeable growth for all roleplaying games on the platform. It can be daunting, so here are 5 tips for streaming roleplaying games on Twitch, just to make it a little bit easier as you’re starting out. 1) Camera Placement Is Important If you stream your games with your friends over Skype, the camera placement is already decided for you. Having an entire group together in one room offers a more engaging experience, but provides a challenge for the camera setup. We went through multiple setups until we decided on our final camera placement for our roleplaying sessions. When a potential viewer enters your channel they’ll want to be engaged immediately and your cameras will be responsible for that. First and foremost, you never want to place your camera somewhere else in the room and point it towards the table. Seeing a group of people sitting around a table with half of their back towards you is easily the least welcoming image someone can find when they enter your channel. The downside of streaming roleplaying games is that usually the groups for these games are pretty big; so if you’re playing in the same room, you’ll need multiple cameras. The best placement for a camera is directly pointing at one or two of your players. The audience will want to see your reactions, and a camera pointed face on is the best way to achieve that. We have all of our cameras in the centre of the table and facing directly towards our faces. This setup will come with a bit of upkeep, as you’ll need some sort of rig to hold your cameras in the centre table. We use extendable tripod arms that can be attached to the edge of the table, which can be found on Amazon for cheap. 2) Good Audio Is Vital The next step after setting up cameras is obtaining the audio equipment. Once again: if your streaming session is over Skype this issue is mostly solved for you, but the consistent quality will suffer as everyone’s microphone is different. If you’re streaming with everyone in the same room you’ll have more control over the microphones, but good audio equipment isn’t cheap. In a perfect world, each player will have their own microphone, but if this isn’t realistic for the budget you have set before you, there are other options. A single Snowball microphone set in the centre of the table will do a surprisingly good job in ensuring that everyone is heard at reasonable volumes. Another recommendation I have for audio equipment is to only upgrade if you feel that streaming these games will be consistent and worth it for you. If you’re only going to be streaming once or twice a month, it may not be the best use of money to upgrade everything immediately. Streaming on Twitch can be a slow burn and an audience won’t just appear overnight. Have your budget reflect that. 3) Decide On Your Level Of Audience Interaction The largest part of streaming on Twitch is the audience that visits your channel. The best way to hook them is interact with them. While roleplaying, it’s a challenge to constantly break away from the game to talk with people as they enter, so deciding on your interaction method before your stream is crucial. If you have a player or trusted colleague in chat as a moderator, they can respond to people as they enter, potentially engaging the audience member enough so they stick around. Furthermore you could take planned breaks in your game to specifically talk with people who may have entered and remained in chat. Another form of interaction is allowing chat members to directly impact the game. Obviously, this is something you’ll want to run by the GM to determine what level of chaos the chatters can put on a session. A simple solution is to allow viewers to choose a character to get a critical pass or fail. If the game you’re playing has items you can allow chat members to make their own magic item. Finally, a simple solution that works for the majority of games is allow a chat member to name or create an NPC. If you want to control the amount of impact a viewer can actually have on your game you can put these interaction levels behind a paywall. When you first start on Twitch you’ll only have access to direct PayPal donations, but if you stream consistently, you can become an Affiliate to Twitch and you’ll gain the Bits feature which is perfect for these kinds of interactions. 4) Build An Interesting Level Of Atmosphere A further way to keep your audience engaged is by adding music or sounds for atmosphere. If you’re not planning on uploading your content to YouTube, you can play any kind of music you want in the background. Copyrighted music will be muted in all Twitch VODs, so be aware of that if you wanted to use Twitch as a place to store your streams after they’re finished. There are plenty of royalty free music options out there on the internet. Tabletop Audio is a perfect place to go for atmospheric music that won’t be too demanding on your sound levels. If you want to get really creative you can find websites that let you build your own soundboards to add specific sound effects when needed. People in the audience may react well if you explain what the characters hear and suddenly they hear it too. Of course, all of this leads back to tip #2: balance your levels accordingly and have your players be the priority. Having your players dress up and bring props to the table could also lead to some interest from viewers. Someone who just popped into your channel may be more inclined to stay if they see one of the players dressed as a cranky old wizard. 5) There Is A Long Road Ahead Of You This one is quick and simple: something will go wrong. Streaming on Twitch is technologically overwhelming. There are various aspects you’ll need to be watching: bitrate, audio levels, camera, chat, donations, and not to mention the game you’re playing with your friends. It will be overwhelming and exhausting, but it will get easier the more you do it. As also mentioned earlier, it takes a lot of time to grow on Twitch. Don’t be discouraged if the audience doesn’t appear on your first stream. Our first month of streaming we didn’t hit more than 3 viewers at a time. Consistency in schedule and a commitment to growing quality will cause more viewers to become regulars. The entire struggle is worth it. I’ve built relationships with our long term viewers and the support they offer is indescribable. Starting is the hardest part of streaming. I’ve seen a lot of people on the internet say that if they were going to stream, they would want everything perfect before they started. That’s impossible. When we started we tied a GoPro to a ceiling fan to hang it over the table. We quickly learned that this wasn’t the best method, but just because our first stream wasn’t “perfect” doesn’t mean we were immediately shunned from the streaming community. In the end, you’re doing all of this because you love playing these games and you want to show the world the fun you’re having so they can take part. Don’t let the daunting, and often thankless, start turn you away from the world of streaming roleplaying games. Hopefully this helps you get started on Twitch. There’s so much more to talk about in each area, of which we’ve only skimmed the surface. I’d love to talk more and offer assistance to anyone looking to start playing tabletop games on the internet. You can find me on Twitter here. There’s also the High Level Games’ Facebook page where a whole plethora of awesome people will be able to help you with any sort of roleplaying problem you may have. Do you have any pieces of advice for streamers? Share it in the comments below! Justin Cauti is a writer and Twitch streamer. He plays board/roleplaying games on the internet at http://www.playingboardgames.tv. Follow him on Twitter for updates on his boring life and writing projects @LeftSideJustin. Picture Reference: https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/16/16666344/dungeons-and-dragons-twitch-roleplay-rpgs-critical-role-streaming-gaming  For nearly a year, I have been GMing a playthrough of the Mummy’s Mask adventure path for my Twitch channel PlayingBoardGames. This was my first time as a GM for an adventure that would last more than two or three sessions. It was a daunting challenge but I was very excited to learn in a trial by fire scenario. Overall, the experience has been positive and incredibly fun. I have a lot more to learn, but these are four things I’ve learned running Pathfinder for my Twitch Channel.
1) No Player Treats Battle Maps The Same After a few sessions I noticed a distinct divide in how my players perceived combat. Some of my players needed to know every distinct detail about where they were and where the enemies were. It made sense to me, combat in Pathfinder requires a lot of math and spatial awareness. Knowing the exact distance and how to possibly use the environment to your advantage is crucial in successful combat. However, I had some players who absolutely loathed having to look at a map and measure out their movement. These players were my more ‘cinematic’ players. They were the kind of players who cared less about being exactly 40 feet away from the Orc and cared more about charging up to the Orc, weapons raised with a screeching battlecry. They understood the requirements for proper distance and space between enemies, but they wanted to create the entire situation in their head. Their mind made it more cinematic and, for them, incredibly more fun than a little battle map could. To balance my players I had to come up with a way to suit both parties AND also showcase combat well for Twitch. In the end leaning towards a more cinematic approach works best. Our combat is all verbally based with myself being the only one with the battlemap. Our players who like knowing the exact distances and space still always ask, but now I am able to share that information with them on the fly. 2) The Heart of Pathfinder Lies in Your Players I would not be anywhere without my party. They push me to give them the best story-driven experience I possibly can whenever we get together to stream. I’ve heard a lot of stories and jokes about harsh DMs that enjoy putting their PCs through the death gauntlet, the party coming out with less limbs or lives than before. To me, that negates a lot of what I find to be the most entertaining and fun role-play experiences. Pathfinder, especially with the way we stream it on Twitch, reminds me a lot of people getting around a campfire together to tell a good story. The players act as the heroes (or villains) that hook the audience with their decisions. I’m sitting behind them building props, making costumes, and thinking of interesting roadblocks to throw at them. My job is to keep both the audience and party in suspense while also giving my players a challenge and making sure they’re following the rules. No story is fun when suddenly the main character dies for no reason. Likewise, the story isn’t good when the main characters can suddenly do whatever they want. The push and shove and balance between the PCs and the GM is a beautiful one. We are not enemies. The greatest thing I can do to get my players engaged is to not be a jerk to them, but is instead to provide stakes and plotlines that get their character involved-- to get them role-playing. 3) Let Your PCs Impact the World This sounds like an obvious one, but the importance of it didn’t hit me until I did it on a much smaller scale. This isn’t about your PCs having an impact on the main story, but having them influence and change smaller details. This is best explained by an example: our PCs were called in to help decide something by the city’s generals regarding an undead invasion. Inside the war room all of the uptight officials were standing over a map of the city muttering in silence. One PC proclaims: “This room is missing a man standing with a sword over his head screaming his lungs out.” All the generals met him with disdain, insult, and confusion and the player shrugged it off. The next time the players decided to attend the war planning they barged in the following day. As they entered they found (with a successful Perception Check) that a man standing in the back quickly lowered a sword and stopped screaming when he saw players enter. The PCs all LOVED this. I cannot stress enough about how much of an impact this little joke of a moment had on the players. It makes the world feel malleable on a smaller scale and reminds them that there is more to do than just ‘save the world’. It gives them a reason to interact with every character and circumstance they can, because nothing is absolutely set in stone. Of course the example I gave was on the sillier side, but our stream is quite purposely comedic. This brings me to the last lesson I’ve learned. 4) Pull the Rug Out From Under Your Players On our channel our primary format is comedy. We like laughing and we like making people laugh. Due to this, our Pathfinder sessions have a lot of comedy in them. The NPCs are ridiculous, our PCs tell a lot of jokes, and most things are taken with a lighter twist. However I found that it was very important to put my players into situations where in a blink of an eye they weren’t laughing anymore. The story has been unraveling over our sessions and I’ve been taking characters’ backstories and weaving them in the plot. I found ways to put in little story notes that would push the buttons on these backstories and exploit the emotions of the PCs. When you add in a moment of absolute seriousness after a moment where everything was happy the players can really get sucked into the story and realize that there is an actual stake that they are fighting for. This works the opposite way too. It’s why Shakespeare’s tragedies had comedic scenes or moments within them to lighten the mood. It’s a little breather and change of pace that the audience, or in the case of Pathfinder, your players, really need. Shifts in pacing, storytelling, mood, and tension are incredibly important. Nothing that follows a straight line is interesting. Surprise your players and make them constantly feel like another twist can happen at any moment. This gives them a reason to continue playing and pushes them even further in their characters. And really, to me, this is what Pathfinder is all about: mutual storytelling with rules and dice. When streamed on Twitch roleplaying games take on a unique presentation. It’s less of a game and more of a show. We don’t necessarily play Pathfinder as much as we perform Pathfinder. That doesn’t mean these four points won’t help GMs who play games in the private of their own home. Adding a living and breathing world is the heart of good roleplay, it takes it beyond a game and into a story. Turn your campaign into a story your players will want to share around a campfire. Justin Cauti is a writer and Twitch streamer. He plays board/roleplaying games on the internet at http://www.playingboardgames.tv. Follow him on Twitter for updates on his boring life and writing projects @LeftSideJustin. |
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