How to play board games online with your friends | Hacker News Reader

How to play board games online with your friends

masilotti.com

228 pointsjoemasilotti211 comments

A few friends and I invented a board game several years ago and we all thought this pandemic time would be a great opportunity to get back into it.

I set up a real time board game maker online, called DoomGrid[0]. It's very basic and just uses Firebase to sync a bunch of game objects across everyone's game board.

We also published the rules for our invented game recently[1] (warning, only 70% complete). We've now spent over 10+ hours developing those rules and the story behind them.

If you haven't tried inventing a game yet, I'd highly recommend it. It's really fun! I personally enjoy it just as much as actually playing the finished game. And it's very rewarding the play something you crafted from scratch.

[0] https://doomgrid.com/

[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GBGlrMk4By5IZ28yCqq3vHAo...

This looks like a blast! I'll have to share it with my friends this weekend. We always think of new board game ideas but never take them anywhere. DoomGrid could really help.

A friend and I made a game a few weeks ago and it's also just simply synchronizes the board using a server to store the game state.

It's a Codenames clone you can find here http://those.codes

This looks great. Do you think your friend might add a short paragraph to the home page explaining what this does? Might engender a little more trust.

I'm totally gonna use this to play Codenames with my parents-in-law.

That's very polished, I like the "draw yourself" animation.

Had you looked into using https://boardgame.io/ for doing state management?

I prefer having more freedom than a turn-based system provides — the the setup I currently have is actually super simple, but I'll look into this for the next turn-based game I make.

I took this game design course[0] on Coursera for fun and found it pleasing. The students are asked to invent constrained games as assignments and they get feedback on them from their peers.

[0] https://www.coursera.org/learn/game-design/home/welcome

Austin has a local board game Meetup group that's shifted entirely to Tabletop Simulator during this time. It's great and definitely maintains the best feeling of playing a physical board game.

I'm surprised that the author didn't mention the hundreds of games that you can download for free in the Steam Workshop as mods. Not all of them work flawlessly, so you have to test things out beforehand. However, the almost unlimited array of options is what makes TTS stand out.

We've found that games without hand management tend to work best. Over the past 4 weeks, we've run games like Arkham Horror, Great Western Trail, Terra Mystica, Blood Rage, Caverna, Puerto Rico, Hansa Teutonica, Concordia, Lords of Waterdeep, and Quacks of Quedlinburg.

This is awesome and gave me a lot of ideas! I'd love it if you checked out this app we're building to play social/board games over video chat. There aren't as many options as Tabletop Simulator but it may still be a good fit for your meetups: https://www.cyberspaces.app

One feature in tabletop simulator is that it is literally a simulator of a tabletop - which means that the simulated tabletop can be flipped over. At least, I think that’s supposed to be feature!

I skipped mentioning the workshop mods because of the huge variation in quality. A follow up post could go through a bunch of mods and recommend some good ones, though!

Yeah, that's a pretty meaty topic on its own. If you choose a mod with bad scripting, you're in for a rough ride. I always try to test a game out by myself to make sure everything functions as expected.

On the bright side, if anything messes up, you can usually press undo and just manually move the pieces around. :)

I've been looking at moving to Austin and love board games. Unfortunately with everything canceled I can't currently use Meetup to check out the scene. Would you mind talking a little bit about what the board game scene is normally like in the area?

Sure thing! I'm caveating this with the fact that I've only been in the area for 2 years now. After I found some good groups, I haven't actively looked as often.

Meetups - Austin is pretty heavily split between North/South of Town Lake (Lady Bird Lake). A lot of people don't "cross the line". - North Austin has a lot more gaming groups than the South Austin region, at an estimated ratio of 3:1. - A majority of groups meet at local game stores, but there are a few that meet at restaurants and breweries (which I prefer the vibe of). - Most groups meet in the evenings on weekdays. I haven't seen many weekend groups, unfortunately. - Most groups play a wide variety of modern games, so you'll always be learning new games. There are very few groups if you like the "classics" (Monopoly, Life, Sorry, Catan, etc.) - Most groups are decently sized, with anywhere from 10-30 folks showing up on a weekly basis.

Locations - Austin has a small, but high-quality selection of Board Game cafes. Favorites are Vigilante and Emerald Tavern. - Austin has a lot of local game stores. One of the more heavily trafficked ones is Dragon's Lair.

Conventions - Austin has a yearly board game convention with a great group of regulars (https://www.boardgamebash.com/) - You're only 3 hours away from the Dallas/Fort Worth area which holds BGG.con in both the Spring and Fall (https://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/BGGCON). Biggest board game convention in the US next to GenCon. - You also have PAX South in January held in San Antonio, only 1.5 hours away.

Other Notes - There's a really welcoming community of 20-30 folks that meets once per month to help board game designers get feedback and playtest their games. One of my favorite recent finds. - There used to be a REALLY popular weekly meetup that was specifically for heavy games (2+ hours) that pulled in a crowd of 30-40 folks, but it got dissolved and never really had a replacement. I'm not sure what happened, but there is more of a demand for that here. - It's an unfortunate truth that the board game hobby can sometimes cater to some...interesting characters. From my experience, there's MUCH LESS of that in Austin and everyone has been super friendly and welcoming.

I hope that helps! If you're interested in more info, feel free to reach out to me. Email is just my username@gmail.com.

Awesome thank you! I'm up near the twin cities; the saint paul board game meetup goes to a lot of breweries and I prefer that vibe too. I like the game aspect but I think the social part is important too. I'm hoping to move this year, but a lot of that depends on how long the pandemic lasts unfortunately. I'm happy to hear there's some good groups. I don't mind traveling a little bit to meet up, but I'll check out the north side a bit more if it's nerdier.

I was hoping this was going to be how to modify boardgames to play with friends via webcam. We played Monopoly, and had good success - one board, setup a ghost player for the remote people. Remote people used parts of a set to keep track of their money and properties. Later several hours.

>In my experience, Zoom is the most consistent service and works on almost any device. One person in your group will need a paid subscription if you want to host an event longer than 40 minutes. //

We used meet.jit.si, it was free, good sound/video quality and long call time was no problem.

"We played Monopoly, and had good success"

Unlikely. What a tedious game

Sometimes it's not about the game, it's about the people you're playing with and the conversation you have over the game.

Yes, but Monopoly is probably worse (or not helpful) in that respect as well.

Monopoly is great for fostering interaction!

I mean, if your experience is anything like my family/friends, it certainly lets you know who in your circle is a cut-throat bastard who cheats at everything and deserves everything terrible that happens to them.

If they had fun, they had fun, and it's great.

I don't like Monopoly, you may not like it, but please, let OP like it if he wants. What's even the point of your remark ? It's great that they had a great experience, and that's what's important !

Apparently almost everyone is playing with the same "house rules" that make the game awful. Free parking is not a rule and just makes the game go longer. Not automatically putting up unpurchased properties for auction is also a big rule to miss.

I've played monopoly strictly by the rules and it ends up being equally terrible as any house rules imo.

Perhaps even worse, once you get someone who drops in with the hyper optimized bleed-everyone-to-death-with-no-hotels strategy. (Or worse, 2+ people with this strategy, because they it becomes a neverending game of trying to block all monopolies)

I'll agree though, playing without the auction rule is super slow and boring.

Maybe stock rules with infinite houses, I haven't tried that before.

30 seconds per turn per player. Max.

Optimal is 10 seconds.

Keeps the energy high and you can finish a game in 15 minutes.

Speed monopoly! Played with those fun chess timers that you get to smack at the end of your turn.

As others have mentioned, house rules often ruin any fun.

It is, by name, a game about being cutthroat towards other players and emphasizes that you optimize in the long-term purely for personal gain. This actually doesn't come naturally to a lot of people. Even the ones that seem to be more selfish often end up losing because they only optimize for short-term games and make it where nobody will trade with them.

Point is that a lot of those house rules slow down the main driver for the game: forcing people to go bankrupt. The house rules often put money back into the economy, which prolongs bankruptcy. To a large degree, the faster you can speed up bankruptcy, the more fun it is.

One of my personal favorite additions to the game was the Speed Die included in some versions. In a pretty elegant way, it greatly speeds up both the property acquisition and bankruptcy phases of the game.

Also as others are pointing out, the fun a of a board game is 90% dictated by the people you are playing with. That's not to say Monopoly is inherently or intuitively conducive to keeping the experience enjoyable, but it also can't completely prevent you from having fun. As evidenced by plenty of people, myself included, having immense enjoyment from it with the right group.

The people who like Monopoly really love it and everyone else would rather play pretty much anything else.

Ha, kids like to pretend to be rich, it has a forced progression and not too much randomness, auctions are fun (when you don't have to worry about actual money).

Is there a specific element you don't like? For me money just isn't that fun (the original point of the game, I gather) so ... but it's still not a terrible game.

Principally it was the request of one of the kids, was easy to play via webcam, and all participants had a set (different sets, but we called properties by colour+number pair, eg Orange One; and normalised the currency before we started).

The kids want to play Risk next, but I've not worked out how to make that work smoothly. Probably very similar again: , and each person having their own dice (to improve the tactile aspect).

+1 for meet.jitsu

My group has been doing a similar thing - except that video quality has been to unreliable for some of the more detailed boards (Troyes, Power Grid). We needed the ability to pinch and zoom the board.

We’ve been using an app called iPhotoBot to take high res shots every few seconds. These get uploaded to Dropbox. Then there is a web server of a synced folder which builds a page of the images. Server-sent events are used to update the page.

It’s kind of clunky to set up, but I can share my code if anyone is interested. I’m also curious if there are better ways to stream high quality photos.

Wow, that sounds pretty cool though! I wonder if there are any video services that offer pinch-to-zoom.

An alternative would be to open a video chat in your browser. Then, on a Mac, you can zoom in with your touchpad. But I think zooming on the page in any browser should work, right?

Resolution might be a problem, since you're just looking more closely at the same pixelated full-board video you were already receiving.

If the VC software was smart enough to detect your pinch action and send you a cropped feed at higher resolution from the source, that's a different story. Not sure if any existing tools do this.

I've never used that service, thanks for the advice! I would love to cancel my Zoom account if possible.

I have a group of friends that is doing the "IRL" board game setup that you mentioned. They have a tripod and like three devices for household. I'll see if I can get more info on how they have it working.

I'm kinda surprised by all the hate on Monopoly.

It's a great game for learning. It teaches you to take risks early and slowly lower your risk tolerance over time to let your existing assets appreciate. It teaches you that the best values are at the extremes of real estate: you want to be either a luxury condo owner or a slum lord. It teaches you that capitalism isn't fair, because good strategy and hard work don't pay off if you don't get lucky. Come to think of it, maybe that last one is why HN doesn't like it. ;P

> Come to think of it, maybe that last one is why HN doesn't like it. ;P

It’s demonstrably clear that the SV startup scene is a meritocracy where the best ideas get funded. Just ask Adam Neumann and Elizabeth Holmes ;)

"It teaches you that the best values are at the extremes of real estate: you want to be either a luxury condo owner or a slum lord.”

I thought the best properties in Monopoly where the opposite of this? It's my understanding that the best properties in Monopoly are orange followed by green then either red or yellow. Mostly the middle of the road properties. Orange is the best because it's approximately a 7 roll away from jail.

yes

That's a pretty good hypothesis. I honestly don't know.

The reason I've preferred purple and (dark) blue is that they only require two properties to have a monopoly, so you can get monopolies sooner. It might be confirmation bias on my part, but my memory is that when I get these monopolies early it often prevents people from developing the orange properties. But like I said, I honestly don't know.

You're probably right that in the long run the orange properties would pay off the most based on being ~7 away from jail, but I wonder if games play out long enough for that to outweigh the effects of getting monopolies early.

I suspect that it depends on the play style of your opponents. A lot of people are too hesitant to trade in order to gain monopolies for multiple people early on. I've seen it play out this way with multiple parties not having monopoly and one party having one on Blue (or even purple in one case) and absolutely refusing to trade out of fear that it might help someone else.

The results are inevitable at that point.

We always played with a house rule that trades are not allowed until all properties have been purchased.

You need to factor in frequency of landing and cost to build. Orange is in the sweetspot. IIRC, red gets landed on more often, but the extra $50/house makes it tough to build up. Green is crap on both accounts. Pink is less frequent but cheap to build. Light blue and purple are only good if you monopolize early and can drive a building shortage (get ready to be yelled at by anyone not intimately familiar with the rules). Boardwalk is mostly useful to tilt the balance in your favor on long games. (as you pass go and collect chance cards, $ in circulation go up over time, so it gets harder to bankrupt people)

The best property is the cheapest group of three you can acquire the quickest based on the rolls in your particular game, so you can buy up houses ASAP and lock up the housing stock for the rest of the game, thereby ensuring you will win, albeit very slowly.

Once you get 6 properties with 4 houses each, you control 75% of all houses.

This is especially true if you play strictly by the rules where you cannot buy a hotel without first having four houses - it's then impossible for anyone to surpass your edge by skipping straight to hotel.

It doesn't matter which group of three, so long as it's cheap enough to build out all the houses quickly.

But yes, orange is best because of jail

The best properties are the cheapest (brown and teal, then purple or orange). Houses are cheap, buy until there are no more left (don't buy hotels). You now have the Monopoly of houses. Sit back and collect money.

The biggest problem for me is that everyone plays by their own house rules.

Most people play a modified version of the game, without the auctioning of property, and with additional money put into the game when landing on Free Parking. Most also play they game as children.

Without auctioning, and with the money from Free Parking, the game lasts longer, and is frustrating for the losing players -- particularly for children, who have to tolerate the gloating of the winning child.

It might be educational, but that doesn't make it fun.

IMO the version on the Nintendo Entertainment System (yes, the really old Nintendo) is the best Monopoly, because it plays by vanilla rules and takes care of all the bookkeeping, auction-running, and setup for you. Plays fast. Few enough buttons even non-gamers or kids new to gaming can keep up.

Plus I think you can play it multiplayer online with modern emulators, which is relevant to the current situation.

I wouldn't consider entirely replacing most board games with a video game version but for Monopoly I'd make an exception. Play the one on the NES.

[EDIT] a crucial factor might be that there's no hidden or secret information in Monopoly, so it converts to all-playing-on-one-screen better than a lot of board games would.

Monopoly poisoned the expectations of generations of people about what a board game is. It's terrible not just because it's a bad game, but because it keeps people out of the hobby.

^this shouldn't be downvoted

Monopoly taught me to never play Monopoly, so I guess I got something valuable out of it.

By now everybody knows there are alternatives to Monopoly, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAWzA09XGxc

I'm not familiar with many of the games in that video. But one of the things that makes Monopoly well-suited to remote playing is that there no information that needs to be kept secret, so it's reasonable to play with a physical board where remote people tell the board owner what moves to make on their behalf.

Games like Catan where you maintain a hand of hidden cards require either some software to facilitate play, or else a lot of painstaking effort. It's not impossible though: one of my relatives played Euchre (a trick-taking card game) on a Zoom call with friends, where the dealer would show each person their cards one at a time, while everyone else turned away from their screen so that they couldn't see.

> how to modify boardgames to play with friends via webcam

It's easy to adapt roll-and-write games (the genre that Yahtzee belongs to). One player rolls the dice and puts them in front of their webcam, the rest mark their answers on private boards. You can each buy the game, or print off copies of the board, or draw them by hand, or take a picture and write on it in a photo editor.

We've been playing a lot of Railroad Ink, which has a particularly easy board to draw by hand.

With a clear tabletop, and a very carefully placed camera(s) under the table, my group found a bunch of card games to play, with very little change need. Took multiple video streams/apps/devices to work.

We tried Boggle, it was painful because we had a group at each webcam and one of the people had a really poor connection. The checking of words for uniqueness at the end of the round took forever. Still fun, but I wouldn't play again unless it was one webcam per person. YMMV.

The site in the leading image is not mentioned elsewhere in the article, but it's Dominion, which can be played at https://dominion.games/

(Disclaimer: the online version is developed by a friend of mine. Not the original physical game of course, which is the best-selling game by Donald X. Vaccarino.)

Oh, wow... I can't believe I forgot to add that site! I literally used it last night and that photo is of me and my friends.

I enjoyed that you have a Base Set strategy guide open at the same time as you're playing.

Looks like a rough game. Why did you buy the last Cellar to end the game when you were behind?

I highly recommend people check out Dominion. Having played many years ago on isotropic and then less so when goko/makingfun took over, this implementation is pretty light and quick.

The games themselves go pretty fast, and there's enough expansions that every game shouldn't devolve into a solved format. (I say this as a casual player learning the new expansions). You get access to the base game for free, and the pricing model for the expansions is pretty fair in my opinion (~$5/month for all thirteen, ~$2.50/month for half). There's a matchmaker and custom games. Even bots for those who want to play solo.

Is your friend doing okay? The site seems pretty slammed. Looks like they finally got the ratings updater back online after it went down a few weeks ago.

He's doing fine, if a bit lonely, because he can't yet afford to hire anyone to work on it together. Though he has an active online community helping him out.

The site had some stability issues when user numbers spiked a couple of weeks ago, but he says he can scale more easily now and isn't afraid if everybody on HN comes to check it out.

Does he have a Patreon or something? I would love to support it.

I don't think he has a Patreon, but you can always get a paid Dominion account.

We're working on an app for social/board games with built in video chat: https://www.cyberspaces.app

Current we offer:

Boggle (just released yesterday, feedback is especially appreciated) https://www.cyberspaces.app/boggle

Codenames (we call it Cyberterms) https://www.cyberspaces.app/cyberterms

Liar's Dice https://www.cyberspaces.app/liarsdice

Kings https://www.cyberspaces.app/kings

Other things to point out: It's free and no signup is required by any of the game participants (just create a room, share link, and enter). If you have a good/bad experience, feel free to reach out: mariusz at cyberspaces dot app

Awesome, thanks!! Codenames is one of our gamenight crew's favorites; will def try it out this wknd! :)

Of course! We love Codenames too. We are fielding ideas for next week's game so we'd love to hear about the other games your crew plays.

Looks good. I'd love to know what stack you're building with and what you're learning.

After seeing the readastorytome.com Show HN [0] was using Phoenix LiveView I was considering building a similar app to play spades or 42 as an excuse to learn some things I've been wanting to learn for awhile.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22836940

Awesome! Building these sort of games is a lot of fun and I recommend it! We think there's a good opportunity right now for games over video chat: folks that are self-isolating need a way to connect with each other and if you provide a fun service for that I think it will be used.

We started off using what we knew best: Rails, React and the Twilio Video SDK. We'll introduce other technologies as they are needed to increase our velocity or enable us to build more rich game experiences.

Happy to chat more offline: mariusz at cyberspaces dot app

I am working on a little clone of One Night Ultimate Werewolf using Phoenix LiveView. It has been working out great for me so far.

Doesn't work on Vivaldi: "Camera/Microphone Issue"

Hey. We're super sorry about that. We are using the Twilio Video SDK for video conferencing and one thing we check is that your browser is supported by the SDK before entering a game room. The messaging on the error screen you encountered isn't great and we'll work on improving it. The experience works best on desktop Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge. On mobile iOS it only works on Safari browser.

this is really awesome, would love an option to play the games without requiring cam/mic access (if friends are already bought into another tool like zoom), which could also may also allow more players (e.g. bigger teams for codenames)!

Thank you - really appreciate the feedback! Bigger codenames games get CRAZY and we understand the appeal and we want to be able to provide that experience too. We've been thinking about this problem a lot since many of our users play as couples (they share a screen) and they can't easily participate separately. We also understand the privacy issues and we'll be building an option to enter a game room with your audio/video defaulted to off.

That's great to hear! look forward to it

How are you guys managing the video? Is it peer to peer or is it being routed and encoded in a server first? Codenames needs at least four players to start, if it's p2p, have you noticed any lag or bandwidth problems?

Hey nice to meet another Polish dude! We use Twilio's Video SDK and their P2P rooms. This works fine for most users on desktops and good internet. When I play with friends in CA (I'm in NY), I don't experience any serious issues. Sometimes there's feedback when a user has their speakers blasting. Many of our users experience problems on mobile when there are a lot of players in the room. We're thinking about switching video providers to one with an affordable server option to improve the larger game rooms experience though.

How much do you guys spend per month on the Twilio API if you don't mind me asking? We are currently running our site on an ovh server for $5 a month with no problems since we don't have a crazy amount of users.

Haha definitely not the cheapest project I've built. Happy to share specific with you over email: mariusz at cyberspaces dot app

Not sure which country you are in, or if you care at all but you might want to avoid using trademarked game titles like Boggle to avoid any legal disputes. Perhaps a subtle nod like Bogly or something would be enough to let people know the general game...

Thank you! We'll definitely look into changing the names to avoid legal issues.

Yeah man, really impressed with your simple yet effective implementation. Played a quick game of Boggle with a work mate of mine to test it out. Worked quick and seamlessly! Can't wait to see what other games you get on there.

I'm really happy to hear this! I'm actually pushing an update now to make it (hopefully) even better.

I love social & competitive word games like Boggle and Codenames. Are you taking suggestions for which games you'll implement next?

We are! You can vote for the games you'd like to see on our poll: https://forms.gle/dg97LycciHNCfgpH7

I just gave it a shot to play codenames and it worked great for us. Are there restrictions on the max number of participants per game at this time? I'm thinking this could be fun for a work happy hour.

A few weeks ago I tried Tabletop Simulator with two other friends to play Gloomhaven[+]. I admire the developers that took on such a (positively) complex and rich game as Gloomhaven.

But it was a far cry from in-person playing (I realize). It's very much understandable—you just can't replicate that high-definition feeling you get from in-person game, especially from such a rich game. I was 'dejected' (again, that's not the right word) enough that I didn't try Tabletop Simulator anymore. Maybe I should try other games.

Man ... do I now wish that I hadn't turned down (with lazy excuses) all those in-person Gloomhaven sessions I was invited to.

Live and learn.

[+] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/174430/gloomhaven

I feel your pain. As fun as online sessions are nothing beats physically picking up a figurine or meeple. I also found Gloomhaven particularly hard to use on TTS. Wingspan, on the other hand, was a joy to play.

Thanks, will check out Wingspan. Haven't heard of it before.

There are definitely some games that just don't translate as well to Tabletop Sim, but as far as shared tabletop experiences, TTS blows every other one I've tried out of the water on the widest variety of games. I use it for D&D, Wizards' Academy, and I own about half of the official DLC games.

Thanks for the suggestions. I haven't even scratched the surface with TTS.

I'll try and put together a collection of great workshop mods when I'm home tomorrow and shoot it your way :)

Aw, thank you. I must admit, I'm such a novice with Steam and online games in general that I didn't even know what are "Workshop Mods" until I looked up now. :-)

After watching an attempt to make Scrabble work [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaXo_i3ktwM ], I was thinking what games could work via a webcam if all players have the game.

Thinking of games I've played recently, Dominion would work. Ticket to Ride wouldn't. On the Underground would, 1960 Making of a President wouldn't.

Normal Settlers wouldn't, but the junior version of Settlers would

The key thing is not drawing secret information from a shared pool. Dominion works as it's secret information from a non-secrete deck, which can be known by all players -- you just have to ensure to remove the right cards from play. If player A takes a Duchy, player B removes one Duchy from his set from play.

With Ticket To Ride there's no way to ensure that you don't get the same tickets on each side - secret information from a common limited source.

Normal Settlers would struggle with the soldier cards -- you can draw a soldier, but it could be roadbuilding or year of plenty. Junior settler has the same with coco cards, but those are played immediately so that works.

Obvioulsy open games, like Chess, Go, Backgammon, work. Games like Battleships and Guess Who, where there is secret information but no shared ppol would work too (ok you could both be guessing the same character in guess who, but that would be OK)

An Oracle/proctor would help, to set things up and divide the state up properly.

Dominion would indeed work with webcam, because everyone only shuffles their own cards, but you can only play with the cards that everyone has (if one player has an expansion and the others don't, you can't use it).

If all of your players already know how to play, I strongly recommend the official Dominion Online [0]! The base game is free, and the expansions are very affordable too ($1.95 for a month with half the expansions [the older ones], or $3.90 for all, no recurring charges, and only one player at the table needs to have bought them). Unfortunately it's not very intuitive as an introduction to the game because you don't get a good feel of where cards are coming from and going to, but once you know the game it's arguably better (because of the instant setup and shuffling, and automatic tracking of effects).

[0] https://dominion.games/

The River (by Days of Wonder) is a worker/resource game that can work since there's limited private information that originates as public.

The ticket to ride app is only $8-9 depending on your platform. It's pretty easy to find other players and make an online game. We played a few games as a family with a meet.jit.si running in the background, it worked pretty good. If you assume the price of the game is the cost of the gas it would take to drive to someone's house, it evens out in the end.

+1 for Tabletop Simulator, one of my children taught themselves Blender in the process of creating and uploading a game for TTS.

TTS is a such a blast. I have a group of five friends who play Wingspan every week and the winner gets to flip the table. Such a satisfying experience! Also, secretly making your opponents pieces slightly bigger or smaller can be a fun way to stay occupied between turns.

My friends and I have been loving TTS. $20 is a pretty good deal for a sandbox where all the heavy lifting has been done already so you can just have a good time.

Another addition that I've found really fun is Lords of Waterdeep. The board game version of it is a chore to play due to setup and how massive the board is. The digital version is way more fun as the board game is set up already for you, and not as daunting.

Lords of Waterdeep is available on Steam + iOS + Android - it's the exact same game on it them all. Cross platform gameplay works which is really amazing. AI also exists and isn't half bad.

Your non-computer using friends/partners can play on their tablets/phones along side friends who have gaming PCs.

I'm surprised there is no mention of jackbox. It's setup to be played by a whole load of friends around the same tv, using their phones as handheld answer devices. We made it work over discord video chat with one person sharing their screen and was a hoot. Quiplash is a lot like cards against humanity and drawful is neat play on pictionary.

Jackbox has been, by far, the least successful for our social distancing game group.

https://tabletopia.com/ is not included in blog article, but is worth to try. Their library is huge and games there are very fun to play. Recommended.

The biggest flaw with this one is the lack of an undo button.

Interacting with stacks of cards is sometimes weird, and the physics get wonky, especially with hex tiles that snap to the board, but still don't align properly.

It works better the less objects are involved.

Playing "Wingspan", putting a card below another with eggs on top is dangerous.

Don't even try to play "Dominant Species".

Here's a great (and growing) list of free or freemium board games online that a friend shared with me!

Document version: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10iOD7Wy_YU4NmkPU7ZH7YTrq...

Spreadsheet version: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FnsE0E3p_qVugf2Tu6dj...

I've been playing some games on https://www.yucata.de/en with friends - San Juan, Imhotep, Castles of Burgundy, Russian Railroads, Thurn and Taxis. Beware with Yucata that if you start a game with more than 2 people, you cannot resign and if you start a different game, it makes you take your turn in other games first. We also use Tabletopia https://tabletopia.com/games - Terra Mystica - one person needs to buy Tabletopia.

For more places to play boardgames online see https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/wiki/play_online as well as https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/2/d/1nwZkqIoIkkUakCvj...

> In my experience, Zoom is the most consistent service and works on almost any device. One person in your group will need a paid subscription if you want to host an event longer than 40 minutes.

Have to disagree on this, Discord has been a FAR better solution for my group of friends and I with our online game nights. We tried Zoom, Discord, Google Meet/Hangouts, and Discord has, by far, been the best UI/UX/clarity/quality.

The one thing I like about Zoom above Discord is the ability to see people's faces. Discord doesn't have this, right? It's nice to use the mini-layout in Zoom and put it off to the side like the article suggests.

I'm still waiting for some guy on Twitter[0] who's working on his own game board simulator to release his 8-bit video conferencing solution. The pixelation gives the perfect feel when you're playing DnD online with friends during a pandemic.

[0] https://twitter.com/HunterLoftis/status/1245385563697545219

Discord has video chat, as well: https://support.discordapp.com/hc/en-us/articles/11500098275...

Oh, nice, I was completely unaware of this feature. I must have missed it because it's only available inside private or group DMs, not channels!

I think it's available in channels now: https://support.discordapp.com/hc/en-us/articles/36004172105...

Does everyone need a Discord account to join the call?

The big benefit (for me) of Zoom is that I can send a link to anyone and they don't need an account. Asking someone to sign up for a Board Game Arena account AND Discord would be too much.

That's fair, I guess depending who you play with, some people may not have a Discord. You do have to have a Discord account, correct. All of my friends and I are already all together in a Discord server, so it makes sense, but if it was new people playing that could def add to the hurdle.

And yet... asking us to sign up for Board Game Arena and Discord is exactly what the weekly game night I've been involved with the last month did, and they have 8+ people every week. (For that matter, I asked the folks in my new D&D campaign to sign up with D&D Beyond and Discord, and that went fine as well.)

Vast majority of people IME already use Discord for many things anyway

"Gamer" community bias, IME, as well as other internet-age communities.

It's not the most general platform, but it's one of the best at what it does: voice and text. Video is just icing on top.

If Discord had a version suitably branded for Business, I'd say it'd be better than Zoom and Slack combined.

It just works.

Jit.si is as easy as https://meet.jit.si/joemasilotti Just give browser permissions and you're in.

I replaced the Google Hangout recommendation with Discord. Thanks for the heads up!

Yeah, discord is pretty bad, but it's better than Zoom.

Jit.si is as easy as https://meet.jit.si/bluetidepro Just give browser permissions and you're in.

I wish there was a way to do this but with popular/classic board and card games instead.

My friends are, for the most part, not board game nerds. They want to play commercially successful games like Trivial Pursuit, Balderdash, Uno, etc. We've had a real struggle to find a sensible way of playing them.

Eventually we just had one household point a webcam at a physical copy of Trivial Pursuit and everyone else play via Zoom, which was less than ideal.

You could try https://skillgamesboard.com

They offer Chess, Checkers, Reversi, Go, Connect Four, and the like.

boardgamearena supports a whole bunch of classic card (Hearts etc) and board games (Checkers etc).

Tabletop Simulator (mentioned in TFA) is ideal for that, it can play most if not all of those. We've played Monopoly, Sorry, The Game of Life, Uno, Clue, and Catan as well as your standard card games (hearts, rummy, etc.). We've got a couple "classics" queued up for this weekend too. The first game was getting used to the controls but it was very smooth sailing after that.

It's basically a "sandbox" gave that can support, in theory, any board game.

Can you give me a brief description of how to play Catan on this?

I have a harder problem than just playing against friends. My wife and I, and another couple, all want to play Catan together. I don't want to sit in a different room to my wife.

I was considering just using a webcam here and at my friends, having two boards setup and both doing the same moves, so we can all "see" what is going on, and one side looking after the deck, the other the dice.

I made an online version of Catan, want to try? I don't want to publicize it since it's running on a free Heroku dyno (and copyright infringement, probably), but I think it'd be fun to share with a few internet strangers.

It's more of a tabletop style where you do everything yourself (collect resources, place settlements) and the pieces are synced between players.

Email me! cebraverde, at gmail.com

Sadly I only have one laptop.

What was wrong with colonist.io ?

The issue is secret hand management , a separate device per player is needed to handle secrets.

I’ve successfully setup a Discord session between two households where we all had laptops or desktops around a kitchen table with Tabletop Simulator on each, and a central TV for the video/audio and the overall game board shared “spectator mode”.

We played Ticket to Ride and a couple others (Sushi Go Party, and Spirit Island , which is like cooperative anti-Catan). It worked out well but definitely took some practice to get the right mix of software, and it helped that TTS was on sale.

I'm building a Dungeons&Dragons/Pathfinder/etc remote tabletop system for my D&D party:

https://twitter.com/HunterLoftis/status/1248742209110884353

"Share a link and start playing" has been the most important quality for my group of variously-technically-experienced friends.

This has my attention, especially if it has D&D Beyond integration.

"a tad clunky"? Every single person I've shown boardgamearena.com has commented on the subpar UX.

But then we play a few games of Coup and all is good :)

https://acquire.tlstyer.com/ is a good implementation of Acquire

On the other hand, we found boardgamearena.com very, very polished after trying out yucata.de and brettspielwelt.de.

Tabletopia is another online service for this. They seem to have quite an extensive library.

Good call. I initially left it out because it felt too close to TTS. How does it compare?

We've played a couple of games in both TTS and Tabletopia. Neither became a favourite.

Superficially they are indeed very similar, you're getting a 3D simulated world with the board game in it, and then a clumsy way to interact with that world.

We did not find (not sure if any exist) rules enforcement implementations for Tabeltopia. Every game we tried we had to understand and enforce any rules, and the physics engine is arguably an obstacle rather than assistance as it neatly allows you to drop cards where they can't go, flip cards you shouldn't see, resize counters or accidentally stack them when that's not useful....

Big upside to Tabletopia: It runs in browser. If a person in your group has a company laptop that's locked down to do Office and so on, chances are it can't run Steam (and so TTS isn't possible) but it can run Chrome and thus Tabletopia works.

Definitely the biggest contrast is to BGA. BGA is the place to go if you want rules enforcement and aren't happy to stick with one game you all enjoy. But you won't get any of the mechanical joy if that's important to you. If you actually enjoy making change with monopoly money, BGA discards that because their rules enforcement just turns the amount of money (cows, glory, mana, whatever) into a number instead. Little wooden cubes become small red squares on the screen that appear exactly where the designer put them, you can't balance them or line them up how you want, because that isn't part of the game rules.

Personally I am now spending several hours every single week on a variety of games at BGA and maybe one session of TTS Gloomhaven if we can face it.

To me video conferencing isn't essential. We usually run a Hangout for live games, but in practice you care mostly about the voices. It's satisfying to hear another player say "Aw, I wanted that" when you take away an option you suspected they wanted, and it's easy to say "Sorry, Jenny is screaming, back in five" and put the headset down compared to having to type all that with a child screaming.

My dad is in his late 70s, not good with technology and likes to play scrabble. We used to play a game every week on the weekend. So I thought now would be a good time to download an app to each of our ipads and play online during lockdown.

So as it turns out, there is no good easy clean online scrabble game. They're all horrifyingly gamified, "social" with lots of bots and fake accounts (one with bonus forced facebook login) and full of ads to trick you into downloading other things. All features that my poor non-techy dad would get confused and put off by. I was amazed.

So does anyone know of a good simple clean way to play scrabble remotely?

you could create board in google docs spreadsheet and create stack of letters via script maybe browser plugin if needed.

It's kind of sad, to be honest. The official Scrabble app does exactly what you want, but only for pass-and-play. (At least it did a few years ago when I played.)

I wonder if you could set up the game at your house, physically, with a camera pointed bird's eye view. He wouldn't be able to move his pieces, but he might be able to communicate via a video chat?

There's this Codenames clone [1] that's great, you can play in multiples languages and you don't need to share a screen to play. It's for 4-8 players and it's easy to play.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codenames_(board_game)

[1] https://www.horsepaste.com/

Awesome, thanks for the link! I'm working on an addendum to the article for game-specific sites. This is perfect.

Ah, if you're aggregating links, I've seen some pretty comprehensive Google sheets listing the different online board games to play in quarantine. Here's one: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nwZkqIoIkkUakCvjiiLu...

Also, plug for my own site https://oneword.games. It's an implementation of Just One, the 2019 Spiel des Jahres winner. I built it a month ago just to play with my friends; now I'm getting hundreds of daily players and I can't figure out where they're even coming from =P

Thanks for sharing! I'll have to try some of those.

I've been working on an online Codenames clone as a side project for virtual get-togethers. It is live and playable[0] and requires 4+ players. I'm planning on open-sourcing it as soon as I find the time. It's been a good excuse to practice some Vue.js and Websocket communication and a lot of fun!

[0] http://codenames.seafish.io

It's interesting to see other implementations of Codenames!

We've made one here http://those.codes

I've since open-sourced this, contributions welcome.

https://github.com/seanfisher/codenames

Between this article and the comments, I'm bookmarking this page as a good list of these games. I'd be remiss if I didn't add my own humble attempt, a Boggle-like game to be played over screen share: https://wordgame.paulbutler.org/

I've been working on a vtt for DND5E for the past couple of years. You can text/video chat, create characters, maps and all of the essentials! Please take a look!

https://imetatroll.com

If you really like what I am doing, I have a twitter account and a patreon account. Thanks!

This looks great. I love the font! A 2 minute screencast overview video showing the interface would go a long way to making me want to sign up.

Thank you! I will be working on an introductory video soon :)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCzEAhkVqsU1CFTGDKzR8A

I do have two older videos if you are interested!

Yeah, I love these! Definitely made me want to give it a try! Maybe embed them both the home page somewhere?

I just tried it out and it was really hard to get started. I couldn't figure out how to edit a game board and there was really little guidance around what to do, like a step 1, step 2, step 3. I had no idea what an "Encounter" sized board was, for example.

And the icon buttons were hard to use. I had to hover over them to see what they did and it wasn't easy. Maybe use a tooltip library for those (like tippy.js) or just have the text next to the icons — this would be much more usable.

Also, a quick getting started video overview would be awesome. I wasn't sure how to edit a board or see it in perspective.

I really like the general interface and feel of it thought. Felt old school and like it's own little world. I was also impressed that you have video and audio chat built in — really, really cool. I hope it gets easier to use, because I think I'd want to try it more!

Thanks for the feedback!

I worked on a multiplayer version of the puzzle card game Set recently with a friend. It uses socket.io to communicate and Svelte for the front end. It’s a lot of fun to play with friends or alone: https://isaset.com/

This is really well done! Love the subtle animations and the ability to pick cards with the keyboard.

Thank you!

https://setwithfriends.com

This is an implementation I have played with a bit, works well too!

I was going to comment that it doesn’t work well on mobile, but it looks like that’s on their todo list: https://github.com/ekzhang/setwithfriends I wasn’t aware of this implementation, thank you for sharing!

Recently released[0] a free, online version of a favorite social/party game... it goes by the name of Fishbowl, Salad Bowl, Monikers, or Celebrities.

http://fishbowl-game.com/

The first version was created and tested in ~3 weeks. So far it's been fun and hilarious for groups of friends, family, or coworkers (4 to 10+ players, ages 5+).

Also open source[1]. Built with Typescript, React, Material UI, Apollo GraphQL, Hasura, Express, and Postgres; deployed on Render.

[0] Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902950

[1] https://github.com/avimoondra/fishbowl

For those with a more wargaming lean, VASSAL is an amazing toolkit.

Full Java app, and modules for hundreds of games all the way back to the original version of Tactics from AH.

I've personally done a bit of improvements on Fifth Frontier War, from ye olde Traveller universe.

Yeah, VASSAL is a good alternative to TTS! I left it out because I'm personally not into war games which feels like it's strength. But I would definitely be open to learning it and adding it to the article.

Note that it only runs under Java 8.

But yeah, it's got modules for wargames as well as cards and probably others. It's free, and most mods are too.

Brettspielwelt is huge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrettspielWelt

I can recommend it, although it's been years s8nce I've played there.

Tried last Saturday, and it was completely unplayable.

I guess they were under too much load. It took us an hour to just start a session of Wizard, and then we never managed to actually play because it keep throwing us out and showing error messages.

We tried this, but it just .. didn't work. Massive problems getting a game to launchable mode, and then it just doesn't launch. Games disappearing from the invite list, and joins not registering.

I can easily imagine that all could now be caused by overwhelming traffic, but the outcome was no game anyway.

I use an online shared spreadsheet (like EtherCalc[0], or Google Sheets) to play my turn-based combat boardgame[1] with friends during the covid19 quarantine lockdown.

I think it's a lot faster and easier than using roll20 or other online boardgaming platforms, requires no signup nor learning any new shortcut.

[0] https://ethercalc.net/ [1] https://www.tomcooks.com/projects/snipr/

We've been mounting a Logitech webcam to an inexpensive tripod with an inverted-column. We connect that webcam to a computer and log it in to a videoconference.

We use another computer to bring our family into a videoconference with friends. Works great with most games.

Took us about half an hour to get the lighting right, and now we can spin it up in about five minutes to play any game in the house.

About half the time, we don't even play the game. Conversation matters more than everything else these days.

If you are after a Board Game Sandbox, I recommend you take a look at Tabletop Playground as they are running a free beta on Steam right now ahead of the games launch next month: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1282050/Tabletop_Playgrou...

Full Disclosure: I am helping to publish the game, so feel free to AMA

https://github.com/netjiro/hactac

Fun, tricky, tactical hacknslash tabletop/rpg. Played since 2008. A bunch of adventures and campaigns available. Uploading when I have time. Hundreds of hours of adventures in the repo already.

Let me know if you want to try it out. Happy to host a game (UTC+2 CEST). We usually play over maptool and mumble these days.

1) README

2) Adventures in Kingsland

3) basic rules and design ideas

4) Dungeon of Testing

5) Return of Uchly Namen

etc

Any similar suggestions for card games, especially Poker?

I haven't found anything yet, but if I do I'll add it to the article.

http://kosmi.io/

https://ba.net/poker/live/

https://truco.ba.net for truco or spanish card games

I spent a good portion of my day searching for this yesterday (everything looks very shady). What i really want is a self hosted option but i have not found anything yet.

The best ones I've played on are

https://www.pokernow.club/ - Poker

https://www.trickstercards.com/ - including Spades, Bridge, Hearts

You could try http://playingcards.io/

It's effectively a 52 card sandbox. You can also invite other players with a unique URL. Each player has their own "hand" private to others.

The controls seems a tad clunky but it should work for just about any card game!

Are there any online versions of the card games Mao, Golf, or Lucky Bastard/Karma? I’ve been considering making some sort of card game simulator that supports those because I haven’t found a good 1) website that 2) works across screen sizes and 3) enforces play order. http://playingcards.io/ is the closest I have seen.

Has anyone found an easy solution for video chats with virtual games? I've tried Hangouts, Meet, Discord, and Zoom but they all seemed incomplete for my requirements.

My requirements:

- Host can share their screen and video camera at the same time without having to join the meeting from two different devices

- Desktop audio and host's audio can be heard by everyone on the call

- Gallery view in video chat so everyone can be seen while playing the game

> Desktop audio and host's audio can be heard by everyone on the call

I find the inability to have more than one person 'speaking' at a time the most unnatural thing about videoconferencing. Is there any solution?

I found Skype to be the easiest to use with these requirements. I hosted a Jackbox game and was able to share my screen (and game audio), my webcam (albeit in a smaller view than normal), and could see everyone in a gallery view.

Thanks. I'll give it a shot.

I tried Skype and it fell short as well. While sharing my screen I can only see a small floating window that shows 1 participant at a time. I can't see everyone while sharing the game. It was very easy to share my desktop audio while sharing the screen though.

We played Pandemic with great success: the other couple had the game too, put all their cards face up so they could find them fast. We drew for everyone, they mirrored.

That avoids complexities of camera resolution, and lets you examine other players at a glance: important for a co-op game.

(Yeah, I deliberately bought Pandemic just as we entered isolation since I've always wanted it and obvious reasons).

Had deliberately avoided playing it this year, too depressing.

Reminds me of this cool DIY project to record chess piece moves (on a physical board) to a computer.

https://tech.bakkenbaeck.com/post/chessvision

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21613982

I wrote about this as well on the 11 April: https://theexceptioncatcher.com/blog/2020/04/games-that-you-...

There are more games there that you can play.

Currently building a Splendor clone in Phoenix LiveView to teach myself Elixir... I had a rare moment of geek glee last night when I got the reserve-card functionality working, watching the cards disappear from the other screens. Afterwards I think I will do Azul in Blazor as a way of comparing the two frameworks.

I've been working on a free and open-source online implementation of the board game "A Game of Thrones (Second edition)": https://swordsandravens.net/

The game can be daunting and long (~4 hours), but the gameplay is very cool!

is it finished and playable?

Yes, it is!

Finding good games to play online with friends and family is a difficult task, because you find very much crap. So I appreciate the post.

I implemented the games Halma, Mühle and Dame. Don't know the English names.

Ui for now is only in German:

https://wunderwald.games

I tried Halma briefly and it didn’t seem to enforce rules or play order. Is that by design?

Yes, it's by design. It was easier at first but you can "help" new players easier.

I'm currently working on a real-time games platform for more social-type games over video calls.

https://ziago.co

It has a few popular drinking games also. Working on adding more intellectual games soon.

Would be happy for some feedback/suggestions.

It's running on Firebase and Vue.

I wish there was something Flash-like, even easier probably, what would let you make multiplayer board games easily. A board game essentially is just a simple set of pictures you move around + a chat + a dice perhaps. This sounds fairly easy to implement.

Look at VASSAL - it's primarily been used for wargaming but modules can be made with lots of different mechanics, and the more recent abilities to build automated rule behavior get better and better.

Colonist.io has been playable and nice (for Settlers of Catan). They too struggle under load.

I know from the creator of Dominion Online[0] that he had to upgrade his servers since the start of the Corona crisis. Lots of new users, leading to all sorts of problems. He seems to have things under control now, though.

[0] https://dominion.games/

Want to try a looser, table-top style version? Email me cebraverde, at gmail.com

I was frustrated by the official online Catan and Colonist.io, so I made my own version.

They have a beta site that was less swamped last time we played. No rankings, but we didn't care.

I've been working on a WebGL toy for building board games. You can share your hash URL and play with someone else.

https://beta.probability.nz/

For most I think it's just finding friends to play with, then finding time/priority/scheduling to actually get playing.

Huge recommendation for http://netgames.io, they have Secret Hitler and Codenames and the UI makes sense.

There's my crap https://secrethitler.io. (because of some poor design decisions its capped for new players at around 250-300, there's also https://private.secrethitler.io and https://beta.secrethitler.io as well)

Haven’t seen anyone mention tabletop simulator (available on Steam). It won’t be for everyone. I play Magic the Gathering and board games with friends. Many other games are also available with no work. You can play almost any board game with a little elbow grease.

> Haven’t seen anyone mention tabletop simulator (available on Steam)

It's literally mentioned in the article?

It's mentioned in the article...

This is a nice list for playing with people already familiar with euro games. If you’re looking for more social games that can be picked up by casual gamers, I’ve been keeping a running list of sites I’ve used at the bottom of https://blog.metamorphium.com/2020/03/19/play-from-home/

The list is focused primarily on games that are good for remote team building, but work well for any casual group.

So far, games include Secret Hitler, Codenames, Love Letter, Spyfall, Jackbox, Avalon, One Night Werewolf, and some others.

Let me know if you have more links in this category of games!

I've used boardgames arena, it's ok but has a very classic German web design feel -- horrible UX that acts like the user is a dummy for needing good UX.

it is going to make it harder to cheat at monopoly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com