In the age of stay-at-home orders and social distancing best practices, it's a lot harder to gather around at a friends house or a local game store for a few hours of Dungeons and Dragons. That doesn't mean that campaigns have to stay on an indefinite pause though. Thanks to a large toolbox of remote gaming support resources, many dungeon masters are able to keep their adventurers moving forward on a weekly basis even if they can't gather together in person.
Obviously DnD Beyond has been a major resource for tabletop RPG fans who want to keep playing at a distance. The digital toolbox allows DMs to access tons of rules, players to edit and manage character sheets, and it even has some very smart integrations with Discord. The officially-supported Discord bot of DnDBeyond, called Avrae, goes a lot further than simple roll1d20 commands and can be a very powerful tool once Dungeons and Dragons players and the DM master its command lines.
Like any new tool, Avrae can be incredibly intimidating when it is first added to a Discord channel. Keep in mind that there is going to be a bit of a learning curve for everyone involved. Don't expect your first combat encounter run through Avrae to be as fast-paced as it would be in person while rolling physical dice on a table. That said, give it a bit of time and practice and the tool can end up saving a ton of time in the long run. The last thing DMs want to do is distract from the immersion and story with boring command lines of code for players to figure out, so there are some things that groups can do and learn ahead of time to try to avoid that distraction.
What Not To Do With Discord's Avrae Bot
Using Avrae for the first time during a live session and trying to learn the tool in the middle of a combat encounter is a recipe for disaster and can both kill the pace of your adventure and any chance that your players will actually take to the tool with a positive attitude. Avrae isn't a hard tool to use, but it does require some patience and practice during the learning curve. Any role player with a busy schedule will assure you that the time to tackle that learning curve isn't in the middle of a session. So, first thing is first: Don't introduce and learn Avrae in during a real session.
Load in Character Sheets
After inviting Avrae to the Discord channel for your DnD group, you're going to want to add each player's character sheet. That's easiest if all the players have created a character in DnD Beyond and have it set to Public. If that's the case, just grab the URL for the character and drop in the following command:
!beyond https://ddb.ac/characters/...
That's all it takes! After that, the character sheet should be in the channel and associated with the player who ran that command line.
Run a Practice Combat
Making simple checks and saves like !check arcana or !save dexterity is going to be easy for the vast majority of players to get the hang of once their character sheets are loaded in. That's not going to be the problem. Combat on the other hand... That gets a bit complicated.
The best way to tackle this learning curve is to schedule a special session specifically just to play around with combat in Discord. This will remove the idea of wasting time during a regular session and give everyone the singular goal of focusing on mastering the bot's command lines.
Take this as an opportunity to toy around with some of the creature types that will be in your adventures, perhaps you're planning a Magic-inspired Theros campaign and want to see how your party does against a Sphinx.
Tips for Dungeon Masters
Practice makes perfect and the tool is definitely going to get easier to use after a few practice sessions, but there are still some command lines that DMs may want to have conveniently ready in a clipboard while they prepare for each session. Here are some of the most important ones DMs will use:
Start a combat encounter -Â !i begin
Adding a monster to combat -Â !i madd <monster name> [arguments]
Note: Arguments are really important to making combat run smoothly and also possibly the hardest part for DMs to wrap their heads around if they aren't used to command lines. Basically arguments are how you'll name monsters, group them together, and make other customizations.
Frequently used arguments:
-n <number of monsters> (ex. -n 5 adds 5 creatures)
-name <monster name scheme> (ex. -name "Orc#" -n 2 adds Orc1 and Orc2)
-group <group name> (makes all creatures in the group act on the same initiative)
-rollhp (rolls for a creature’s HP)
-hp <hp> (overrides a creature’s initial HP)
-ac <ac> (overrides a creature’s initial AC)
Tips for Player Characters
From a player perspective, combat is actually a bit easier since they don't need to worry about loading in or managing monsters during the encounter. Instead, the main thing to master with be casting their spells and making their attacks. This takes a bit of getting used to, but is fairly easy once you have a good handle on what options are available to you and how targeting works.
!i attack <attack name> -t <target name> [arguments]
!i cast <spell name> [-t <target name>] [arguments]
To see a list of available attacks, run !i attack list. That's about all there is to it and from here players and the DM just need a bit of practice. Some players are always going to prefer actually rolling a d20 and their damage and that tactile experience may be part of what they love about the game. There's certainly nothing wrong with that, but for tables that don't mind a more digital approach, Avrae can definitely be the tool you're looking for with just a bit of practice.
Be sure to check back in the near future for more Dungeons and Dragons news, updates, and strategy guides. Until then, roll well, adventurers!
Dungeons and Dragons is available now in hardcopies or digitally on DnD Beyond. The Avrae Discord bot is available now.