Props to the Group

I wanted to take a moment to throw out some props to my gaming group for their dedication and patience.

I came down with shingles last week and one of the players hasn't had chicken pox, so he couldn't be around me. We already video-conference in two people for the games, so the idea of adding a third was no big deal. However, Oovoo requires a plan to conference three people in. So I figured we'd just use Skype and move on. We tested Skype individually and made sure all was well and then waited until game time.

Come game time, we connect to one endpoint and are chatting. Then the other endpoint logs on and we try to conference them in. Turns out that Skype currently only supports video between two parties not three. After some finagling and thinking, we manage to get a three way conference going.

We used Skype to conduct the audio portion of the conference. Then we each logged on to Yahoo! Messenger and broadcasted our webcams, since Yahoo! also didn't do three way conference calls. We each viewed each others webcams and we were underway. The computers were taxed a bit for all the data that was being uploaded and downloaded, so some things were a bit laggy.

Overall though, the game went well and fun was had; because the group I game in was willing to try something new and work with a less than perfect solution.

They rock.