It started with a tweet.
I read the suggested rules and thought, 'That's a good idea.' A friend saw the same thing and sent it to me and another friend, telling us to pick a day. We did. If you don't know what I'm talking about at all, this is a popular board game called 'Settlers of Catan' or just 'Catan.'
The brainstorming began. I might as well admit we spent a good deal of time figuring the means to play online. As a result though, two of us developed a setup. We used the other guys the first time. He built a way to put his phone on the dining room light fixture so it could capture the board and more. We tried Google Hangouts first but the video quality wasn't great, so we fired up Zoom which was much clearer. Zoom's time limit for free accounts appears to be disabled, as the call extended indefinitely close to 40 minutes.
The first game went well, better than I expected tbh. It certainly helped that everyone already knew the rules (though with five people I explained the Special Build phase). How does it work? Each person/couple needs a laptop to see the board and talk to the other players. Only the broadcasted board (pinning this view works best) should be set up, so there's no confusion on who built what. The two households without the board only have cards and dice in front of them. When building they call out what and where for the person with the board. Normal limits on the total number of resource or development cards has to be thrown out. So there could be, for example, more Monopoly cards played but that just needs to be accepted. When a robber steal happens, the two people involved use the cameras and everyone else turns away. In this case and for trades, the card bank is used to take or drop cards. Another thing to consider is turn order. It worked well to have something on screen to keep track of this. The number of development cards were easy to lose track of too. Just ask every once in a while who has what.
When the game was over, one of the guys made a funny and true comment. We all live in different cities, making this something we could've done any time. The #VID really is forcing some creativity to stave off loss of sanity.
After that night, my wife and I wanted more. So we reached out to a couple we're friends with and picked another date. We had to use my setup this time, which involves stacking boxes on the kitchen island and using a decorative ladder to hold the phone. I cut out little pieces of paper to highlight the trading ports, as they're really hard to see on screen. And we used the colors (green/brown) from the extension instead of orange/white, also hard to see.
Once again it was a lot of fun. Our friends wanted the board in front of them, and to each their own, but I think this is a distraction and could take your focus away from the game itself.
This has made something very clear. We're missing getting together with people and games, because we want to keep playing. This works because Catan is quick enough to get in after the kids go to bed without getting too late. It's not too hard to play over a video call. And a number of people have it. If you're interested, let us know and we'll make it happen.
Now, what other games could work?
What a night, need to play Raiders of the North Sea next!