Stream DND Tips and Tricks

Let me preface this with a simple fact:  I'm not an expert.

I started down the road of live streaming DND games back in November of 2020, playing with a few friends from RL and the stream community.  While I've picked up a few things to share, I'm by no means Matt Mercer or other Geek and Sundry or other major DND streaming player.  But here's what I've gotten out of it.

Visuals

When using Twitch, one of my top priorities is the visual space and making sure I'm putting emphasis on the things that matter to the audience.  As my games tend to skew very RP heavy, very discussion focused and very little on tactical combat (we use theater of the mind whenever we can), I don't dedicate a lot of screen space to my players over the map.  

If you're running a game that is very focused on where everyone is, how  far they can move, and who's in range of a given spell or attack, it makes sense to make that the focus of the stream "space".  And when so doing, it makes sense to keep that space dynamic.  Shift the focus from token to token as needed, zoom in or out, and so on.  I tend to think a bit about the usual games that you see on Twitch and how engaging the screen is, typically.  It would be impossible to match that level of action but I use that as a consideration.

I would also suggest making use of OBS slide shows to keep something dynamic on the screen as well.  This could be name plates that alternate between player name and character name, or race and class.  For The Convergence I use a scroll of our character art that includes tidbits about the characters.  Which, I honestly need to add more imagines to.  But again the goal is to keep something changing on the screen so that it doesn't remain static.

However, one thing that I do think can be static is to present the "quick and dirty" to the viewer about what's going on.  Think about the common questions you would ask if you approached a game table at a convention.  "What's the game? Who is she playing?  What's everyone race and class?  What level are they?"  While it's good to have your chat answer questions (and I'm blessed that mine is pretty good about jumping on those), I also think there's value in having some of it displayed within the overlay.

Engagement

So one of the other questions that I had to ask myself when I started streaming DND was if my goal was to stream a recording of a DND session, stream a casual play of DND, or to create a DND stream.  And I think between all three of those there are different levels of engagement you look for.  In the case of the first, the goal is to have a good recording of the game for other sites like YouTube or Spotify.  In that context it makes sense to minimize interaction and distraction to focus on the game and the final product.

On the other hand a DND Stream should play into the Twitch Platform.  So it helps to have plans to interact with chat, give them ways to influence the game (either with cheers, channel points, or a combination of the two).  To this end I still keep my sound alerts on for cheers and raids, though not for follows or subs.  I also will let people redeem channel points to affect the stream if it's in line with still being a decent DM.  It's a hard line to walk and as we slowly grow I will always need to reevaluate that level of chat interaction.

OBS Set Up

In OBS, one of the first things I was happy to learn about was the Scene within the Scene.  So what I tend to do is create layers of things I want to use more than once.  So for example I have a scene for the player frame, art and name.  Then I use all of those scenes in my "main view".  It allows me to make quick tweaks between games by just moving the frame and all the attached parts, rather than having to move a dozen things at a time.  The other big advantage is that it's easy to create a few different scenes that I can swap between quickly during a stream based on need.

This is my layout for general play.  The box under my frame is capturing the window with the DND beyond dice roller and for the most part the players take up the bulk of the screen.    Each of the elements there is a scene that combines the needed parts.  The roller for example is a scene with graphic of the iPad and the trimmed window capture.  This lets me move it around easily when I plan the layouts.  

For combat it was easy to get everyone over (just move the scenes) and add the needed scenes to show multiple dice rolls, the combat tracker and a map.  In this particular combat we weren't using a map so I filled the space with a graphic (I need something better or another scene for non-map combat).

Another really useful tool for OBS is the plug in that allows for move transitions.  This way when I change between combat and RP there isn't a lot of fuss.  The combat stuff slides out of the way, and everyone glides smoothly into their new positions on the screen.  When I started I used different stingers and while they can be fun and all, I feel like they're a little distracting.  

Wrapping Up

There's more to share but I feel like I've got the basics of my philosophy and layout down pretty well here.  I'm happy to write more with direct a focus on a particular part of my stream setup.  I hope some of these tips are useful and welcome discussion of them here or on Twitter (@LanternNoir)