When 2020 started, if you had asked me what our challenges were, I’d have gone into a long talk about transparency, volunteer burnout, plans to offload responsibilities, reaching out to other communities and new volunteers, and a whole bunch of other things that were probably ambitious and in line with my nature of always reaching just beyond my grasp. At no point would I have mentioned “Virtual Tabletop”. In fact, if you had asked me about it, I’d have given you a polite but firm “that’s not what RTR does, but we’d love to help promote your game.”
See, I’ve always believed that what makes Raleigh Tabletop Roleplaying work as a club, and more importantly as a community, are those face-to-face interactions. Through gaming, social events, and just hanging out together, we’ve built a diverse and safe space that I’m incredibly proud to have helped foster. Our events have introduced people who might never have met otherwise, and we’ve all been made better for it. And we’ve made unforgettable memories. I felt those face-to-face interactions were a core part of the ‘soup’, as it were.
Towards the end of February, the world started to change. On February 11th, we got a name for this disease that was ravaging pockets of the world: COVID-19. By early March, we saw it start to spread. There was a lot of discussion among the organizers on what this meant to us, a club based entirely around 4-7 people sitting around a table in a public space. Some of us started prepping for a move to the digital, but I was adamant that I wanted to keep us meeting in person as long as possible. We implemented a series of steps to clean all of our play spaces when we arrived. On March 13th, I said publically that we were “business as normal” and outlined what we were doing to keep our members safe.
That stance lasted all of 2 days. On March 15th, I came to my senses (thank you to everyone who had patience with me and talked to me about this). RTR made The Pivot. We cancelled all of our in-person events and shifted everything we could into the virtual space.
Our volunteer team sprang into action in one of the most impressive displays I’ve ever seen in my time in RTR. I cannot say thank you enough to this group for coaching so many of us into the world of Virtual Tabletop and then everyone putting in a lot of effort to shift many of our projects online. A week later, we were holding SOP games online. Less than 2 weeks after that, we launched our next season of Semi-Organized Play on time. Things have been bumpy, but we’re still doing what we do – bringing together people for a few hours of camaraderie and fun, and even some gaming in all of that.
Not everything has been perfect. As Randy posted, we had to cancel the GM’s Faire this year. Our Social Events are really limited right now. Several projects behind the scenes in RTR are paused for now so we can focus on our core mission.
It would have been very easy to say “RTR is going into standby mode until it’s safe to meet in person again”. It would have been a lot less work. But we felt that if there ever was a time to really get down to the core mission of RTR, it was now. A lot of us are stuck at home and cut off from our friends. If we could, even for a few hours, let people see some friendly faces, laugh, and have a good time, we were going to make that happen.
I’ve said it already, but I can’t say it enough – thank you so much to all of our volunteers who have stepped up and transformed Raleigh Tabletop RPGs into a virtual club almost overnight. Y’all have been amazing. And I don’t know if I’ve ever been more honored to be a part of RTR than I am right now.
