Playing HQ in a chat-room

[Steven B]

Hi all,

Since this is my first post I feel I should first say how great I think this forum is. So that's the flattery bit over with.

So to my question; I was wondering if anyone here had had any experience in running RPG and more specifically HQ within a Chat Room?

I am currently setting up a non-Gloranthan game for a few friends. This will be the first time I have tried this, and will also be the first HQ game I have run. Also the players will be new to HQ - and some new to RP. So it should be fun.

I have already decided not to use the extended contest rules, atleast initially. But may use them once we all start to get used to the game.

Any hints, tips or encouragement would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[rylen dreskin]

I haven't had a chance to really play yet myself, but I think hunting down some of the "how to augment" threads would be useful.  There are 2 approaches.  

The List approach is to say, I'm using my Argue 19 to convince the group to head north around the obstacle, with Talk for Hours (+2), stubborn (+2), Know Trivia (+2),  Know Local Area (+2), and Smooth Talker (+2).  For a total of 9W.  I'm not using Seduce or Fast Talk since I resepct you.

Fine, I resist w/ .....

The other, prefered by the posters, is to alternate Augments, building a story as you do.

A.  I think we should head north here.
B.  I prefer the southern approach.
A.  I'll use Argue 19 to insist we go north.  I'll explain based why based on Know Local Area (+2)
B.  Nope.  South.  I've got Stubborn 5W.  Plus some I know the area, too (+2)
A.  I'm a smooth talker (+2).  I'm sure I can bring you around.
C.  I've got gullible.  Unless B has something, I'll fall in with you for +2.
B.  You're my brother.  Doesn't our relationship mean anything to you?
C.  Oh, right!  +2 for you too.  (I can do that, right?)
GM -- Sounds fine.  You've agreed with both of them.  And then realized that.  Or are you now just backing your brother?
C.  Both of them.
A.  Well, I know some trivia I'll throw in to try to cloud things (+2).
GM -- I thought this was more lore trivia.  Just +1.
A.  OK, and I'm prepared to Talk for Hours (+2).
GM -- Anything else?
B.  He's just going on, isn't he.  We'll I'm Impatient 17.  Will that help or hurt me?
GM -- Call it -1.  Unless you think this is earthshaking, eventually you just want to get traveling.

They skim through.  Add everything up.  And roll.
You might want to have some counters to keep track of modifiers as you go,

Hope this helps.
And welcome aboard.

Rylen

[Trevis Martin]

I believe Mike Holmes is running a HQ game over on the indie-netgaming channel on IRC.  For info click the link in my sig.

Trevis.

[Bob McNamee]

Mike Holmes, most definitely, is running an HQ game in IRC chat.

He is running a non-Gloranthan game set in Shadow World. If I remeber right.

I'm a Player in the game, but have never seen Shadow World, so its all new to me settingwise, as would be Glorantha.

I'm sure Mike could give you some pointers, if you e-mail him.

The game is run on magicstar IRC in room #indierpgs on monday nights at 8 pm Central US time. Drop in, we like lurkers.

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah, not really much to say. The game runs about like most. We use the standard "list" for augments per above, which seems to work fine. That said, I'd never seen the other idea, and it's intriguing.

Extended Contests are a bit of a bugaboo, given the slowness of the media. We've done few of them. The ones we have done, other than being slow, worked just fine - nifty outcomes. So I think that the best advice there is just to do them when they really are obviously superior to simple contests.

A lot of my players are new to HQ - or were before the fourteen sessions that I've run so far - and in some ways, they're still learning the rules. This is the real problem of IRC, taking time to teach is very hard. So we have this circular problem which I noted after the last one: we avoid extended contests, so we don't get good at them, making us slow at them, making us want to avoid them. I have this feeling that if I could just train them all face-to-face for a while that extended contests would go fast enough to make it a non-issue. But how to get to that point?

I dunno, maybe I'll have to devote an entire session at some point to teaching how they work.

I'm still working through a lot of things myself. One thing that I'm seeing a need for is for us to have some place online to store characters so that we can all see the same copies. My versions get out of date, and then I have to ask the player for an update. If they just made those updates to someplace online, it would be better.

One thing that we came up with just a couple of sessions ago - and I don't know why this didn't strike me earlier - was to use multiple rooms for multiple scenes. That is, we don't do "party" play (if you do, this probably isn't too important), and the waits for a scene are much longer in IRC than they are in FTF. But that provides an opportunity, too. Which is that the GM can switch his attention between two scenes while waiting for player feedback. This really increases the overall rate of info exchange from what I've seen so far.

Other than that, there's the obvious stuff - have any long descriptions written up before hand so you can copy/paste them in. You have a dice roller, right? Uh, use the tools to provide atmosphere - Brand has made up some really nifty character sheets, for the game for instance. That sort of thing.

Mike

[Steven B]

Thanks for the quick replies all. Some helpful stuff.
Shame I won't be able to lurk in one of Mike's games, that would of been fun, but it will be 4 am or so over here and my dedication doesn't reach quite that far.

I am planning to start my game mid-june and it will will be based around the MMORPG Everquest 2 (which is due to be released at the end of the year) and set in their wolrd of Norrath. So a fairly traditional setting. I have no idea how the game will play out, but I'll be sure to post the results here if any are interested.

Thanks again.

[Moah]

I'm still working through a lot of things myself. One thing that I'm seeing a need for is for us to have some place online to store characters so that we can all see the same copies. My versions get out of date, and then I have to ask the player for an update. If they just made those updates to someplace online, it would be better.

Have you thought of using a Wiki (a website everyone can change)? You can have each character sheet a webpage that's easily changeable by your players.

[Nick Brooke]

I'm still working through a lot of things myself. One thing that I'm seeing a need for is for us to have some place online to store characters so that we can all see the same copies. My versions get out of date, and then I have to ask the player for an update. If they just made those updates to someplace online, it would be better.

Set up a Yahoo!Group? You get to use a shared Files area which is ideal for character sheets, maps, handouts, writeups...

Cheers, Nick

[Mike Holmes]

Heh, thanks, Nick, and Moah.

I am moderator of six Yahoo Groups, and have played a game I designed called Universalis via Wiki in more than one place. I'm also a programmer, and capable of designing my own back end databases for such an effort.  Sorry to be confusing - I wasn't trying to say that I needed suggestions for how to do it. I was just musing that I hadn't done it yet. Actually we do have some of the files on the Yahoo Group from my signature, but I haven't made that mandatory, and have been thinking about finding something a bit easier to play around with. I might just go with the Wiki idea.

Maybe Clinton will let me post on the Anvilwerks Wiki. www.anvilwerks.com

Steve, if you're not already using something like this, check out Nick and Moah's ideas. Really good tools.

Mike