Playing tabletop games online

[Matt Snyder]

I'm interested in online play, including play-by-post, play-by-email, IRC, and other methods (I'm keen on hearing other methods! Blogs? WiKis? Etc.). I've done very short-lived bouts of online play, but nothing remarkable.

I'm toying with the idea of running a Nine Worlds game in some way online. However, I haven't come up with a workable solution for using the system.

Specifically, I'd like to know how people handle existing systems (i.e. systems not designed for online play specifically) via the Internet. Do you use any programs for fortune-based systems? Do you let each player post his own fortune results? Let the GM do it? Eschew fortune altogether?

Also, does anyone have any insight in terms of attracting players, keeping a schedules and keeping the game alive?

[GaryTP]

Hi Matt,

Many people have gravitated online due to their inability to find time to meet in person. Middle-age (and kids) set in and there goes your time. So there are now a lot of online players.

Most use IRC chats, while some use java chats (to be found all over). Almost all have dicebots (scripted die rollers you can access) within the game. There are also some sights that have die rollers to download. DnD and White Wolf Storyteller use these a lot. Storyteller seems to do especially well in this environment.

My personal preference is to not play this way, I prefer the speed that can occur in chat play. Die rollers can bog you down. BUT they're useful if you want to go this way. WebRPG and (I believe) ScreenMonkey are software packages that let you keep up a whiteboard on your screen that everyone can see. You can use their digital icons (characters, monsters, items) for laying out a room and play just like in a regular tabletop game. It's pretty cool.

One of the best way to emulate a tabletop experience is to have a conference call with web screen access online. That way you can see the icons and you can all pick up on each others' voice tone and attitude. I think Microsoft has a web-based conference call solution. I also think it's free.

Hope this helps.

Gary

[David Laurence]

I've had a lot of success with play-by-e-mail (dueling Exalted campaigns continuing for more than 2 years at this point), admittedly perhaps because it's all I have to work with, being separated from my co-players by seventeen time zones.

The way we play, the GM handles all the fortune - the players describe what they want to do, along with some contingencies, and the GM rolls and describes what actually happens. It's slow as all get out, especially since we do combat round-by-round, but if you don't mind that it can work well. We've found that having time to think about your response makes staying in character a lot easier than at the table, and we've had some surprisingly deep roleplaying experiences.

[James_Nostack]

I've been running an on-line campaign for 2.5 years now over e-mail and OpenRPG.

E-Mail
Advantages - lots of time to think.  Using e-mail It's entirely possible to create a setting using "just in time" improv methods: declare a few sentences about your setting to start with, and as players explore, flesh it out day by day; there's always enough time to come up with something evocative and original.  

The lull is also very useful for players who want to ponder their next move.

Also, it's pretty easy to use private communication with a player to "pass notes," and you can send cool attachments as propsl


Disadvantages - slooooooooooooooooooooow*.  Unless you've got some really dedicated players, it will take at least 2 months to play out a single scene, at least when playing traditional RPG's; I can't say about this new-fangled indie stuff.  This means that it's pointless to run a long campaign: given a finite lifespan, you can only hope for one short story, which won't be that short since it takes a year or more to tell.  This also has the drawback that players forget what the hell they've done in the past: "Who was that guy?  What did those dudes at the gas station say, again?"  It's not uncommon to forget details that were 5 minutes of game time in the past, since they occurred 2 months ago in real life.

* = a googul extra o's are hiding in the fourth dimension

OpenRPG
Advantages - OpenRPG is a chat type of thing with dice, mapping, minis, dice, programmable character sheets... the works.  It's entirely free, and if you've got a speedy internet connection it's pretty easy to run your own server.

I find that OpenRPG comes much closer to capturing the cameraderie and zest of a tabletop game, without any of the distractions.  I run a 2 hour session once every fortnight, and we accomplish maybe 3 important scenes a month (then again, I'm very lazy with scene framing and a more aggressive GM could move along much faster).

Disadvantages - OpenRPG can be tricky to install on some machines; I've never gotten it to work reliably on a Mac, for instance, though people tell me it can be done.  

It's still slower than tabletop play, but infinitely faster than PBeM.  

With OpenRPG or other chat-type things, the GM needs to be able to process the game in real time, so it helps to do some prep work ahead of time.

[greedo1379]

David and I are in the same boat (the same island actually).  I play games using Yahoo groups and a forum.  We handle things basically the same way, with the players describing what they want to do and dice rolling, etc. handled by the GM.  We have the same problems: mainly that scenes take months to get through.

As far as keeping players interested...  I'm not sure.  I think it really depends more on your players than anything you can do.  If your players are getting their "gaming fix" in a traditional setting I think it can be very hard to keep your players.  If they are like me (and perhaps David too) then PBEM type games are the only way to get a game in and as a result we are pretty dedicated.

As far as tips for GMing are concerned, I have a couple:

1) Keep it moving.  At the tabletop you can tell your players are bored.  In a PBEM setting you really can't.  They just stop posting.  So you have to keep it moving even if you risk railroading your players.

2) Be flexible.  Let your players take... what do you folks call it... directorial something or other.  Let them describe the outcome to a scene.  Sure, you could do it but that post of yours is just adding a couple more days onto the game when it often isn't neccesary.

3) Allow "do overs" or try to limit the number of "points of no return".  I mean that in the course of following 1) you might find that there are things that a player wanted to do or ask.  Make this possible.  

4) Do stop when you think players will have actions.  If the players are sneaking through a dungeon you don't have to lay out the whole map if there is nothing interesting in it.  

"You come to crossroads.  Do you want to get left or right?"
"Left"
"You go 20m and come to another crossroads.  Left, right, or middle?"
"Left"
"After 20m you hit a dead end."
"Secret Passages?"
"No"
"Go back and take middle passage"
"After 20m you hit a dead end."
"Secret Passages?"
"No"
"Go back and take right passage"
"After 20m you hit a dead end."
"Secret Passages?"
"No"
"Go back to the first crossroads and take right passage"
"You find a monster."

The dead ends might be something interesting like a bunch of cages or a treasure room or whatever but they don't really move the story forward at all.  Playing the game out this way would take about 18 days (I assume a GM post per day).  This would be much better handled with something like:

"You wander through the various tunnels and caves and come across an old throne room, a treasure room, and a torture chamber.  After carefully searching each you are quite a bit richer.  As you approach a corner you notice a horrible smell.  It smells like rotting meat and seems to be coming from around the corner."

Then the players make all their pre-monster killin' preparations and go.

(I realize you might not be playing a traditional dungeon crawl type game but I think some of this is still relavent)

[Ginger Stampley]

I've been co-GMing (with my spouse) an Amber PBeM using variant Everway rules for about the last 3 1/2 years. I use a javascript card generator when I need to do Fortune draws. Since we sometimes do Trump readings, a lurker who's married to one of the players wrote a script for drawing a full reading. We also have a wiki.

Greedo and James gave some good recommendations for email games. I'm lucky that my players maintain logs, so we can and frequently do go back to review what happened earlier in the thread. I've found that consistency is key to keeping a game going; even if your post is going to be mediocre, get something out the door or at least a notice explaining why you're not posting. We post 3x weekly like clockwork. It used to be more frequently than that, but we have a large group (20) and the game is socially oriented, so there's a lot of player-to-player posting that doesn't require GM intervention.  Also, you should keep in touch with your players to make sure that everything is OK. A little (private) base-touching and asking how you can make a thread/scene better goes a long way.

There's a lot of experience in PBeM gaming in the Amber community; I'm in one game that's been going for 8 or 9 years (I haven't been in it all the way, though). There are a lot of arguments about which techniques are best, such as private mail vs. list games, but a lot of the details need to be negotiated on a group-by-group basis.

In general, I've found that the more rules-light a game is, the better it works for email. While it can be difficult to roll dice in an email game--I have found I prefer to have all the dice handled by the GM/behind the scenes--the real killer for me is stopping to handle rule complexity.

I'm also a participant in a very slow letter game played by blog, but it's  freeform and I don't think talking about it would answer your original question.

[Trevis Martin]

Hey Matt,

I've played several play by post games.  I'm in a Sorcerer game run by (Fastlane) Lxndr and we've been going almost a year and a half now.  We've had quite a few scenes but the pace is leisurly.  Still its one of the best games I've ever been in, online or not.  There is a dice roller on the rpol site that we use for any rolls (Alex enters all the rolls but any of us could do it.)  We also post all the mechanical discussion in the actual scene threads but in different colors for players and GM.  We also have an OOC thread for kibbitz.  Its a hard thing to explain but its been very successful.  Poke your nose around and see how it looks.

I've got the latest version of the Universalis Arena online game on my wiki, which you can check out through the link in my sig.  In that game w e have set up a system that pretty much automates the coin tracking.  All dice rolling is done by the players and results are accepted on our honor.  It hasn't been a problem for us at all.

And I've played in IRC a bit witht he indie-netgaming group (also in the sig) which is mostly people from here abouts playing various indie games.  There is a dicebot on the server we use for most dicing issues.  One of the advantages of a dicebot is that it can roll imaginary dice.  Like, say 13 sided.  One of the things I haven't really seen in IRC play but think has potential is the ability to be in many rooms at once.  This potentially allows developing narratives to happen at the same time with little confusion.

I haven't found anything yet that would do cards online in a satisfactory way, but maybe you could come up with a clever dicing scheme to simulate the cards the way Lxndr came up with a dicing scheme to cover the roulette wheel.

Finally, I have a playtest version of my new game, Revisionist History that is meant to be played specifically in a wiki, forum or blog.

Gary, the webconferencing solution is an interesting idea.  I'm looking forward to seeing what might be done with the new version of  ichatAV (being a Machead rather than a PCHead.)

Matt, I would LOVE to play nine worlds with you.  I really like the game but it will be a while before my regular play group will get to it (Already several other games in queue.

best,

Trevis

[timfire]

Matt, doesn't Nine Worlds use playing cards, or am I just totally confused? If that's the case, I'm not sure how you would handle an online game. There are plenty of utilities for dice, but none for cards as far as I know.

[greedo1379]

Matt, doesn't Nine Worlds use playing cards, or am I just totally confused? If that's the case, I'm not sure how you would handle an online game. There are plenty of utilities for dice, but none for cards as far as I know.

I'm not too familiar with Nine Worlds and more specifically the deck of cards used.  If you'll let me assume that its just a standard deck, couldn't you just use the dice and a key set up something like:

1: Ace of Spades
2: 2 of Spades
...
51: Queen of Diamonds
52: King of Diamonds

If the dice program you are using doesn't let you do strange dice (what? no 52 sider?) then just do a d100 where you reroll anything 53+.

The key would have to be saved in another window or something for reference.

[ffilz]

That only works if the game shuffles the deck between each draw.

Frank

[Callan S.]

One thing I've had a lot of success with in a PBP, is having the players run combat themselves Vs grunts.

Yeah, I just list the stats and basic grunt tactics and they roll for both sides. You get a combat that might take a week done in two days, sometimes one.

One important thing is that grunts are portioned out to each PC, and you can't attack someone elses grunts. Why? Because you have to make it turn based then to accomidate it, since its a screen time thing (no one wants to post a day late and find all the enemy dead and thier PC just stood still like an idiot)

Another is to make things simpler. Eg, I list the bad guys with an average initiative roll, so the player only has to roll for themselves.

Here's a link to how I described it for my PBP players: http://rpol.net/display.cgi?gi=5888&gn=D20+Modern+(spiced+with+Rifts):+A+Tale+of+Revenge&threadnum=9&date=1098931336

[Matt Snyder]

Matt, doesn't Nine Worlds use playing cards, or am I just totally confused? If that's the case, I'm not sure how you would handle an online game. There are plenty of utilities for dice, but none for cards as far as I know.

It does indeed, Tim. And, as noted above, the game's mechanics are such that I'd have to have a custom built utility created to handle the complexity of 1) multiple playing card decks and 2) limited numbers of cards after shuffles, etc. Using a straight "d52" (actually a d54 w/ jokers) probably wouldn't work.

Not sure I'm able to corral the resources to do it, which is partly why I posted here to see what other people have done for solutions (Ginger's -- Immlass' -- Amberway dealer java ap was very interesting!).

Still thinking on how to do it. Thanks for the repsponses thus far, folks!

[Ginger Stampley]

I think both of the card applications are javascript, which is slightly different.  A good javascript coder should be able to make you a custom browser-based script that does what you need.

As I understand it, the thing that made the six-card spread so hard was the need to have the additional cards that vary per-spread (simulating the possibility of having different Trumps in your deck). My husband, who coded the card draw for our site, was planning to write a similar generator of his own, but when Andy wrote his, it got pushed back down the priority list.

In short: I think it's eminently doable, but you'll need a programming/math geek to do it. The right kind of programmer will do it for fun if the problem is interesting enough. (The guy who wrote our six-card spread, for instance.)

[Matt Snyder]

Yes, it probably is doable. Javascript is indeed different from Java itself.

I have a friend who might be able to do this for me, actually. But, he and I are busily trying to do our day jobs. No daylight there, so that's not likely to happen soon.

It would be great to have such a shared application for Nine Worlds, though. Having all players able to see other players' cards would be fantastic. And (pie in the sky) if it were visual -- like a Flash application -- "reading" the cards would come much more naturally. Hmm.

[Matt Snyder]

ANOTHER QUESTION: How many players is best? What works and doesn't in terms of number of people for: Play-by-post, chat/messenger based, etc.?

Ginger, another thought -- I was just thinking about those Bridge reports in the newspaper (Omar Sharif, right?!?). They do a competent job of displaying the cards surrounding the table. So, I could either 1) draw for everyone as GM, or 2) let everyone send me their card draws.

Either way, I then create a simple graphic showing everyone's card for each phase, post it somewhere, and go from there. (Best as a play by post technique, I guess).