I was wondering if any of your have had experience with playing RPGs via IRC (or similar chat mediums)?

Do you know of any Social Contracts that explicitly deal with how to handle this medium? How about the effects of the medium on the way play if changed, good or bad?

Thanks in advance!

Ron had a bit of a rave about Code of Unaris, which is a game recently written specifically for use with IRC. No other medium will do.

I haven't played it, but the thread I quote has quite a bit of discussion that is probably relevant.

I play via IRC all the time.

You will find that, compared to FTF, things will take longer, tempers will be shorter, and misunderstandings will come thick and fast.

Patience is the first requirement.

I ran a game in an AOL chatroom for maybe a year or so, and learned a great deal from it.

• You lose almost all the clues you use in live play. You can't use voices or mannerisms or anything like that to communicate who is talking; you can't indicate to whom you are speaking by looking at him. You have to type emotive descriptives, like that the character is angry, or laughing, or furtive. It takes a lot longer to do everything because of this, even apart from the fact that no one types as fast as he can talk.• Look-ups become a problem. When I'm running a live game, I can talk and keep the game going while I'm flipping through a book or making notes or checking my notes or rolling dice or any of a number of other things that use my eyes and my hands. When you play in a chat room, you converse with your eyes and hands, and that means you don't have them for these other things, and that also slows the game.• I don't know IRC, but on AOL we had a lot of traffic with people popping into the room and throwing themselves into the game without any regard for the fact that it was a refereed game. We could have taken a private room, but part of the point of that was to show the game to people, so it was Hobson's Choice there.• It was easy to fall behind. When players started getting really active, the text would scroll pretty fast, and you had to pay attention lest you miss something important. This further complicated any use of reference books, whether rules or settings or character sheets.• AOL does have random number generation built into the chat rooms. If you type the right command it returns a die roll for you. I found it most convenient to keep commands for the essential die rolls in a text document from which I could quickly copy/paste to make them work, particularly if it was likely that I would use the same roll several times in succession.


I probably wouldn't attempt it again, although I might if I knew the players well and could get a private room.

Hope that helps.

--M. J. Young

M. J. Young,

Thanks! That was the sort of advice I was seeking.

We plan on using OpenRPG (I think that's the name). Privacy of the room is a given, so we wont have to deal with unwanted interruptions.

The game http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=12692 Code of Unaris does explicitly use the medium as a feature of play.

I think what I am wondering about now is anyone has seen a protocol amongst people who are playing that reduces the confusion and "overlap" between responses.

I understand that speed will be reduced - I've seen that before. I will make it a point to make sure the player's understand that the metabolism of player communication will be slower.

What I'd really like to adress, in a written Social Contract, are the rules for "speaking" as a player in the game, that is, informing the other players and the GM what they are doing, saying, or trying to achieve with a game mechanism. I'd like this protocol to reduce the instances where one player tries to "out shout" the others ("I said it first, therefore, I GO first!").

I am also aware that some games remove this problem with their turn order resolution mechanics, but I want to make the players respect this problem up front and right from the start.

I imagine some sort of text tag that indicates: "ok, I'm done, y'all can talk now", or, "I aint done yet, more text to follow."

Suggestions?

(Thanks for the responses so far, gentlemen. Keep 'em coming.)

Hello,

My very brief experience with the medium is that speed of response is actually quite fast, equivalent to face-to-face. What slows things down is the disconnection among what's being said.

If one person is trying to get information about who's standing where, if another is frantically trying to "hit him!" (i.e. a foe), and still another wants clarification of whether a starflower glows brightly or brightly glows, then there needs to be a way to negotiate announcements and in-game actions.

In other words, IIEE. That's what chat-medium play apparently needs to evolve, and although it may gain some clues from things like Sorcerer's and Trollbabe's "free and clear" phase, it will also certainly make use of the new medium's strengths just like hacking did, in ways that are hard to foresee.

Best,
Ron

How about military radio protocols?

"Over"
"Out"
"How do you read me?"
"Read you five by five"
"Roger, wilco"

These were custom made for embedding in the main text of a conversation to talk about the structure and quality of the conversation itself.

I particularly like "Read you five by five"... which refers to the quality (first) and strength (second) of a broadcast, on a scale of 1 to 5. So "five by five" means clear and loud. "Five by two" means free of static but so faint as to be almost inaudible, and so on. This strikes me as something you could easily use on the internet in general... particularly "You are broadcasting very loud, but I am not getting your meaning" translates to "I read you only 1 by 5".

One thing that has not yet been mentioned here is the use of multiple channels. Every IRC game that i have been involved with took at least two seperate channels: one for In Character (SIS) information and one for Out of Character (negotiation, metagame, dice rolling). If a game grows large enough it is possible to open up a second (or third or whatever) In Character channel to facilitate simultaneous handling of multiple scenes.

So, having a second channel is, as i see it, a must have. Additionally, if you want to indicate that you are not finished talking a simple "..." at the end of a line of text is a great indicator.

Thomas

Hello,

Really? The IRC session I was in just treated all communication at once. Just as a preference thing, I think I'd like to keep it that way. The idea of looking at different windows to process all the information seems silly to me. I can count the games in which the widely-vaunted IC/OOC distinction matters or makes sense on the fingers of one hand.

I really like the idea of that military-radio protocol.

Best,
Ron

Ron, its not so much an IC vs OOC difference.

Its a "this has officially occured in the SIS" vs. this is still being negotiated and worked out.

That way everying posted in the IC channel is clearly something that has happened and its not cluttered up with rules queries, debates, IIEE issues, mechanics, etc.

Lots of IRC games log the IC channel as a way of keeping a history of the events in the game. You don't want things like "Wait, there's a guy in the corner, too? I thought that was the red-haired guy we just killed" in the history.

JamesDJIII wrote: I think what I am wondering about now is anyone has seen a protocol amongst people who are playing that reduces the confusion and "overlap" between responses.

I imagine some sort of text tag that indicates: "ok, I'm done, y'all can talk now", or, "I aint done yet, more text to follow."

Suggestions?

1. For small groups (1 GM, 2 players) ICQ offers a "see each letter as it is typed mode"). Yes, these are all in different windows--but it reduces the wait-factor (and you can interrupt or respond during another thought).

2. I've had some success typing long blocks of text as individual sentences with dashes or ellipsis to indicate more text was coming. Keeps things moving.

3. Using a chat system that has dice rolling built in helps a good deal. The GM can interpret results as fast as the players can.

4. communication is a lot more ... "literary." Your character "says things excitedly" or "meanders over by the grove of trees" and so on. Lacking some clues or a really fast clarification system, it helps to think in a descriptive mode.

5. I haven't had problems with tempers or misunderstandings in my (comparatively) small amount of gaming--but the online medium does present possible problems in miscommunication. I tend to use parentheses for OOC comments and using/encouraging the use of player comments would, IMO, help a lot.

I've found online gaming to be a very valuable addition to my repertoire--not because I have trouble finding games at home but because online IRC games offer me a chance to play with people I would because of where we live, likely never get to meet.

-Marco

I think there are probably some good threads in the past about IRC communication.

For my part, I've found the following help a lot:

1) Character dialogue always goes in "" marks, while player dialogue is normal. Character actions can be done with a /me command or just said as player dialogue. This greatly clarifies what characters actually say out loud. I prefer not to use two different channels, but I can see where that would also help.

2) If you're typing a message that directly relates to something someone said, put their name at the beginning. For example:
Player 1: Can I open the safe?
Player 2: Do I find anything in the drawer?
GM: P1: No.
GM: P2: Yes.
This example shows how putting the person's name is necessary to avoid complete chaos when requests may overlap like that.

3) If you have something long to type, start by saying "typing..." so we know to look for something from you soon. If you can't finish it at once, end with "..." or "more..." to let us know that. GMs should try to write out key descriptions ahead of time (like, the day before if possible).

4) Always type in complete sentences (or thoughts, anyway). I can't count the number of times, something like this has happened:
GM: You see see the legendary gem in the drawer
GM: but its just an illusion
In this case, the two lines may get separated by other comments, making it hard to tell what's just an illusion... and players may miss the second line anyway and think they've found what they want when they haven't.

4a) As an addendum, always state the intent of your action. "I move over beside the gap" is not as good as "I want to be in position to ambush the enemies as they come through the gap." Some players want to game the GM by keeping their intentions secret... I think it's stupid in face to face gaming, but it winds up creating huge communication problems in IRC.

4b) Part of the problem in the example given is due to lack of punctuation. If you don't use periods, commas, consistent capitals, etc. it's hard to parse out. Certainly this would have been more clear:
GM: You see see the legendary gem in the drawer...
GM: ... but its just an illusion.
Thus, players should work to include proper punctuation and grammar. I explained to one player like this: Bad grammar and punctuation on IRC are the equivalent of mumbling with your mouth full in a regular game.

5) During combat, state your action and roll the dice* at the same time and without regard to order. The GM will then parse this based on initiative and ask questions if necessary to clarify who did what when. There's nothing more stupid than people sitting around idle, waiting for the GM to say "It's your turn" before they start typing.
* I have typically had people roll the dice at home and tell me what they got. Ultimately, IRC options for dice-rolling proved more of a hassle than they were worth, and I wouldn't play with someone I didn't trust anyway.

Oh, and I've had enormous problems with attendance over IRC vs regular gaming. For example, in my regular groups we get about 90% attendance (one person missing every other game or so), but in IRC games, it runs more like 50%. On top of that, I often have people show up an hour late and then leave two hours early in a four-hour session. It blows my mind - no one would do that in a face to face game - but it happens so often, I have to think it's fairly common. I'm not sure how to impress upon people the importance of actually attending the game, so it's probably a good idea to be selective in who you permit to play in the first place.

As an addendum to Justin's post - while for comparatively dice-light games like Shadows, a dicebot will be of limited use, with things like Exalted where pools of unwieldy sizes are rolled frequently, a well-crafted bot (which interprets your results as well as generating them) is a godsend.

jdagna wrote:
5) During combat, state your action and roll the dice* at the same time and without regard to order. The GM will then parse this based on initiative and ask questions if necessary to clarify who did what when. There's nothing more stupid than people sitting around idle, waiting for the GM to say "It's your turn" before they start typing.
* I have typically had people roll the dice at home and tell me what they got. Ultimately, IRC options for dice-rolling proved more of a hassle than they were worth, and I wouldn't play with someone I didn't trust anyway.

Wow.

Great replies. I am still parsing them for specifics. If and when I get it written, I'll pos the IRC Social Contract here.

Still if any one else has ideas, please, keep 'em coming!

Working though things can take quite a bit longer on IRC, one thing you need to be aware of is spotlight time. If you have a sizeable group it can take quite a while to work back around to someone. On one recent IRC game I was left hanging for 2 1/2 hours! I had time to take a nap and watch Star Trek and nobody noticed I had left the keyboard......

jdagna wrote: 1) Character dialogue always goes in "" marks, while player dialogue is normal. Character actions can be done with a /me command or just said as player dialogue. This greatly clarifies what characters actually say out loud. I prefer not to use two different channels, but I can see where that would also help.

3) If you have something long to type, start by saying "typing..." so we know to look for something from you soon. If you can't finish it at once, end with "..." or "more..." to let us know that. GMs should try to write out key descriptions ahead of time (like, the day before if possible).

4a) As an addendum, always state the intent of your action. "I move over beside the gap" is not as good as "I want to be in position to ambush the enemies as they come through the gap."

Oh, and I've had enormous problems with attendance over IRC vs regular gaming. For example, in my regular groups we get about 90% attendance (one person missing every other game or so), but in IRC games, it runs more like 50%. On top of that, I often have people show up an hour late and then leave two hours early in a four-hour session.

We actually did have a player in a live game years ago who would frequently show up several hours late, pick up his character papers, find out what was happening, and then announce that he had to be somewhere so he couldn't stay. We thought it very funny.

Our means of handling such situations was simple: if you're not there, the referee has full rights to run your character with the advice and consent of the other players, and whatever happens to him, for better or worse, happens. Players who were concerned about maintaining the integrity of their characters were present consistently; those who were there to socialize with friends came when they could and got briefed on what they missed. It worked well for us.

Of course, you have to have some regular players for the game to work; I think, though, that if you've got a solid core group a few less committed players don't kill a game if the characters are handled this way.

--M. J. Young

I've done a lot of online gaming in the past. In fact, up until recently, it was all I could do since compatible local groups were hard to come by. Most of the online gaming I've done before was of the free association variety, concentrated mostly on the setting and character interaction. Some of these were freeform; some of them were dice-based. I have since grown disenchanted with this set-up. Hopefully, you'll be able to see my reasons as I talk about my current IRC game.

I run a bi-weekly IRC game using Decipher's CODA system based off of The Silmarillion. We've been going strong for about a year now, with no major conflicts. I'm sure that a variety of factors goes into this, but I'll just share with you what I did on my part to make things work.

First, I sent an invitation out on forums where I'd likely find players who shared my interest in the type of game I'd be running. I did my best to include as much information as possible so that players could determine for themselves whether they'd like to join in the endeavor. Besides stylistic aspects, I included pragmatic information such as what days and times are best for me to game, the location of the game, and how to contact me via email. I only had 2 players reply to me, but the lack of numbers was more than adequately compensated with the quality of the experience. Later, we had a new member join the group, much to our benefit.

Because keeping tabs on everything via email alone was becoming tedious and more trouble than it's worth, I created a Yahoo group for the game and did my best to utilize the tools at my disposal. I use Files for character information, NPC write-ups, house rules, game information, and session logs for the games. Links is used to point people toward resources that contain vital and trivial information related to the game. I use Photos to store pictures of the various characters (both actual photographs and drawings taken from online). Database is used mostly for character names, but I may expand it to include equipment stats as well. Calendar is a godsend because it allows us to see what's on the agenda for all the players, and it's easy to make small changes and remind the group about them. Last but not least, post keeps me in contact with my players and my players in contact with each other without having to rely on a lot of emails being sent (or not sent) to everyone. I'm pretty sure I could manage the game without a Yahoo group, but I don't think I'd have as much to enhance the experience.

A while ago, I changed the schedule from weekly to biweekly because of real-life issues. One of the players is married, and he wanted to be able to spend more time with his wife, especially on the weekends. Rather than balk and deliver ultamatims, I did what I could to work with this player, even soliciting the others for their input. It took barely any time at all to come to an agreement to meet bi-weekly. I'm glad for the two-week reprieve, especially as my life has gotten busier, because I am not rushed to come up with something or to keep my GM motor running week after week. Within the past couple of months, I had to be firmer about attendance. I simply told the players that I'm starting at the scheduled time whether they are present or not. If they get there late, they'll have to wait for me to smoothly integrate their characters into the events. While attendance isn't perfect, I am less frustrated because I can still GM with the players who show up on time.

While this does not put things into a larger theoretical framework, I hope that it can be of some help to you as you determine what can and can't work for your own game.

Valamir wrote: Ron, its not so much an IC vs OOC difference.

Its a "this has officially occured in the SIS" vs. this is still being negotiated and worked out.

That way everying posted in the IC channel is clearly something that has happened and its not cluttered up with rules queries, debates, IIEE issues, mechanics, etc.

Hi,

Been off line for a bit due to son's medical issues. Everything's ok.

In regards to the multi-channel chat verses single channel chat, each works in its own way. For games that have intense rules and dice rolling, I prefer the two-channel game. But for simplier games (such as Code of Unaris) the single channel does it for me. Code of Unaris can be incredibly fast. The adrenalin rush that happens from it is very fun. Players have told me that the speed and creative chaos that occurs mimics what happens in realtime situations. I would say that it's more like chugging a soda than sipping tea. I enjoy games that let me sit back and contemplate issues, but I also enjoy fast, fluid games.

Anyone who would like me to gamemaster a Unaris session just email me at gary@goldleafgames.com. I'd be happy to schedule one for you. The rulebook is not needed for the demo.

Gary