Heya all,

I just posted 1/5th of the Initiation session of a Dogs game I played online. The actual "game text" is fairly short, but the post is huge because I happened to log all the chat that happened around game. As a result you can see the things that I was thinking while we played, all the places I screwed up, and how the game actually played as people went through the process.

It's right here for those interested: http://yudhishthirasdice.blogspot.com/2005/11/dogs-initiation-conflict.html

Hi Brand
Thanks for that post, it was very interesting. I was wondering what chat tool you used to play ... you mentioned MUSH but I always thought that acronym meant something more than just an online chat game. Anyway it seemed like you had some neat macros or something for showing the conflict's status, rolling traits etc.

My two brothers and I are planning on starting a Dogs game online (one of them is in Shanghai while me and the other are in Canada - so the time zone thing is definitely a factor!). We were planning to use OpenRPG, which I've used before and is pretty good although requires a fair amount of setup. But I'm interested to see what else is available.

I used SimpleMu and we played on a MUSH server. MUSH servers are nifty as on them you can code dice rollers and set descriptions of rooms and lots of neat stuff. The big problem with them is you have to have server space to make it work. We were lucky enough to know someone who would let us use their space in a large display of generosity.

Sister Rebecca's player (who is a poster round these parts and can tell you more, if he wants) did the coding for the neat little conflict tracker and dice roller. He'd also be the one to talk to about MUSHes and MUSH space in general, as I'm fairly clueless about it. I just kind of go "Dude, make it so" and he does. He's like a magic genie with superpowers.

I've done something similar for playtesting my game, Verge. I set up a little MUSH and wrote some code to handle the peculiar dice mechanics. We used a wiki to record character sheets. Everything else was done via online communication on the MUSH.

I'm very willing to help people do this, or even host an Indie Games MUSH where anyone can connect to chat real time with indie game enthusiasts and play in tabletop-style games run via the MUSH. I am a very experienced MUSH designer and programmer.

If anyone is interested in figuring out how to do this, or asking me to help you host such a thing or write the code for your dice, or whatever, we should start another thread somewhere not in Actual Play. Perhaps in Connections?

Yeah, I'd be Sister Rebecca. ;)  If you've any interest in the die roller, I'd be happy to PM you the decompiled code.  It's really pretty simple.

As for MUSH space, there are places that are just space available for messing around.  I think Storyteller's Circle MUSH is still up (just google it), and for OTT (online table top) all you need is one room for privacy.  MUSH clients are free and there are many of them, for PC and Mac.

Thanks for the advice on MUSH stuff! I had no idea there was such a large community of people playing those types of games out there.

I think for now we'll try OpenRPG since we're familiar with it, and see how it works out with Dogs play. It does have some nice features like basic HTML formatting, plus you can run your own server easily. We can probably figure out some trick for keeping the dice pools visible in the status window too.

http://www.openrpg.com for anyone who's wondering...