What is it like trying to run a pencil-and-paper RPG in the various online
RPG fora?
Googling for 'online role playing' produces a selection of sites, but the
pencil-and-paper online sites all seem to be being flooded out by the
computer RPG-related stuff. I know there's supposed to be some good online
penciil-and-paper game sites out there somewhere.
As one example, http://www.giantitp.com
(The Order of the Stick) has an
active D20 RPG area, and it's quite a fun comic too.
Would anyone who has played in them (or, like me, considered and rejected
playing in them) care to share their views on what they're like? What do
they do well, and what do they do badly? I believe someone (Mary?) may
even
have posted links to a couple of them, but I can't even remember enough
details for a search to find that post again.
I believe most of these fora are based on PHPbb type setups - i.e. web
forums of one form or another, with some custom code for things like
die-rolling tools, a whiteboard facility and other useful stuff. Plus a
load
of (to me) unwanted dreck, such as avatars, lack of threading and the
other
common weaknesses of web-based chat fora.
Reason I ask is because I'm looking at trying an on-line RPG using a Wiki
format instead, because I think this might work better. As I'm mooting a
Wiki, it should be plain that I consider 'cheating' by trying to sneakily
edit old posts to be a non-issue. This is likely to involve me doing a
certain amount of customising to whatever Wiki I decide to use, however.
But there are some features of the existing fora - such as a whiteboard
facility - that look like they might be useful. Or are they in practice
just gimmicks?
One Wiki approach which looked promising is at http://kevan.org/rpgwiki
See also the related the Lexicon RPG of Neel Krishnaswami, which I
always thought looked fascinating, and would love to play . . .
sometime.
Google cache of Lexicon here - this link should be all on one line:
http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:t346ZYXVzy4J:www.20by20room.com/2003/11/lexicon_an_rpg.html+http://www.20by20room.com/2003/11/lexicon_an_rpg.html&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk&ie=UTF-8
Thanks for any comments.
--
Simon Smith
When emailing me, please use my preferred email address, which is on my
web
site at http://www.simon-smith.org
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