"Simon Smith" <simon_smith_news@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:856833b14e.zen44412@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> 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
I've never played a truly pencil and paper system online, but I've both
played and written systems for online play that were fairly close to
pencil
and paper systems -- no computer assisted stuff besides rolling dice.
The benefits of playing online are interesting. They break down into two
basic categories, social and mechanical.
First, the mechanical. Die rolling becomes easier when you can have a
computer roll your dice for you. And you can get some rather odd dice
rolled
too. Also, you can actually have an IM window open with the referee so
that
you can "pass notes" to the referee without anyone knowing it. This
eliminates the suspicion inherent in passing a note across the table. This
also means that the host can have a messy house, obnoxious roomates or
children, and live in the middle of Arkansas without too much problem.
The social aspects are far more profound. If you have several referees,
you
can easily set up a tavern environment, a web based forum, and private
chat
rooms for the game groups, and actually set some type of meta-game in the
environment. This takes the interaction levels to great heights, and you
can
have faction, allies, and neutral resource groups involved that create a
much more dynamic environment where you have far more resources. It also
means that a tourney or adventure always has a large contingent of
possible players.
These interactions are not to be minimized, as the multiplayer environment
really adds a new dimension to games. Want two parties to go for the same
goal? All you need is two referees and a common adventure, and some
communication, via IM, between the referees, and you can actually have
this
kind of adventure quite easily. (I've got an incomplete tournament dungeon
that can have up to six different teams going for the same prize at once
with the steps they take affecting the other teams and how they progress.
This kind of scale is hard to do outside of convention environments, and
even then, communication between referees is problematic.
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