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Playing Pen-and-Paper RPGs Online with Friends?

Posted by Cliff on from the long-distance-campaigns dept.

MotorMachineMercenar wonders: "My friends and I have almost 200 years of combined pen-and-paper RPG experience. As my gaming group has drifted apart (moving to different cities and countries to pursue careers and love) our game time has diminished to just a few nights a year during vacations. We've toyed with the idea of playing online but never got far. Now, I'm not talking about MMORPGs, NWN or anything like that. Just regular, open-ended pen-and-paper RPGing with old friends, not restricted by computer game mechanics. So we'd like to recreate the good ol' tabletop experience as much as we can. We've thought about using Netmeeting (or similar) to communicate with voice and maybe video, to share maps, character sheets, etc. What about throwing dice securely so everyone or only the GM sees the results? Does Slashdot have other ideas or better tools? Has anyone done this successfully?"

8 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. tisk tisk by nocomment · · Score: 4, Informative

    YOu never tried sourceforge did you? ;-) I found this, I don't know it it's _exactlt_ what you are looking for but there's others. phprpg

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  2. Several Good Options... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    WebRPG http://www.webrpg.com/
    OpenRPG http://www.openrpg.com/

    And many more. Just Google it!

  3. WebRPG by MoodyLoner · · Score: 3, Informative

    Try http://www.webrpg.com/

    --
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  4. OpenRPG by stefanlasiewski · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.openrpg.com/

    Not super pretty, but very functional. A bit like an IRC client with a GUI map capability.

    If you already have a group of players, this product is great.

    --
    "Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
  5. OpenRPG by NearsightedBoy · · Score: 3, Informative

    You might try OpenRPG, designed specifically for this sort of thing. Written in Python, completely open source, and has plugins for a multitude of pnp systems from your standard DnD to Shadowrun, Storyteller, GURPS, etc.

  6. Macray's Keep by oroshana · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've been lurking on Macray's Keep for a while now. It seems to be a nice system so you might want to check it out.

  7. Re:Secure Dice Protocol by oroshana · · Score: 3, Informative

    Irony Games' Dice Server is pretty nice and supports PGP authentication.

  8. I did this once by Vaevictis666 · · Score: 4, Informative
    ...In a dungeon delve module.

    Step 1: Scan the map.
    Step 2: Load it up in a layer-enabled image editor (Gimp, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, etc)
    Step 3: Make new layers based on room numbers (or one big one, but it's harder to erase)
    Step 4: On the correct layer, black out the room in question. repeat for all rooms
    Step 5: On a master layer, black out the rest of the map.

    Now, as rooms are explored, either delete or make invisible the layer blocking the room, and export to a gif on a machine running a web server. Then I just notified the group (via irc, where everything was going on) that the map was updated, and they refreshed as often as necessary.

    This has the added benefit of you both being able to see a "current" version of the map, and references locations by the same numbers used in the module.