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Playing Pen-and-Paper RPGs Online with Friends?
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?"
I've had pretty good luck with pure text (like IRC), but it doesn't have the visual tools of netmeeting and its like.
I've got to ask... 200 years experience? Even with 10 people, that's 20 years / person. How many players are in your group?
-lw
Mods: Disagreeing with me != my post Offtopic / Flamebait.
World without hate or war, invaded. Tragic?
I came up with a secure dice protocol, so that both the roller and the DM know that neither side is cheating. I am probably reinventing the wheel here, but ah well. The protocol to simulate a 6-sided die roll (it extends to any size):
1. DM's computer randomly sorts the numbers 1 through 6 and puts them in a comma separated list. After the list, there is a space and random salt characters, for instance:
1,4,3,5,6,2 AIQJCE
2. DM's computer generates the MD5 digest for this string and sends it over the wire to the player's computer.
adc4f4c66858ab4f5e1d03dc22bb92b3
3. Player's computer chooses a random number between 0 and 5 and sends that number back to the DM's computer.
3
4. That number is used as an index into the generated list, so in this case the player rolled a 5. The DM's computer sends that result over the wire, as well as the original string.
The player can verify that the list was generated before he picked his number by checking that the md5 digest of the string matches. The DM likewise knows the player didn't have the string when he chose the number, because it wasn't sent over the wire.
No algorithm is needed to generate private DM rolls; he can just roll them. Sure, he could fudge the numbers, but he could do that in pen-and-paper.
for a MS product. It allows you to share applications so everyone can see and use you die rolling program. You could also share any other D&D applications over it, allowing others to see your character sheet, maps, graphics, NPC generator, etc. Also you get a nice scratch pad to doodle on.
The Macray's Keep website will only accept browers that are (or show themselves as) Internet Explorer. I suggest avoiding the site until they are friendly to all, or even sending them a (kind) e-mail recommending that they accept other browsers.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Funny thing is, a few clicks in, and its fairly clear that they dont do anything that couldnt work on Mozilla or Konq.
Bizarre.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
I actually tried this a number of years ago (probably about 7 or 8 years now) with some friends of mine in the same situation as you are in, playing Earthdawn. We went through a couple of phases with this. For the first one, we used an IRC client. My friend who was maintaining the IRC server wrote a little bot that would do dice rolls for us, so you could type in "d20 + d6" and it would do the roll for you. In ED, it was steps, but that's not relevant.
:)
This worked fairly well overall, but the pacing of the game was very slow, primarily due to all the typing necessary. I was the GM and was typing fast (I think I could do 60-70 wpm back then) and it still felt like the game crawled. That, and my wrists and hands were crippled by the end. It was fun, but it wasn't the same.
Then we tried using an internet video way of doing it. As you can imagine, the video 7-8 years ago wasn't great, although sadly it isn't that much worse than it is right now. We were all on academic networks so we have nice fat pipes. The chat one worked out pretty well, but then we added a couple of people from a mailing list who didn't have access, so we had to drop it and go back to typing. A few years later, I tried the old WebRPG, and it didn't really help the problem any, you still had to type it all in.
Based on that experience, I would say that there are a couple of things you would need in any application. First of all, you need to use some sort of voice chat, which is actually fairly easy to use these days (I would expect, although I haven't done it myself). If you don't use voice chat, then perhaps a voice recognition thing for the GM to cut down on typing. If all else fails, try and type up as many descriptions ahead of time so you can cut & paste them into the IRC. You will still be overwhelmed by ad hoc discussions, but this should help a bit.
The other thing you need is some sort of common workspace to do things in, primarily for rolling dice and a whiteboard for maps or stuff. We didn't have the whiteboard and did okay, but we were either outdoors or in very small dungeons, so it wasn't that necessary. I also drew up some maps and put them on my website to help the players out if they were really desperate. The rolling dice stuff could be handled by what I imagine are a lot of secure little apps to do this with. If you have IRC, write a bot.
IRC is also handy for secret messages where voice doesn't work, so I would recommend to use IRC at least for that. It also can work as a back-up system for people who have problems with the video, which we definitely had 7-8 years ago, and quite frequently at that. It's still worthwhile so you don't ruin a whole gaming session because someone can't get their microphone to work or something. You should do a dry run at least once ahead of your first planned session, and this will need almost as much time as a true session. It may not seem worthwhile, but you'd be surprised.
Last but not least, don't try and GM drunk. I tried that a couple of times, and it was fun for all involved, but a bit ridiculous...
Its scope is pretty limited, but JParanoia works pretty well for Paranoia games. You could probably shoehorn other games into it, but that might be ugly. And if youre lucky, you might even get to beta test some new Paranoia XP rules.
I'd never heard of this, so I clicked your helpful link... only to read...
In order to enter Macray's Keep, you must be using Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 5.5 or higher). The system has determined that your browser has failed one or more of the afore mentioned criteria. The solution is to download (for free) latest version of Internet Explorer (its free).
nevermind, then.
I've done openRPG and WebRPG (the latter of which I left when it turned into a pay service -- it has since gone back to free, I believe).. but they are both
1) full of munchkins and powergamers and lamers and noobs. expect interuptions and idiocy abound.
2) unreliable, both the players (if you meet random people, expect literally 1/3 at most to show up to a specified gaming session) and the programs (servers/clients for both programs stall gaming sessions at least 2-3 times in a 4-6 hour session.)
3) as pointed out below, typing out a gaming session is pretty slow and a 4-6 hour gaming session means you don't really do a whole lot.
Sure, I liked them when I needed my fix, but you really cannot beat gaming in person. check your local gaming shops for bulletin boards and make new friends, even! sure, you and your old buddies can still get together, but that doesn't mean you have to limit your gaming to just with them!