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Dungeon Masters in Cyberspace
The New York Times has a piece this afternoon about the launch of Dungeons and Dragons Online. They talk with some of the folks who made the game, and reflect on roleplaying's move from table-top to online spaces. From the article: "While players in most online games communicate by typing, Turbine has tried to enhance the in-person feel of D&D Online by building voice-chat software into the game so players can speak with one another using a microphone plugged into their computer. And while most video games try to adopt a cinematic mode of storytelling, D&D Online plainly reminds users that they are playing a computer approximation of a pen-and-paper game. During combat, an icon of a spinning 20-sided die appears in a corner of the screen, just as modern slot machines still show spinning reels even though a microchip has already decided if you've won the jackpot."
Their support pages say they have no plans to make a Mac version, so if you're a D&D fan who only uses Macs [or just prefer them], you're out of luck.
My friends and I hoped that DDO would allow us to relive our D&D pen and paper days, but as others mentioned, DDO falls far short of that. We did however search the net and found a couple of programs that did a better job of it.
My personal favorite is Fantasy Grounds (http://www.fantasygrounds.com/, which mimics a table top with dice and such. There's no real automation in it, but if you know XML you can customize the rulesets and such.
There are a few others, Klooge (http://www.kloogeinc.com/) is a bit more complex, but you can tweak the heck out of it if you know what you're doing. OpenRPG (http://www.openrpg.com/) is another one.
To each their own, but these programs (combined with voice comms) can really help ya relive the tabletop experience if your friends are long distance like mine.
H