Tabletop Gaming Over the 'Net?

kebes asks: "I'm the GM for a group that has been gaming together for about 12 years. We're starting to move away from each other, and want to switch to playing our tabletop RPG online. So far, we've been using a combination of TeamSpeak and IRC. It works, but is not ideal. What protocol/chat service and applications would make for a great online gaming solution? The voice and text chat abilities are crucial, but having a collaborative white-board would greatly help. Ideally, the solution would be integrated (one app), allow logging of the session, run on multiple platforms (Mac OS X, Linux, Windows), work with web-cams, and permit file-transfers. What service or app (or combination thereof) would work best for our needs? Anyone else have stories of success or failure?"

Comments

A variety of tools. . .

[WolfStar76]

My friends and I are all D&D fans (looking forward to GenCon next week! Woot!) and all live in separate states, so we were looking for a similar solution as well.

There are several ways to go, but for my money, the best product is FantasyGrounds.

Fantasy Grounds is a "virtual tabletop" complete with d20 rules, character sheets, dice, a chat window, the ability to share images with your players, and to mask/unmask maps as your party progresses.

The current version is 1.05, but a major revamp has been in the works all year, with a version 2.0 due out "soon". Speaking of GenCon - the SmiteWorks guys (who make FantasyGrounds) will be sharing a booth with the guys from Code Monkey Publishing (makers of the E-Tools software for character creation).

Other tools to look at include OpenRPG and Klooge.

I'm not, personally, a fan of those, but everyone has their preferences.

Also, to aid in communication, I strongly suggest running a TeamSpeak server, so you can actually talk to your fellow players, instead of typing everything manually.

Re:A variety of tools. . .

[Raleel]

I can agree with just about everything the above poster wrote. I have not run with FantasyGrounds, but I keep hearing good things. I don't have quite enough of a reason to invest in it yet. The documentation seemed a little light, but when I demoed it, I didn't look really hard.

I've used OpenRPG for a few years now and have been pretty happy with it. It has a solid whiteboard, and it runs on my mac and on another player's linux machine, as well as windows boxes. It also has a dice rolling mechanic that is nice for other game systems. In particular, it's shadowrun support is solid. While I personally don't play much SR, I have players who do.

I strongly second the teamspeak, ventrilo, or whatever application to do voice. If you are all familiar with each other, you won't get any wierd feelings talking to strangers, and you'll be able to verbally abuse each other much more easily :)

Bandwidth

[HugePedlar]

Just make sure your 12-sided dice don't clog up the tubes...

This is how we do it

[grondak]

My weekly DnD 3.5 game has a local DM, me, and two internet-based out-of-towners. We use a Logitech webcam and Yahoo instant messenger's voice + video services. We have a great time playing, now that the technology discussions and problems are out of the way.

Our requirements:
1. The DM wants to be able to move the minis around the map and sit on the DM's side of the table, and wants me to run the tech side of things for him. He wants to be able to draw a quick map or a picture of what we're seeing and show either to the players. This means hands-free communication for the DM and me to the out-of-towners and a picture of what he's drawn, taken by some type of camera.
2. We need to be able to "talk over" each other-- or at least know when more than one person is trying to talk.
3. Quickly sharing a changing map environment is crucial-- and the DM can't get me to draw everything in a tool because of the time it takes to explain things, or have himself draw them on paper and have me re-draw them in a tool.
4. We need to have a way for the players to communicate without the DM overhearing (and without chasing the DM out of the room)
5. I have a nice iBook and an iSight camera-- we should use it!
6. It shouldn't cost us anything "per month" to play. I didn't want to turn our out-of-towners off the game due to service subscription fees "just for a game."
7. We need the tech "out of the gaming process" so we can focus on DnD.

How things worked out:
1. I looked for a lot of cross-platform voice + video solutions with "talk-over" capability. Wouldn't you know it, but a two years or so ago, when I did the research, cross-platform, integrated tools with all other requirements just wasn't happening. We looked at stand-alone video tools running simultaneously with stand-along voice tools. We looked at "camming software" and only joked about playing in the buff. Consider AIM, which Apple's iSight can talk to with iChat. That seemed to be my only cross-platform solution, but the out-of-town players didn't want to sign up for "yet another IM system." So, I removed the cross-platform requirement. Things got easier. Remember, I did this research 2 years ago, so specific details are lost to me. I play DnD now, and don't spend my days looking for tech solutions to a problem I've already adequately solved.
2. We settled on Yahoo IM on the PC only. Yahoo's voice system allows you to know if you are "talking over" someone else because it beeps at you when a voice collision happens. The video support is decent, too. When the players need to communicate without DM knowledge, we just type. The DM doesn't look at the computer screen often.
3. Our little camera can go anywhere. We reposition it according to need. I have a little test pattern placard I can put in front of the camera for when the GM and I are setting up. That's double-nerdly, in case you didn't notice. :) We have various-sized boxes upon which we place the video camera to allow the right viewpoint for the out-of-towners. Sometimes we need to move the camera to allow different out-of-towners to see different parts of the game, but mostly, the battles converge to a single area and the camera movement slows down until the "move to next battle area" part of DnD.
4. We use an external microphone, a little cheap one, and lay it on the gaming table between the DM and me. Sometimes the players hear mumbling, but that's mostly when we accidently talk away from the mic (say, past the table, down to the floor.)
5. Sometimes the tech fails: eg: Yahoo wants to upgrade the client. The DM's internet is out (again). The wireless router is dead. The reception is poor because of the running microwave. Yahoo booted us again. The wireless reception failed.
6. We did not get a tool that lets us draw on the screen. We just draw on a piece of paper and point the webcam at it. Much faster and much less prone to perfectionism.

7. Most of all-- this feels like real DnD. The tech, now that it works, is out of the w