D&D On Google Wave

Jon Stokes at the Opposable Thumbs blog relates his experience using Google Wave as a platform for Dungeons and Dragons — the true test of success for any new communications technology. A post at Spirits of Eden lists some of Wave's strengths for gaming. Quoting: "The few games I'm following typically have at least three waves: one for recruiting and general discussion, another for out-of-character interactions ('table talk'), and the main wave where the actual in-character gaming takes place. Individual players are also encouraged to start waves between themselves for any conversations that the GM shouldn't be privy to. Character sheets can be posted in a private wave between a player and the GM, and character biographies can go anywhere where the other players can get access to them. The waves are persistent, accessible to anyone who's added to them, and include the ability to track changes, so they ultimately work quite well as a medium for the non-tactical parts of an RPG. A newcomer can jump right in and get up-to-speed on past interactions, and a GM or industrious player can constantly maintain the official record of play by going back and fixing errors, formatting text, adding and deleting material, and reorganizing posts."

Comments

Kinda sounds like

[OverlordQ]

IRC (sans logging)

"The few games I'm following typically have at least three channels: one for recruiting and general discussion, another for out-of-character interactions ('table talk'), and the main channel where the actual in-character gaming takes place. Individual players are also encouraged to private message between themselves for any conversations that the GM shouldn't be privy to. Character sheets can be posted in a private message between a player and the GM, and character biographies can go anywhere where the other players can get access to them."

I'm sorry but I still dont get all the hype, to me it's just a bastard child of IRC and a Wiki.

Re:Kinda sounds like

[twoshortplanks]

I'm sorry but I still dont get all the hype, to me it's just a bastard child of IRC and a Wiki.

Yes! That's exactly what it is. You say that like this development of new technology is a bad thing. Do you need to hand in your geek card?

Re:Kinda sounds like

[Jessta]

The hype works like this,
1. Replace IRC with IM(msn,yahoo etc.) in the user population which is more about one-to-one conversations and terrible at group conversations. These users are now completely unaware of IRC and are stuck with email for one-to-many communication.
2. Next you sell them various ways they can get back the one-to-many communication method(facebook,myspace,google wave)
3.???
4. PROFIT!

It's really that simple, everything old is new again...oh and now it's in your web browser so you can use those CPU cycles you're missing out on when your CPU would otherwise be sleeping.

Re:Kinda sounds like

[Canazza]

it's not really the development of a new technology, it's the hybridisation of everything that's come before - IRC, IM, Wiki's, Email - into one flexible platform. It's certainly an interesting idea, but what it needs is the ability to forcibly narrow down the parameters so you can *if you want* lock it into a pure Wiki, or IRC clone or whatever.

It might, however, be one of those kid in a candy shop style affairs where the kid can have as much candy as he wants, but doesn't know where to start, eats everything, pukes and makes a mess.

Re:Kinda sounds like

[AniVisual]

The hype is because it has no technical jargon words. The media gets a headache when it encounters technical jargon. The hype is because it has marketing jargon. The media falls head-over-heels when it encounters marketing jargon.

Re:Kinda sounds like

[dangitman]

That's a fairly pointless thing to say. One could argue that there's been no new technology since the wheel... everything since is just a derivative. Why does it even matter if it's a new technology or not? Something doesn't have to be new or completely original to be useful. In fact, the best technologies tend not to be the first iteration of a new concept, but a much later one.

Re:Kinda sounds like

[Leolo]

With version control, play-back capability, distributed storage, and a well documented pluggin API.

Wave blows me away.

The fact that so many people chime in with "I don't get it" is probably an indication of how revolutionary it is.

Re:Kinda sounds like

[ruemere]

Synergy. User-friendly integration of components allows for delivery in a single package.

Hmm. Tolkien and the concept of the Ring come to mind, too.

Regards,
Ruemere

Re:Kinda sounds like

[Beale]

... And then you *learn* and don't puke up the next time. Allowing users to lock modes would mean that a lot of people would never find out what's interesting and new about the system. You might end up with a horrible mess once, but then you can look at what you did wrong.

Re:Kinda sounds like

[osgeek]

I still don't get it. Cell phones are just regular phone but without the wires.

I still don't get it. The web is just like gopher/ftp but you with pictures.

I still don't get it. The iPhone is just a bastard child of a cell phone and a pda.

What you don't get is that almost all new products that really take off are amalgamations of pre-existing technologies. Yeah, Google Wave is just a really neat way to put together IRC, Wiki, and Email. Its impact will be huge. A couple of years from now, even your mom will be talking about sending you a Wave. Numerous imitators and Wave server implementations will be around. Waves and wave-like concepts will be omnipresent.

Re:In my humble opinion.

[cfc-12]

I think Wave has been released too early. Its still a technological preview of a future technology, but is not usable today for what I have commented. I love to have it available, has a toy, but I have not found a real use, nor my friends seems inclined to use it.

They released it early so they could get feedback on it to see what needs to be improved for the final release. Your post is probably exactly the kind of feedback they're looking for; have you submitted it to them as well as us?

Re:Privacy and the real-time web

[dkf]

5. Replaces a perfectly good, pre-existing protocol, when there's absolutely no sane reason (other than the aforementioned commercialism, of course) to do so? Check.

It's actually XMPP under the hood, which has been around for a few years before Google started getting excited about it. XMPP's jabber application has a number of advantages over IRC (notably the encoding of metadata is nowhere near as horrific) but that's hardly the only use for it.

Doesn't make any sense as a replacement for email though. Maybe as a way to replace POP or IMAP, but SMTP? The advantage of SMTP is its universality (yeah, even Exchange and Notes allegedly...) which means it is great when you need to communicate with someone who is using a different software stack to you.

Re:Privacy and the real-time web

[Zerth]

You do know that the wave protocol is open and designed to run on multiple servers, same as email/irc? Apparently you are unaware that there already exist other non-google wave servers.

If you're not a troll, then you are just ignorant.