Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Pretty much all of the described things (three separate threads. Private messages. Logs.) are exactly as they would be in PbP (play by post, usually on a forum) game. In addition, RPG oriented forums (Myth-Weavers, GiantITP...) often have dicerollers, character sheet managers, etc... Those could be added as gadgets here too, I guess. But nothing there seems revolutionary as in offering anything new.
I think that the point is easiness of use compared to other options and stuff like that. Rather than letting you do something new, wave lets you do all the old stuff in one program instead of having multiple ones. One useful scenario for this could be: A PbP game that is played normally on forums, but on wave you see "Ah, those two guys are online now", send them a message "Want to do some playing in real time?" and begin chatting with them. Much easier than telling them to fire up IRC, connect to a server, etc. (especially if they aren't "computer people").
So I could see wave potentially being useful for this (like many other things). There just has been too much hype about it so people first act more among the lines of "This will cure cancer and HIV and everything!" and then go "Uh, this isn't THAT awesome. We'll need to desperately look for things in which this is superior to other mediums!" instead of going "Oh, a new alternative for forums and chats. Neat. I'm sure we'll come up with some interesting uses for this over time."
I have been designing a program to play DnD over the internet lately. One with battlemaps, chats, dicerollers, stuff like that. I am aware of OpenRPG and similar products but I'm not completely happy with them (the UI, the functionality, a lot of things) so I've decided to write my own one. I think that writing a wave plugin for the missing stuff instead might be worth giving some thought.
I put on my robe and wizard hat.
Those of us with beta accounts are familiar with the fact that its slow, clumsy and unexciting.
Sort of sad how everyone is shitting themselves because they found ONE decent use for Wave. A dedicated program for D&D, which dedicated players would rather use than a general tool shoehorned into D&D and stuck in the damn browser, would be much better.
I used to like Google's products because they were simple and responsive. This is what I would expect out of a startup, not a company with resources and experience like Google.
They've probably already realized this is a failed experiment, and they'd be better off shoving it under the rug now than pushing forward as if this is the next Google Search or Mail.
Long live the BSD license
ED: You see a well groomed garden. In the middle, on a small hill, you see a gazebo.
ERIC: A gazebo? What color is it?
ED: [pause] It's white, Eric.
ERIC: How far away is it?
ED: About 50 yards.
ERIC: How big is it?
ED: [pause] It's about 30 ft across, 15 ft high, with a pointed top.
ERIC: I use my sword to detect good on it.
ED: It's not good, Eric. It's a gazebo.
ERIC: [pause] I call out to it.
ED: It won't answer. It's a gazebo.
ERIC: [pause] I sheathe my sword and draw my bow and arrows. Does it respond in any way?
ED: No, Eric, it's a gazebo!
ERIC: I shoot it with my bow. [roll to hit] What happened?
ED: There is now a gazebo with an arrow sticking out of it.
ERIC: [pause] Wasn't it wounded?
ED: OF COURSE NOT, ERIC! IT'S A GAZEBO!
ERIC: [whimper] But that was a +3 arrow!
ED: It's a gazebo, Eric, a GAZEBO! If you really want to try to destroy it, you could try to chop it with an axe, I suppose, or you could try to burn it, but I don't know why anybody would even try. It's a @#$%!! gazebo!
ERIC: [long pause. He has no axe or fire spells.] I run away.
ED: [thoroughly frustrated] It's too late. You've awakened the gazebo. It catches you and eats you.
ERIC: [reaching for his dice] Maybe I'll roll up a fire-using mage so I can avenge my Paladin.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
The google web Wave client is tryiing too much things, and give the feel of a alfa client, with the speed a bloated "v14.0"-ish app.
1) It will be better if it try less things. FIRST. Using waves to configure things, is like using emails to store emails settings. Is just a bad idea. It could be cool, and good for devs (eat your own dog food), but is bad for users. Since the use of waves is slow, changing settings is slow. A normal interface, like the one that Gmail have for his setup details, will be much faster and easy to use, also more "normal". Future versions of Wave could have something different, but for the current version is just too much. This wave client is trying too strong to be a 2020 client, and need to be a 2009 client.
2). Again, is 2009. For most people Wave is slow, It just do too much things automatically. Opening and closing waves sould be much faster. It feel like everything is automatically autoupdating all the time. Thats sould stop, and only the active wave be this active. Maybe broadcast the "modified" flag. A future 2020 version could get that feature back, once our computers and the whole internet is much faster.
3). Too much!!!.. Is too much!!. Wave is complex beyond needing a manual, It almost need special training. It seems some features are unwanted, but present everywhere. ..more about this soon..
Who created a wave?. It seems a wave lack the "headers" of a email. It sould have a way to know the name of the wave creator (the OP in forum parlance), the date of such creating, and other stuff. The subject/title of a room, sould probably be "manual" and not "automagical".
Why I can't download it to a file? say a PDF.
Why I can't open a wave in areal fullscreen way, withouth the web MDI interface?.
Its need more control over a wave. Like... force part of it read-only, or stop more people to join.
How its now.. what If I say something sensitive, and some guy invited the wrong person? ok, you can do that with email, but here seems something that can be like more casual. It just don't trusth a wave, because It feels public, without a way to stop that. It would be "easy" to block that.
What are the limits of a bot? can a bot that inject a SWF steal my account details? Facebook seems a bit more "safer" than this. Bots are like too "misterious". Bots sould have a special way to be identified from humans, and a dedicated page with (maybe) commands. Hell... PEOPLE need a simple profile page.
LOTS OF STUFF...
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.
A faster client (desktop based?) will be giganteous step.
-Woof woof woof!
Google Wave has one huge advantage IMO.
Lots of us get along fine with email, for 1:1 and 1:n communication, mailing lists, the works. So OK email misses the "wall" or "real time web" effect were everybody can see what everyone else is posting. But email works.
And the really big deal about email is the standards - I can use outlook yesterday, gmail today, and yahoo mail tomorrow. I can move my stuff among vendors and keep my stuff from years back. Because everyone must stick to standards.
Trouble is there is an insidious conspiracy to make email uncool. Its led by the hordes of Facebook-ers and lately Tweet-ers. Like, I mean, do you really want to spend your life tweet-ing your latest embarrasing whatever to the world at large? But lets face it - the pressure is on bigtime. If you're not there you don't exist. Talk about peer pressure - the most obvious success of the social realtime web is the use of peer pressure to force everyone on board.:-(
Now along comes wave. Google Wave is basically email on steroids, with a "wall / real time web" capability thrown in. You can be totally private or you can be totally public or any combo in between. Nice. And oh yes you also get media richness.
And the Facebook-ers and Tweet-ers can't claim its uncool; actually you can one-up 'em - they're old hat.
Finally. Privacy is back (at least when you want it).
Now they just need to reintroduce standards. Is anyone listening?