Online Role Playing

My old gaming group is wanting to reunite, but as time has gone by, none of us live very close to each other (and I'm three states away!). I've been looking into ways to game online. Some of the sites I've looked at so far have been:

http://www.mirc.com/

http://www.openrpg.com/

http://www.webrpg.com/

http://www.kloogeinc.com/werks/

Werks looks the best so far, but I really don't want to pay $40 for what is essentially a souped-up messenger program. Can someone give me some suggestions about a program to use, and advice about how to run the darn thing? I am by no means a programmer and don't have any experience with online gaming, other than first-person shooters over the LAN at work!

Use MS instant messanger or aol instant messager.

You can always start a play by post game right here at the In Character forum, or find a chat room.

Aha, online playing. That's all my RPing at the moment. OpenRPG is probably the best if you like tactical fighting: that mini map is great for sorting out attacks of opportunity and such. Otherwise, any IRC client will do, as long as you throw a dicebot in there. There are many of them, just do a search for "irc dicebot", and you should get several hits.

Finally, for distributing character sheets, you should give my 3EProfiler a whirl, or Mike Simon's KillaCampaigns for campaign tracking.

I'm about to start experimenting with on-line play as well. I'm leaning towards using MS NetMeeting along with a few apps.

MS NetMeeting has a lot going for it:

It's free.
It supports VOICE! (no typing necessary!)
It supports web cams if you're into that sort of thing.
It allows you to share applications you have running.
It supports text messaging and private messages.

I plan on using it with the following applications shared:
TMapper to track combat and PC positions(with maps drawn by DungeonCrafter).
The Dice Roller from the 2e Core Rules CD.
Excell for tracking vital PC stats(Init, HP, AC, Spot and Listen).

That should be about all you need.

Neverwinter Nights?

Xar666 said:

Neverwinter Nights?

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I don't think that is quite the experience that people are looking for for "on-line D&D". Not that NWN doesn't sound cool. I can't speak for everyone, but when I talk about on-line RPGs, I want a way to run a PnP RPG (namely D&D) over the internet in real time. I want it to be as close the experience I get when my group is all sitting around my dining room table. NWN sounds cool, but in the end, it is primarily a computer game.

MS Netmeeting

Uller,

Your MS Netmeeting suggestions sounds promising. Could you explain more about it.

Re: MS Netmeeting

Mego Thor said:

Uller,

Your MS Netmeeting suggestions sounds promising. Could you explain more about it.

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Surely.

The division of the company I work for is distributed over England, Germany and most of the United States. So we have a lot of meetings via teleconference. Often, we need to demonstrate software in these meetings (or just share information in real-time). So I was in a meeting a few weeks ago (and not paying much attention) and thought "You know? There's no reason we couldn't play D&D this way."

So anyway...NetMeeting has the following features that may be useful to RPGs:

Communicate via voice (we don't use that at work) and text.
It has a "white board" that allows you to illustrate things.
You can "share" applications so others can see the application(it even allows others to take control).
You can even share your desktop.

So...my idea is that the DM would start a netmeeting session and the others would "call" him to join. The DM can run the session just like a normal PnP RPG...with his voice. He can share applications to illustrate battles (I plan on using TMapper), for dice rolling and what not. I'm going to use e-mail for text "handouts" and probably upload any pictures to our yahoo group in advance and ask the players to download them (with out looking at them) before the session to save band width.

We're playing "off-line" this weekend, but we plan on discussing how to game on-line and in the next week or two we plan on giving it a try. I'll post here to tell you how it goes.

Oh yeah...you can get NetMeeting for free from Microsoft's web site. Just do a search on Google for "netmeeting" and it should take you to the download.

More Questions!

Uller,

I downloaded Netmeeting and have been looking into it. I'm still kind of unclear as to how it is significantlly different than MS Messenger. Does Messenger act as the server that connects everyone? I'm also wondering if we'll be able to use voice, as my connection is ususally around 42K. I guess the best thing to do would be to have another of my group download Netmeeting and the two of us just start playing with it!

I also liked your idea about a Yahoo group to distribute images beforehand. Do you have the address for TMapper and a good dice roller program. I've found several dice programs for IRC. Is that what I'm looking for and just don't know it?

I really appreciate all your help with this. If things turn out well, I'll name a major villian after you!

Re: More Questions!

Mego Thor said:

Uller,

I downloaded Netmeeting and have been looking into it. I'm still kind of unclear as to how it is significantlly different than MS Messenger. Does Messenger act as the server that connects everyone? I'm also wondering if we'll be able to use voice, as my connection is ususally around 42K. I guess the best thing to do would be to have another of my group download Netmeeting and the two of us just start playing with it!

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As I said, I've not used it for this purpose yet, so I don't know the specifics. At work, we have a directory that we use to "look up" anyone we want to call. I'm guessing that via the internet, you'll need MS Messenger to handle that.

I have a cable modem, so voice shouldn't be a problem for me. Two of my players have modems, so we may just have me (or whoever DMs when it isn't me) do the talking and everyone else type. I've used Voice over Net with a 56k modem and it worked okay as long as you didn't have more than 2 or 3 people.

I also liked your idea about a Yahoo group to distribute images beforehand. Do you have the address for TMapper and a good dice roller program. I've found several dice programs for IRC. Is that what I'm looking for and just don't know it?

Click to expand...

Just look in the Electronic Aids section of enworld for TMapper. There is also a die roller that may be useful.

I really appreciate all your help with this. If things turn out well, I'll name a major villian after you!

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Actually, it's been taken. Uller (or Ullr) is a Norse god...