Online Play: Who is doing it, where and how?

[w_earle_wheeler]

I often hear people say that there are free or readily available virtual gaming spaces online as an alternative to the (currently vaporware) DDI.

Over the past 7 years, my cost of living expenses have been rising much faster than my level of income. In addition to this, the spike in energy costs have caused me to take a good hard look at how much it costs to drive to and from a game.

One possible solution I've been considering is running games online, preferably with a virtual tabletop where players can move icons/tokens around.

Does something like this exist? How much does it cost? Who uses it?

Give me the info! Please. With various sugars or sugar substitutes.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I am not an expert onthe varieties, but here is the wizards game page, which is almost all online, you can see the names ofthe various systems here easily enough. Google should dothe rest

http://forums.gleemax.com/forumdisplay.php?f=598

 

[Hussar]

I've been using OpenRPG for the past four or five years to good effect. IMO, VTT play can be just as good as tabletop. The downside does seem to be play speed though. Things can really grind to a halt if someone is screwing around and, unlike at the table, you cannot pelt the offender with dice.

I've also heard very good things about MapTools.

 

[Braydz]

If you really want a chatroom-style program with a map tool I, I really can't help you I'm sorry.

One thing to consider though is a forum-based game. There are a few things that I like about forum games. One is that I get to flex my creative/writing skills. I also appreciate that they're tech-lite, for those of us that have a hard time managing buttons and functions. Finally they're easy on my time; participating takes five minutes to half an hour once a day or more if people are posting briskly and we can really get the story rolling, but I don't have to travel or schedule or anything.

And as a GM if my characters do something unexpected that throws my story off the rails I'm not sitting there looking like a deer in the headlights, at least not where they can see and I'm pressed to come up with something then and there. I can walk away, get a glass of water, swear a blue streak, meditate on it and come back an hour or a day later with a good next step.

Such forums are also plentiful and free to use.

But hey, that's just me.

 

[Treebore]

Use SKYPE as your talking program.

Use Open RPG for your tabletop/tokens.

Maptools is the absolute best free table top program, but it requires that you can port forward and host. Or that one of your players can.

If you want to listen in/check it out we are running a game tomorrow, around 7 or 8 PM EST. Its a C&C game, but it will let you see how awesome Maptools is and how well SKYPE can work.

My SKYPE ID is treebore.therubylord

 

[Emirikol]

MAPTOOLS rocks for this sort of thing. http://rptools.net/doku.php Download the 1.3b35 version. It's the best to date and what everyone's using. DON'T try to GM a game until you've actually learned how to be a player.

First, it's FREEWARE and they keep adding new features all the time.
Second, it's a virtual online tabletop (so it only does what you want it to). IT's not WoW. It's chat + map + dicebot.
Third, SKYPE/VENTRILLO/TEAMSPEAK work well
Fourth, it's easy to learn as a player (move your token around the map and enter your stats). The tutorials are good.
Fifth, there are tons of players.
Sixth, version 1.3 will be finalized shortly (everyone plays version 1.3b35 right now)
Seventh, the forums are very helpful.
Eighth, there are ALWAYS people who want to play. Drop a note that you want to learn on the forums and someone will run a game for you.

There are other programs out there: OpenRPG, FantasyGrounds, Kloogewerks to name a few.

The biggest obstacle to running maptools is learning how to "port forward" online gaming ports (for any platform, including Maptools) if you're not a computer geek (I'm not..so I had to ask for help).

Look for me on the forums there if you're interested.

jh

 

[Badgerish]

I'm GMing an online D&D game using MapTool http://rptools.net/doku.php

It took a little getting used to with the different layers for drawing maps, but after that it's just getting better and better.

It's really, really easy to get the simple stuff going, and there is plenty of stuff to explore in it.

Currently, i'm not using voice chat because my voice sucks and i find it hard to identify people by voice alone. I'll experiment with voice chat in the future though.

MapTool: free, nice learning curve, great community/support, looks pretty, free.