Gaming online. . . what to use?

I've pretty well accepted that getting together in order to game in real life is not going to happen right now. That said, I know that online gaming is an option. I do have a site set up to support it, though for actual game play I'm stuck on a medium -- right now I'm eyein mIRC, Skype, and Open RPG.

Are there any other options that I should be looking at (and, if so, why)? What programs do you use for online gaming? Or do you prefer play-by-post games, play by email games, or some other turn-based form of play to realtime interaction? If so, why -- and do you have any suggestions on how I might get the most out of that medium?

Basically, I'm open to all suggestions here (and have been investigating quite a few on my own). I own Daniel Sharrock's "Quest" rules for PBEM, have installed Open RPG and am very familiar with mIRC dice server commands (I have no idea if Skype has similar command sets). At any rate, if you can help me find something that works (or clue me in to something that works for you) that would be great!

Thank you

Hey James - I'm in the same boat but a different timezone. Think we can make something work?

Screenmonkey ain't pretty, but it gets the job done. I like it because it doesn't try to be all things. It's a virtual tabletop that refreshes about once every 15 secs. I had good luck w. that + voice with 2 players.

I strongly encourage you (and others) to check out Klooge Werks Digital Gaming Table

Mistwell said:

I strongly encourage you (and others) to check out Klooge Werks Digital Gaming Table

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That looks very clever -- unfortunately it will end up costing more $200 to accommodate all of my potential players, which places it in the same bracket as a fully licensed OS. And I'm pretty certain that Klooge is not that functional

I've been gaming almost exclusively over OpenRPG for the past 5-6 years (only recently being involved in a few PbP and face-to-face games once again, and still running my OpenRPG D&D game). It's fairly simple to use and reasonably stable (though it may have the occasional error, but Windows and other programs give me more errors than OpenRPG does).

It may be kind of touchy if you try to run a game with numerous 'miniatures' on the map simultaneously, but it handles the average D&D combat fine (it just runs slower if you have a lot of .gif images on the map for miniatures). As far as I know, the Fog of War function doesn't work currently, due to some problems with it in the most recent versions, but they'll get that function working again at some point if they haven't already (I haven't updated my version to the latest version in some time now).

You can recruit groups for OpenRPG games by posting on the OpenRPG forums or just checking around the game servers, or running a recruitment server of your own for a while. You can use the same computer to run a game server and play (I'd recommend using the basic OpenRPG Server application to create the temporary game server, not the 'console'. When running the server, you can end the temporary server when finished by typing in 'kill' (without the ' ' ) and hitting the Enter key).

Don't be discouraged if some of the people who seem interested in a campaign just mysteriously drop out, after char-gen or after one or two sessions; some of the people using OpenRPG are just flaky, but there are still plenty of dedicated gamers on it too.

jdrakeh said:

That looks very clever -- unfortunately it will end up costing more $200 to accommodate all of my potential players, which places it in the same bracket as a fully licensed OS. And I'm pretty certain that Klooge is not that functional

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Huh?

Last I checked, player copies were free...

I've been gaming online regularly since 2001. I've been using MUCKs, MUSHes, etc - basically a chat room with "rooms" that you can move through (Think: Zork). The amount of text you can put out is very large compared to things like OpenRPG, which lets maybe three sentences. Find a muck with a dice roller program and you're good to go.

However, just yesterday I am getting set up for a game using Ventrilo (online voice chat program), supplemented by OpenRPG for maps/dice rolls. Using OpenRPG and Ventrilo or Skype might be another route to go, if you want.

Play By Post games are one possibility. The one problem with those is if players just don't post regularly enough for the game to continue smoothly. Myself, I get bored with PBPs.

Some things to keep in mind when gaming in a text medium:

1) It's going to go slow. SLOW. Simply because you have to type everything, wait for someone else to type, etc. I've had a large combat last four hours.

2) Use something besides just text. D&D is a very mini-centric game; movements, positioning, etc is very important. And it's just hard to get that across with just text. Having a hard map with a lettered grid ("I'm on A12, and I move to B9 and attack") helps a lot more than just describing it.

3) Because it's pure text, thus not as fast as spoken language and you can't make gestures, point at a map, etc, you must be very clear. I have a habit where I am thinking while I'm typing, and sometimes I think but don't type it. The communication gap is big.

I've tried most out there...
For free, Screen monkey Lite is the easiest to setup as the players don't need to install software, just use a browser. Maptool is more robust with significant features being added all the time...

For Commercial, I'd say Battlegrounds for features and Fantasy grounds for having backing and a community...

Check my sig for a comparison chart of VGT software with links to the various programs, as well come by the FUM forums where they support all forms of VGT gaming and pickup games...

Mistwell said:

Huh?

Last I checked, player copies were free...

Click to expand...

The RPGNow shop distributes licenses for both Clients (players) and Masters (individuals running games). Such licenses are required for play according to the site and free, fully functional, client downloads (if they exist) are not mentioned anywhere.

[Note: You can download a crippled "demo" client which doesn't allow you to save any info, though that seems pretty useless for playing in any actual games.]

Our gaming group has been scattered over the country for a couple of years now. Recently we've started using RPTools Maptool and Skype. It works pretty good. The games move about as fast as a regular table top game. I think that's about as good as it gets for online gaming.