Best VOIP gaming programs? (was Ghostorb?)

[Heathen72]

I just wanted to know if anyone here had used Ghostorb or other such programs (OpenRPG?) to play 'tabletop' style role playing games over long distances. These programs combine VOIP or chat with facilities for online maps, rules resolution and so on.

If so what your thoughts were on the pro's and cons? Are they any good?
What if you have friends too far away with to play with?
Finally are they convenient enough that you could play say regularly for short amounts of time - say, an hour or so a night?

 

[Heathen72]

I'm guessing GhostOrb can't be going too great - the latest item in their 'news' section is Merry Christmas 2005.

 

[JVisgaitis]

Ghost Orb sounded really cool. Not sure what happened though. I think Wizards should release a progam like this to combat MMOs. It seems hell of a lot better then playing over chat.

 

[Hussar]

I've been a longtime user of OpenRPG. It has a somewhat steep learning curve and is buggy at times. Personally, I have had few to no problems, but, some of my players have had issues from time to time. I believe the problem was on their end and a lack of bandwidth, but, honestly, I'm not sure.

The latest release, 1.6.3 is stable and works well. There is a Dev 1.7.0 version as well which, IMO, is even better. OpenRPG 2 is due out shortly and I know the Dev's are working hard on it.

I don't use voice, but, if I did, I would use Skype. I brought up the idea of using voice in game, but, to my surprise, my players nixed it. They wanted to keep everything as chat.

If you follow the linkie in my sig and do a bit of hunting, you'll find transcripts of my games.

 

[Heathen72]

Ghostorb sounded really fantastic, and I was quite excited by the idea - I had no interest in the getting paid to GM stuff, but as a friend of mine was possibly heading overseas long term I thought it would be a way to keep our long time campaign going. But nothing came of it.

All I heard about were the delays, and concerns from people who had prepaid to be stormcrows (early birds). The start date finally came, and a while later I looked at the site, but there was nothing there saying what a success it had been, or even that the few people who had tried it were having a great time.

It's a shame really because elements of what they were promising sounded really great. The visuals in particular sounded neat, and the implication was that there would be a lot of programmed rules support. I'm wondering if someone threatened to sue, because there seems to have been very little in the way of updates to the webpage, no forums that one can look at to see the response of people who have used it, and no one talks about it online at all.

Maybe it just went bust. But if that's they case, maybe someone like WOTC could buy out the site, get rid of the 'getting paid to GM' stuff, and offer it as an alternative to online games.

I looked briefly at Open RPG, but the visual element doesn't quite seem the same as what I had hoped for. Am I wrong about that Hussar or will version 2 will improve on it.

 

[Hussar]

I'm not sure which virtual elements you are referring to.

Open's biggest flaw is the inability to host images locally. However, now that photobucket allows you to host something like 5 gig of images at 1 meg a piece, it's no longer an issue.

Or do you mean like animation effects and the like?

 

[Heathen72]

I meant animation and mapping, etc, but I really don't know that mucg about them, which is why I started this thread in. What little I have seen of Open RPG didn't impress me, but I couldn't find many examples.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, Open doesn't support animation whatsoever.

While I do like to use graphics, I'm not sure if I would want to go quite that far. YMMV.

 

[Heathen72]

Yeah, Open doesn't support animation whatsoever.

While I do like to use graphics, I'm not sure if I would want to go quite that far. YMMV.

What about Open 2?

 

[Hussar]

It's not out yet, so your guess is as good as mine. I know it's supposed to switch from Python to Java, so it should be a fair bit more stable. Other than that, I have no idea. I just lurk on the boards and use the program. Occassionally pimp the product as well.