Doing Justice to DnD campaigns online

[Jurble]

Hi all,

im thinking of running a campaign later in the year which will be based online as some of my players live interstate. Anyway i figure that im going to have to do pretty muhc all the rolls myself and tell them how they did. I can see how this might detract from the fun of playing it.

Anyway so im pretty much thinking to brainstorm ideas as to how to do PnP justice over the net. One thing pointed out to me before was to make a Yahoo Group so maps and resources can easily be uploaded and shown to all the players, while playing the game actually in something like mIRC or MSN or something. WebCam would be nice but Audio more important for DMing maybe? Like giving different NPCs an "accent" part oft he storytelling side.

Anyway wondering what you all think, from past experience as players, DMs either online or in PnP, how would you "spruce up" online DnD or what choices would you make in terms of how you run it?

 

[dumbdiety]

If you use an IRC program like mIRC, there are some dice scripts out there so your players can roll there own dice and everyone can see what was rolled. It worked great for the game I played online, anyway. Now I just use ScreenMonkey.

Doug

 

[Henry]

I'm going to move this over to Software & Computers, because of the relevance of the topic, but I myself would be interested in finding out more about Screen Monkey. I just looked on the www.nbos.com website, and while it's certainly promising, I would like to see what your impressions are of it, Dumbdeity. How well does this program make an online session flow, and are there a limited number of players that can hook to a DM server at one time?

 

[tenkar]

Give me four weeks and I should be able to give some feedback on Kloogewerks. My group is aiming its first session for the end of July.

 

[S'mon]

I recommend doing all rolls yourself and avoid requiring complex tactical planning from the players - the medium is well-suited to cool intra-PC roleplay but terrible for 3e-style tactical combat.

 

[Aeolius]

Give me four weeks and I should be able to give some feedback on Kloogewerks. My group is aiming its first session for the end of July.

How did you get your players to spend $15 each for the client (player version) software? Most online players want everything to be free.

 

[Greatwyrm]

If anyone has used ScreenMonkey, I'd like to know what you thought - good or bad.

 

[Jurble]

woops sory if i put thw thread in the wrong forum ill check closer next time

it would be good to use a players dice rolling program but heres where i thought that might be a prob. As DM wouldnt you want to fudge some of the rolls sometimes to helpthem along or "dumb them down" you know DM cheating and all in order to let the game flow. If they roll their dice doesnt that prevent this?

Granted i havnt actually DM'ed before inDnD (getting myself ready to) but this is what i never understood when a player rolls their own d20. I mean if i roll a 7 and miss, then a 14 and hit then Dm decides we need a hand and i hit on say, 6 isnt it abit obvious?

still definately going to check out this screen monkey program. Sounds promising!

Also what do you guys who have played online think about keeping NPCs unique and the more "storytelling" side of online play? This is the other area where i am afraid it will fall out.