Help! I'm losing most of my players to moving!

[LordVyreth]

All of a sudden, I'm stuck with a serious problem. Almost all of my players are going to be moving to different states very soon, so we're now forced to either end the campaign very suddenly and in a way that's not the slightest bit satisfactory to any of us, or move it to online. However, I've never even played an online game, let alone run one, so I need advice on how to handle it. What system should I use? How does gameplay differ? How do I handle dice rolls? What about battlemaps? I need all the advice I can get, and fairly soon.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

There are online resources that can help you run a fulltime/full scale game online. From what I understand, you can even set up chat rooms with telepresence capacity to game in...if you all have that kind of money to spend on your computers.

You can also play via email just like the old PBMs of the 1970's and 80's.

In other words, you describe the events thoroughly, let your players decide their actions, and you decide the most likely outcomes. You'll need full copies of the PCs to do this, however.

On the other hand, you could choose NOT to end the campaign abruptly, and schedule semi-annual get-togethers in which to game.

I participate in multiple game groups, one of which has been active since 1984. However, due to pursuit of education and jobs, the participants of that group haven't all been in the same state for more than a couple of weeks at a time since 1996. Still, we consider the campaign active, and get in a couple of sessions a year when we all visit our families.

In the meantime, we all satisfy our RPG jones by participating in other groups.

 

[Cador]

If you are considering dedicated software for running online games, there are a couple of programs and utilities mentioned in this thread in the software forum.

I can heartily recommend kLoOge.Werks, especially if you want lots of features for handling online battlemaps and tokens. The documentation is still a little lacking - there is a user-assembled manual here (along with lots of other resources). And there is a helpful message board where the users and developers hang out.

 

[LordVyreth]

Has anyone tried using teamspeak or another voice-based system to game with? My roomate's into online gaming like Planetside, so he has some experience in using them.

 

[pogre]

Has anyone tried using teamspeak or another voice-based system to game with? My roomate's into online gaming like Planetside, so he has some experience in using them.

I have run some sessions where I (the DM) speak and the PCs all use keyboard chat. It is the best way to play online with the least prep work for the DM. Klooge is great but it does require quite a bit of prep time.

 

[rln]

Recently two of my players moved away, and another had moved a lot earlier. This leaves us with one player in the US, one in scotland, and three on two different places in Sweden.

As I work in a company creating e-meeting tools (Marratech), we will use that to start up our campaign again. I've also coded a small, shared, online dice rolling tool - unfortunately, it's not made for public consumption, at least not yet.

You can use the Marratech tools with our free portal without room locking capabilities... it'll give you audio, video, chat and a shared whiteboard (for digital miniatures and maps). If you're looking for a completely free tool, I'd recommend using Skype for audio.

www.marratech.com
www.skype.com

 

[rln]

The dice-rolling tool is a small perl-script designed to run on a UNIX-based web server. I'm happy to share it with anyone interested.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

We use OpenRPG to game online. Either that or IRC. Either works. OpenRPG has a built-in dice roller (and it's similar to Kloogewerks, but free), and you can find dice scripts for IRC.

 

[Piratecat]

I understand your pain. I was looking for photos of my group, and I realized with a shock that there are only two common people between the present and five years ago. Curse you, West Coast! *shakes fist impotently*

 

[Liminal Syzygy]

This is a challenge for me as well, living in Tokyo. Lots of players moving back to the states. Of my original group of six players who started RttToEE two years plus ago, only two are still around, and one of those took a year off for an MBA program in France so is a returnee so to speak.

I've come to the realization that the environment isn't suited to long campaigns and that I should plan shorter (4 to 5 levels gained over about a year at our fortnightly pace) campaigns instead.

When you are thinking about trying the online option, don't underestimate how hard it will be. It might be better just to wrap things up, even if it is a bit premature. Any wrap up (albeit early) may give better closure than if the campaign just peters out because it's too hard to play online.