On-line gaming tools

[Uller]

Hi All,

My group only meets every 4-6 weeks. As you can imagine, things move very slowly. Yesterday, I was sitting in a meeting. The company I work for is "distributed". We have offices in every time-zone and a few even work from home (I often do, too).

Our meetings typically involve a speaker phone and sometimes we use Microsoft NetMeeting (as well as our own collaborative software) if we need to use a computer to demonstrate stuff.

So anyway, I'm sitting in this meeting (and thinking about D&D) and thinking, there's no reason you couldn't play D&D like this.

So...I'm thinking of starting an on-line game maybe something that is run for 2-3 hours every other week. I was wondering if any of you have tried this. What tools do you use? Most of the people in my group have cable modems or similar internet connections. I figure I need the following tools:

Some sort of Chat software like ICQ. Preferably something that supports voice for normal group communications as well as text for "secret" messages between the DM and one or more players. An on-line dice roller would be good so the players can roll their own dice. Also, something to illustrate battles with. A grid that you can draw a map on and place "icons" to represent the PCs, Monstsers and NPCs. I think that would be the bare minimum. I could probably create a program that can display to all the clients the current relevant stats of each character in the party: Hit points, AC (flat-footed, touch), Spot and Listen bonuses, etc.

Anyone have any experience here?

Thanks.

 

[kengar]

Well, apart from th eobvious mentioning of NWN, you could go to Yahoo! and set up a private group for your campaign. Then, once folks have Yahoo ID's, you can use IM to set up a "conference/chat." For private DM messages you can use the 1 to 1 IM feature. Yahoo supports voice messaging as well. On the Group, the DM could post files containing things like maps and images if he/she wanted. Also irony games has a neat mapping feature called the MapMagical Encounter Editor for quick tacticals (you email the java text by copy & paste, then the player goes to the website and clips it into the field to see the map.

I'm sure other message services have these features too, I'm just familiar w/Yahoo is all.

Good luck.

 

[UD]

My FInal Year Project for my computer science degree is to build a Online Roleplay manager for Chat based DnD games. It will manage character sheets, etc, have the ability to interface with PCGen and TwinRose's software etc. Just doing some prelimary research into the mechanics of it at the moment.

 

[Uller]

Just add voice communication and it'll be perfect.

Seriously. With the proliferation of high speed internet connections, there is no reason not to include voice communications in such an application.

 

[UD]

Hmmm, hadn't thought of voice, thanks Uller

 

[GoldenEagle]

Voice Communications

If you search google for a conference call company you will find one that will support unlimited conference calls (I think it is called Conference Calls Unlimited) for different numbers of people at different times of day. I know that I can hold a conference call of up to 125 of my Sales reps (or 125 phone lines) at any time for any length of time for less than $250 per month. If you took a plan with more restrictions I am sure the cost would be less. alternately you could use a 3-way calling circle. As a side note, the calls do cost the caller a long distance fee.

The whole idea sounds cool. If you use the conference call you would only need the computer for visuals and that would speed things up considerably

John

 

[Uller]

We use Sprint for conference calls. But that costs money. That ain't gonna fly.

Looks like netmeeting will meet most of my requirements, and you can download it for _Free_.

Features useful to gaming:

Voice!

Chat
Private messaging.
Whiteboard(can be used as a simple tool for running encounters)
App Sharing(Open a picture browser to display a picture of a monster or location. Share a spread sheet that displays PC information...AC, HP, important skills, etc. or even entire character sheets!).

Now all I need is a dice roller!

 

[Vanye]

Just add voice communication and it'll be perfect.

Seriously. With the proliferation of high speed internet connections, there is no reason not to include voice communications in such an application.

Sure there is. Roughly 90% of the US is without broadband capability. Of the 15 friends I game with on a semi-regular basis, 3 of us have broadband. The rest don't have it available in their area. Sounds like a good reason to me.