-
NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
Online Role Playing
- Thread starter Mego Thor
- Start date
Uller
Adventurer
Okay...we did a preliminary test earlier this week with just me and a single client. We used MSN Messenger to establish the connection and we were able to share TMapper as well as a spread sheet. I tried to share a dice roller, too, but we decided that just results in way too much clutter. So we decided to just "trust" everyone to roll for themselves and report the result.
The voice stuff worked pretty well with this set up.
Tonight we are going to play a short adventure. This time we will have the following set-up:
Me as DM and host: I have a cable modem and will share TMapper and the spreadsheet.
Two players using one computer with a cable modem
A single player using one computer and a 56k modem.
If this works out, we will add one more connection and two more players (we have two couples in our group). We all have mics so we should give the voice communication a good workout. I am suspecting that voice will be reserved primarily for the DM and when players need to say something long. Short answers and die rolls will probably be typed, especially when I ask the group something (like "Roll Initiative!").
I'll report how it all goes tomorrow.
The voice stuff worked pretty well with this set up.
Tonight we are going to play a short adventure. This time we will have the following set-up:
Me as DM and host: I have a cable modem and will share TMapper and the spreadsheet.
Two players using one computer with a cable modem
A single player using one computer and a 56k modem.
If this works out, we will add one more connection and two more players (we have two couples in our group). We all have mics so we should give the voice communication a good workout. I am suspecting that voice will be reserved primarily for the DM and when players need to say something long. Short answers and die rolls will probably be typed, especially when I ask the group something (like "Roll Initiative!").
I'll report how it all goes tomorrow.
I've had several people tell me that DM's Familiar is a big help for on-line playing even though it's not an online tool. Here's their reasoning:
Playing on-line, with all that typing, is slow. Anything that can make things go faster makes for a better game.
For example, DM's Familiar can roll initiative for all PCs and monsters at once. Instead of saying "Roll Initiative", waiting for everyone to type back an answer, waiting for you to sort it, then telling them who's turn it is. You can just say "Suddenly, orcs charge into the room. Tordek, your turn."
Or for attack/damage. DM's Familiar can do attack and damage results for a monster. So instead of rolling all of that by hand and then typing it in, you can just cut and paste the results from DMF to the player.
And since you're at the computer already, might as well have all of the rules in DMF' s Reference Library at your fingertips.
And you can have the character records in DMF
And you can make your campaign notes in DMF
And you could pre-write descirptions and stuff in DMF and then just cut & paste to Messenger
Playing on-line, with all that typing, is slow. Anything that can make things go faster makes for a better game.
For example, DM's Familiar can roll initiative for all PCs and monsters at once. Instead of saying "Roll Initiative", waiting for everyone to type back an answer, waiting for you to sort it, then telling them who's turn it is. You can just say "Suddenly, orcs charge into the room. Tordek, your turn."
Or for attack/damage. DM's Familiar can do attack and damage results for a monster. So instead of rolling all of that by hand and then typing it in, you can just cut and paste the results from DMF to the player.
And since you're at the computer already, might as well have all of the rules in DMF' s Reference Library at your fingertips.
And you can have the character records in DMF
And you can make your campaign notes in DMF
And you could pre-write descirptions and stuff in DMF and then just cut & paste to Messenger
Uller
Adventurer
All righty...as promised here is the report on NetMeeting and RPGs
We tried it out last night. Turns out that we had 4 computers: DM and 3 players, each on their own box (the one couple was using two computers).
We found out the hard way that NetMeeting only supports voice between two people.
I don't know why this is, but there you go. Says so right on MS's website.
So we were forced to type everything. This turned out to be not so bad. Fortunately, the short adventure I threw together included complete room descriptions, so every time they entered a new room, I could simply copy and paste straight from my adventure outline (in a Word document) into the NetMeeting chat window. This at least kept things moving.
I only shared TMapper. I kept all other applications private. The one problem we are running into is that when I bring another app up, if it overlaps TMapper on my desktop, the players can no longer see the map. That is probably annoying. Everytime I need to look at my initiative and round tracking spread sheet or whatever, they can no longer see the map. I probably just need to organize my spread sheets and desktop a bit better to minimize that problem.
We played for almost two hours. The PCs were exploring a recently abandoned keep (the adventure is somewhat of a murder mystery). During that time, they entered the gate house, got through the lowered (but not latched) portcullis. Explored the small court yard. Entered the main hall. Fought off a small pack of skeletons and zombies and turned them. Unfortunately, the fleeing undead stirred up a nest of Giant Bees in the lower chamber of the keep's tower (doh!) and rather than just closing the door, the PCs are currently fighting the bees.
So that isn't too bad progress. If we had voice, I think they would have finished the battle with the bees and had time to search the main hall. So the lack of voice didn't put us back too much.
I had a really good time and even if we don't get voice to work, I now plan on running an on-line campaign using this set up (with maybe some tweaking...maybe DM's Familiar or RoleplayingMaster to help me...but for now, spreadsheets are working just fine).
Our saving grace for voice may come in the form of Roger Wilco. It is unlimited shareware from game spy that supports voice with multiple people. Everyone seemed to agree that the game was good, but would be better with voice. So next time we are going to try that.
I'm also going to keep a small text document shared that shows all the spells currently in effect on the characters and their durations. Everyround, I'll update it.
We tried it out last night. Turns out that we had 4 computers: DM and 3 players, each on their own box (the one couple was using two computers).
We found out the hard way that NetMeeting only supports voice between two people.
I don't know why this is, but there you go. Says so right on MS's website.So we were forced to type everything. This turned out to be not so bad. Fortunately, the short adventure I threw together included complete room descriptions, so every time they entered a new room, I could simply copy and paste straight from my adventure outline (in a Word document) into the NetMeeting chat window. This at least kept things moving.
I only shared TMapper. I kept all other applications private. The one problem we are running into is that when I bring another app up, if it overlaps TMapper on my desktop, the players can no longer see the map. That is probably annoying. Everytime I need to look at my initiative and round tracking spread sheet or whatever, they can no longer see the map. I probably just need to organize my spread sheets and desktop a bit better to minimize that problem.
We played for almost two hours. The PCs were exploring a recently abandoned keep (the adventure is somewhat of a murder mystery). During that time, they entered the gate house, got through the lowered (but not latched) portcullis. Explored the small court yard. Entered the main hall. Fought off a small pack of skeletons and zombies and turned them. Unfortunately, the fleeing undead stirred up a nest of Giant Bees in the lower chamber of the keep's tower (doh!) and rather than just closing the door, the PCs are currently fighting the bees.
So that isn't too bad progress. If we had voice, I think they would have finished the battle with the bees and had time to search the main hall. So the lack of voice didn't put us back too much.
I had a really good time and even if we don't get voice to work, I now plan on running an on-line campaign using this set up (with maybe some tweaking...maybe DM's Familiar or RoleplayingMaster to help me...but for now, spreadsheets are working just fine).
Our saving grace for voice may come in the form of Roger Wilco. It is unlimited shareware from game spy that supports voice with multiple people. Everyone seemed to agree that the game was good, but would be better with voice. So next time we are going to try that.
I'm also going to keep a small text document shared that shows all the spells currently in effect on the characters and their durations. Everyround, I'll update it.
PosterBoy
First Post
openrpg notes
A couple notes on why you might want to try openrpg. Keep in mind I'm totaly bias as a developer of openrpg.
1) PCGen has an exporter to openrpg format. So its very useful for people playing d20 based games. There's also a ton of d20 character sheets and plug-ins for d20 if you don't use pcgen.
2) Its open source and the development is 100% community driven. So if you want a feature that is missing, just drop by the dev server and explain it to a developer. There's a good chance it will get done in a future release.
If you have any questions, let me know...
A couple notes on why you might want to try openrpg. Keep in mind I'm totaly bias as a developer of openrpg.
1) PCGen has an exporter to openrpg format. So its very useful for people playing d20 based games. There's also a ton of d20 character sheets and plug-ins for d20 if you don't use pcgen.
2) Its open source and the development is 100% community driven. So if you want a feature that is missing, just drop by the dev server and explain it to a developer. There's a good chance it will get done in a future release.
If you have any questions, let me know...
Femerus the Gnecro
First Post
openrpg and pcgen
I use openrpg and I love it, having made several sheets with buttons etc (before the dnd3e tool allowed you to send rolls to chat). so I'm not worried about being able to whip up a sheet that lets me do what I want.
That being said, I'm interested in this pcgen -> openrpg feature. Do teh exported sheets include xlm buttons that allow you to roll dice directly into the chat window, or is it just basically a filled out character sheet with no chatwindow functionality?
I ask this because I can't stand using pcgen to do anything but occasionally check my math with complex characters, but I'd be willing to suffer through the horrid user interface if I could export dynamic openrpg sheets.
Let me know, thanks.
-Femerus
I use openrpg and I love it, having made several sheets with buttons etc (before the dnd3e tool allowed you to send rolls to chat). so I'm not worried about being able to whip up a sheet that lets me do what I want.
That being said, I'm interested in this pcgen -> openrpg feature. Do teh exported sheets include xlm buttons that allow you to roll dice directly into the chat window, or is it just basically a filled out character sheet with no chatwindow functionality?
I ask this because I can't stand using pcgen to do anything but occasionally check my math with complex characters, but I'd be willing to suffer through the horrid user interface if I could export dynamic openrpg sheets.
Let me know, thanks.
-Femerus
aliberator
First Post
klooge
My two cents (for what they are worth):
I started playing DnD online one and a half years ago. My group is scattered across numerous states and I have never had enough players together to play face to face so the internet was my godsend. I started out with Netmeeting. I went through the same surprise you did realizing that its voice chat only worked for the first two people connected. Netmeeting wasn't that great but it was better than nothing.
Then I found WebRPG. This was before you had to pay for it. At the time it was awesome. It had dice, icons, a battlemat, and more. I was a dream come true. Except for one thing: crashes. Inevitably someone kept getting kicked off or it wouldn't work right. Then they made us pay for it. Montly payments (I hate monthly payments). We didn't want to pay for something that was CONSTANTLY giving us fits but we did anyway.
Then I found OpenRPG. I originally avoided it because it wasn't as pretty as WebRPG and was a bit more clunky. But with WebRPG charging money I gave it a whirl. To start out it wasn't as good as WebRPG was (particularly in the sound department) but it had some advantages. You could "customize" it more than you could WebRPG because of the opensource and it had a great community behind it. People were always there to talk to if you had problems. And the best part was PcGen as Posterboy mentioned. As DM I would make NCPs with PcGen and just plug them right into OpenRPG. But OpenRPG wasn't perfect. It wasn't as easy to get the hang of, probably because it was opensource. Don't get me wrong, it was great having a product that was a labor of love by its developers, but you could tell that it was limited by its lack of funds. I would say OpenRPG is excellent for a free product, poor for a paying one.
Then came Klooge. This is the system I use now and in my opinion nothing compares to it. For a paltry fee of $15 (or $30 if you are DM) you get the best system out there. It has everything you want, the ability to load cool maps, whether from DungeonCrafter, Campaign Cartographer, hand drawn, or whatever, to any image you want to use for icons, to character sheets, to battle mats, sounds, to many many more things. You can do all kinds of things that Web and Open can't. You can target people, do automatic dmg, play cool sounds like Homer saying "Doe!" and much more. Simply put Klooge does the best job of giving you a nice looking product, that is easy to use, easy to learn, and makes playing DnD as simply and as easy as possible. My players loved it when I showed it to them. You simply turn on your computer and play DnD with your friends. What more could you want? And if you have a problem the creator of Kloogewerks is more than helpful. Plus he is open to adding on any suggestions you may have. The only negative I can think of with Klooge is it does not yet have a big community base probably because it is relatively new and we DnD players are rather loath to part with our hard earned money. Trust me, kloogewerks is worth every penny and more.
I would pay nothing for Netmeeting, $15 for WebRPG, $25 for OpenRPG, and $75 for Klooge.
Again just my 2 cents.
My two cents (for what they are worth):
I started playing DnD online one and a half years ago. My group is scattered across numerous states and I have never had enough players together to play face to face so the internet was my godsend. I started out with Netmeeting. I went through the same surprise you did realizing that its voice chat only worked for the first two people connected. Netmeeting wasn't that great but it was better than nothing.
Then I found WebRPG. This was before you had to pay for it. At the time it was awesome. It had dice, icons, a battlemat, and more. I was a dream come true. Except for one thing: crashes. Inevitably someone kept getting kicked off or it wouldn't work right. Then they made us pay for it. Montly payments (I hate monthly payments). We didn't want to pay for something that was CONSTANTLY giving us fits but we did anyway.
Then I found OpenRPG. I originally avoided it because it wasn't as pretty as WebRPG and was a bit more clunky. But with WebRPG charging money I gave it a whirl. To start out it wasn't as good as WebRPG was (particularly in the sound department) but it had some advantages. You could "customize" it more than you could WebRPG because of the opensource and it had a great community behind it. People were always there to talk to if you had problems. And the best part was PcGen as Posterboy mentioned. As DM I would make NCPs with PcGen and just plug them right into OpenRPG. But OpenRPG wasn't perfect. It wasn't as easy to get the hang of, probably because it was opensource. Don't get me wrong, it was great having a product that was a labor of love by its developers, but you could tell that it was limited by its lack of funds. I would say OpenRPG is excellent for a free product, poor for a paying one.
Then came Klooge. This is the system I use now and in my opinion nothing compares to it. For a paltry fee of $15 (or $30 if you are DM) you get the best system out there. It has everything you want, the ability to load cool maps, whether from DungeonCrafter, Campaign Cartographer, hand drawn, or whatever, to any image you want to use for icons, to character sheets, to battle mats, sounds, to many many more things. You can do all kinds of things that Web and Open can't. You can target people, do automatic dmg, play cool sounds like Homer saying "Doe!" and much more. Simply put Klooge does the best job of giving you a nice looking product, that is easy to use, easy to learn, and makes playing DnD as simply and as easy as possible. My players loved it when I showed it to them. You simply turn on your computer and play DnD with your friends. What more could you want? And if you have a problem the creator of Kloogewerks is more than helpful. Plus he is open to adding on any suggestions you may have. The only negative I can think of with Klooge is it does not yet have a big community base probably because it is relatively new and we DnD players are rather loath to part with our hard earned money. Trust me, kloogewerks is worth every penny and more.
I would pay nothing for Netmeeting, $15 for WebRPG, $25 for OpenRPG, and $75 for Klooge.
Again just my 2 cents.
Uller
Adventurer
Re: klooge
Nothing _IS_ what you pay for NetMeeting...its free.
As promised, we finished up our on-line game last night. We used Roger Wilco for Voice communications (Team Sound seems better, but we couldn't get it to work for some reason). TMapper provided the battle map (with a map drawn by DungeonCrafter). Everything else was done just as norm PnP gaming. It worked very well. (Edit: I is a goal of mine to do this without requiring my players to spend any bucks...so far, so good!)
I used NetMeeting's chat for private messages to players ("You REALLY like the amulet you just found...you won't give it up for anything!" Bwahahahaha!
). I also used it to paste in large room descriptions rather than read them to the players. This gave the players the ability to go back an look at the descriptions again if they forgot anything...
I enjoyed it very much. I've asked my players if they are willing to play an on-line campaign. If there are less than 4 players, I'll probably be posting for players some time soon...
I'll have to check out Klooge. Is there a website?
aliberator said:
Nothing _IS_ what you pay for NetMeeting...its free.
As promised, we finished up our on-line game last night. We used Roger Wilco for Voice communications (Team Sound seems better, but we couldn't get it to work for some reason). TMapper provided the battle map (with a map drawn by DungeonCrafter). Everything else was done just as norm PnP gaming. It worked very well. (Edit: I is a goal of mine to do this without requiring my players to spend any bucks...so far, so good!)
I used NetMeeting's chat for private messages to players ("You REALLY like the amulet you just found...you won't give it up for anything!" Bwahahahaha!
). I also used it to paste in large room descriptions rather than read them to the players. This gave the players the ability to go back an look at the descriptions again if they forgot anything...I enjoyed it very much. I've asked my players if they are willing to play an on-line campaign. If there are less than 4 players, I'll probably be posting for players some time soon...
I'll have to check out Klooge. Is there a website?
Last edited:
DM
First Post
Yes there is. www.kloogeinc.com/werks Just go to the download section and get a free demo of the program. Incidentally, we’ll be at GenCon, booth # 958, if you would rather pick-up a copy instead. We can also answer any other questions you may have about kLoOge.Werks. Thanks for your interest!
Uller
Adventurer
DM said:
Well...as long as I have your attention (I sent an e-mail to klooge.werks asking the same thing):
I'd be most interested in a multi-license pack. We have myself and 5 players. Is there a 5 pack? How much is it? If I buy a multipack, do I also need to by a Master to run the game?
Also (this is in addition to my e-mailed question): It is likely that two of my players will be on one computer (they share a house). Is it possible for them to share a client? Basically, is it possible for one client to control 2 characters? (if this is the case, we'd only need a 4 pack I guess).
Thanks!
Similar Threads
