Twitter and D&D - How I came to love this combo

[weem]

I actually considered trying Twitter to see if it would be possible to use it to run a pbp game. A very concise pbp game.

But it would have needed everyone else to have accounts. And I like players to be descriptive in their posts, whereas Twitter would encourage brevity, plus the boards here have all sorts of useful functions, so I never took it any further.

Yea, not so sure it would work well for this purpose.

Fantastic Weem!

I can't XP you but thanks for all the info. I knew bits and pieces of this, and heard about programs like Tweetdeck but haven't seen how they work. This fills in a lot of knowledge holes I have. I will definately be looking into this some more. Not that I am an expert or anything - I just thought I would share

Thanks again!

This is pretty much what I was going for - showing people some cool uses of it relating to D&D. I think a lot of people know what Twitter is etc, but not exactly how it can be used beyond the very basic idea of posting a status.

 

[grufflehead]

Yea, not so sure it would work well for this purpose.

As I'm not a Twitter user (Twitterer?) for some reason I can't help think the 140 character thing makes everyone sound like they are speaking in haiku Combined with the pbp idea and I came up with:

I take out my sword
It hums as it cuts the air
Natural 20

 

[DizzySaxophone]

very interesting.

Thanks, maybe I'll finally look at that twitter account I made about a year ago and quit using after about a week.

 

[RangerWickett]

How do you have time for all this stuff, Weem? Top tier XP on EN World, tweeting, and making handy tutorials. Makes me feel lazy, man.

 

[CharlesRyan]

Like the OP, it took me a while to understand the "point" of Twitter--or more accurately, to understand how it could be useful to me. In the end, I pretty much concur with everything the OP says (even down to his choice of applications--Tweetdeck makes it easy to turn Twitter into a series of coherent conversations).

Unlike the OP, I will wax philosophical (briefly) about the "purpose" of Twitter, because I think it helps understand how it can be useful. Forums are about having conversations over time (a given thread usually stays active for a few days; some for a few months or even years). Facebook is similar, and largely about connecting to people from your past. Twitter is about having real-time (or almost real-time) conversations with people that have similar interests, even if you don't know them. It gives some capacity to look into the past (generally only a few hours or days), but mostly it's for seeing what people are saying now or very close to now.

For D&D, this means you can be hearing from a designer as he tweets about some design difficulty he's dealing with at the moment, or follow all the TPKs in D&D Encounters. (You can follow individuals, or specific terms, so when a gamer anywhere in the world tags a tweet with #dndenc, you can see it.)

What Twitter lacks in depth, it makes up for in immediacy. The connection you have with the people you're talking to is very direct in a way that forums and even Facebook simply can't be.

(For the record, my Twitter handle is in my sig!)

 

[weem]

How do you have time for all this stuff, Weem? Top tier XP on EN World, tweeting, and making handy tutorials. Makes me feel lazy, man.

It helps having 1) a (really) great job that requires me to be online a LOT and 2) a wife that is very busy working on her masters degree

 

[mudbunny]

Yup.

Twitter is a great little tool.

Buffs for D&D Encounters o out over Twitter on wednesdays. Trevor Kidd (from WotC) is on Twitter (as are a large number of individuals in the RPG writing world). Twitter is where the Character Builder server status is announced first.

It is also a nice, gentle way of finding out about new blogs and stuff as you see what people you follow are retweeting and it gives you a chance to see if you like it as well.

 

[Morrus]

The biggest problem I have with Twitter (especially since I tend to use it on my phone) is that with the meagre 40-ish people I'm following, every time I open it up there are over 100 updates; if I leave it a day there are far more. I can't imagine how it would be if I were like some people and followed 1000 or more people.

 

[weem]

The biggest problem I have with Twitter (especially since I tend to use it on my phone) is that with the meagre 40-ish people I'm following, every time I open it up there are over 100 updates; if I leave it a day there are far more. I can't imagine how it would be if I were like some people and followed 1000 or more people.

It was said here earlier that Twitter is about the immediate conversation (essentially) so, unlike Facebook where you might go back and look at all the updates if it had been a while, for Twitter (via TweetDeck) I (and most others) would only look at the updates that are immediately in view (on the screen, etc) - I may scroll down a little, but I generally only look at what is immediately there. That means, I am only looking at the last 10-15 updates at a time (of potentially 100-ish that were posted since I last looked). Again, I think this is the case for most people.

Those who posted something and hoped for a response will either post it multiple times during the day "in case you missed it earlier..." etc, or will "Mention" a persons name they are trying to get a response from.

As for Mentions...

...on your twitter page (or in a column if you set it up in TweetDeck) there is a section for Mentions (people mentioning you) - this is the area I pay the closest attention to because these are messages aimed at me specifically. In most cases, there will be many less "mentions" of you than there are general tweets from those you follow.

The point is, unlike other things such as Facebook, Twitter is more about what is happening right now. Where Facebook is geared more towards "sharing", "liking" and the regular back and forth between "friends", Twitter focuses on an immediate message.

---edit---

On that note, where's MY follow @Morrus: ?

 

[Mark]

Facebook is similar, and largely about connecting to people from your past.

That's just what old folks think. It's my impression that Facebook idealistically empowers individuals to create a personal virtual location with an interactive web presence for everyone to experience. Similarly, I believe that Twitter is a selective listening device that allows others to pick the brains of those willing to share their thoughts while simulataneously giving a continuous virtual soapbox to anyone who can garner a following.