Using technology for a modern game.

[herrozerro]

I was prompted by this article in gnome stew to start this thread.

I have had some ideas in the past with a modern game i was thinking about running, including using google earth to find real worlds paces for my game. but the idea of using email or maybe even google voice for texting sounded interesting.

What kind of things would you think might be cool to blur the lines between game and reality? Possibly making your game maybe an AR-lite game (alternate reality).

Personally, I have a few netbooks laying around and I was thinking about using them for hacking or other computer things, perhaps use it to keep all of the party's info like their mission database or something.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

A lot depends upon how comfortable you are with developing your own websites, mucking around on your computer, etc.

You could, for example, set up those netbooks to follow a given URL to a website local to your home network (rather than one in the outside world). Maybe one resident on that specific computer. So, for example, lets say you make up a company called Mandelay Enterprises, you can create a website for them and let them look it up on that machine in your game room, and they would find it.

Depending upon the type of game you're trying to run, I think there are sites that will provide mysteries to solve, including crime scene reports and stuff like that -- check out Crimescene.com, for example.

A lot depends upon how much work you want to put into this. You could build websites that they could hack into, give them puzzles to solve to get the password to access the files, and so on.

-rg

 

[Janx]

on making fake web-sites, here's a few handy tips:

web sites are made of files. You don't need a web-server to host those files. You can open your browser and direct it to read the files locally.

This means you can write .html files to make up your web-site, and set the browser on the PC to go to it. Even book mark it, or make it your home page.

this puts the idea of making fake corporate web sites into reach of a less technical GM.

Granted, you still need know how to make web pages, but even MS word can help with that.


Some other topics for tech in a Modern game is to rememeber that Tech has come a long way since many modern RPGs (like Vampire) were written.

For instance, the SmartPhone.
I can get satelite maps of the area where the bad guy's base, letting me get a sense of the area. The images will probably be one year old.

I can take 2 smart phones and enable "show my friends" on them, so I can track the first phone with the second. This means that I can know where my team is, or use it as a tracking device.

I can setup a multi-way phone conference line so my entire team can be in contact. We can all wear blue tooth headsets to go handsfree.

I can wire the ringer/vibrator motor on a dumb cellphone to the detonator on a brick of C4, to act as a remote detonator. Call the number, the signals goes to activate the ringer, and the detonator picks that up and boom.

I can use video conferencing on a smartphone so the guy at the surveliance van can monitor the situation and see what the smart phone cam sees. Imagine strapping the phone to your tactical vest such that the camera isn't obstructed.

that's just a few fun things with smart phones. Which the player can get fairly cheaply. that means the bar for advanced spy gear operations is much lower than it used to be.