What's the best way to run a game online?

[DDK]

I'm currently trying to figure out what the best way to run an online game would be.

My preference would be for a live chat game however seeing as the players come from across the world, it might be hard to get everyone in one place for long.

I know there are forums and such like WebRPG and Rondak's Portal, however they seem a little convoluted and anything that uses Java is definitely out.

Still, with the exception of the Java no-go, I'm open to all possibilities.

I'd like it to be as immersive as possible and I'm willing to go to a fair amount of effort to set this up so things like creating a forum especially for the game or creating a new chatroom with a dicebot, etc. are definite possibilities.

However, I've never done this before so I thought I'd seek the combined wisdom of the 9,343 members here. Or should I say, the 9,338 guises of Piratecat and the board bots Eric, Morrus, nemmerle and Mark

 

[NiTessine]

I recommend you go with the IRC. I currently play in two IRC-based games on chat.psionics.net (where, by the way, also EN World's chatroom #dnd3e resides). The time zone thing has never been a great issue, since all players except me are Americans, and my sleeping rhythm tends to the nocturnal. We've managed to run a few sessions as long as six hours. The server has two resident dicebots for the purpose of online games.

 

[DDK]

Heh, believe me, I know all about #dnd3e...

But yeah, IRC is my first choice and bynw has always been a great guy as far as supporting IRC games and whatnot.

Do you have any special conventions that you use in chat games? For instance, in my home games, I use the 'time-out' rule where if we're in the middle of a game and you want to speak out of character, you make a time-out signal and speak, otherwise everything you say is in character and carries with it XP penalties.

Any special rules, or IRC settings or extra bots or scripts or anything?

 

[Riveneye]

I currently play in an IRC game twice a week, for approximately 4 hours each game. We have players from Australia, America and the Netherlands. When we first started playing, the DM gathered info on when people were to play, and was then able to work out when games could be held (though, there is always confusion when daylight savings switches from northern to southern hemisphere and vice versa ). Most of us have written scripts to do our rolls. I went a bit overboard, and wrote 800+ lines of code. Though, the advantage is, I now have almost everything automated. All I have to type for to-hit is -

/tohitbow {number of attacks granted by BAB} {enchantment on my arrow} {rapid/norapid} {pointblank/nopointblank} {extra attacks at full attack bonus} {misc bonues}

Which normally just comes out as -

/tohitbow 4 4 rapid pointblank

* Riveneye rolls for to hit [Soulstrike, PBR, +4 Arrow, Attack #1 (d20 + 32)] and gets: 35
* Riveneye rolls for to hit [Soulstrike, PBR, +4 Arrow, Attack #2 (d20 + 32)] and gets: 35
* Riveneye rolls for to hit [Soulstrike, PBR, +4 Arrow, Attack #3 (d20 + 27)] and gets: 42
* Riveneye rolls for to hit [Soulstrike, PBR, +4 Arrow, Attack #4 (d20 + 22)] and gets: 36
* Riveneye rolls for to hit [Soulstrike, PBR, +4 Arrow, Attack #5 (d20 + 17)] and gets: 32

The same thing goes for damage, skills etc. If a situation arises where I haven't written a specific script, I just use my generic dice roller script. For example -

/roll 5d6+15

* Riveneye rolls 5d6+15 and gets: 42

I can't think of any other special rules we've made. Most things are the same as a face to face game, just minus the faces

As for your timeout rule, you could adopt the ooc (out of character) tag. If anyone wants to say something out of character, they'd have to type -

ooc: Hey, did you see that movie last night?

Though, we're not usually fussy enough to enforce it. We've certainly never lost xp over it

 

[hong]

Or should I say, the 9,338 guises of Piratecat and the board bots Eric, Morrus, nemmerle and Mark

Wasn't "The 9,338 Guises of Piratecat" a KICKIN' sci-fi novel by Arthur C. Clarke, or what?

Also, if time zones are a problem, you could run a PBEM, or just start a game up on the In Character forum. See www.pbem.com for articles on running this sort of game.

 

[clark411]

I use OpenRPG ( www.openrpg.com )

-It has a chat function (good thing no?) with little things you can do to differenciate players- various text colors etc. Each character also has a little "status" readout that he or she can alter as appropriate- idle / typing / bathroom / etc.
-a grid-map that you can import images (mini's, background maps like dungeon layouts, and NPC / PC Visuals) onto. Can also move em around, and the map can also be drawn on, so you can squiggle down where exactly the Cloudkill spell landed.
-It has a pretty decent random roll system that does d4's through d20's. Just plug in the # of dice you want rolled, the modifier in a wee text box, then click the button. All very user friendly.
-Also players and DMs can design their own character sheets, with buttons and checkboxes for various functions. One of my players has pretty much completely automated both his characters... just presses the power attack button or the Spot button.

On the whole it works well and isn't much of a hassle, although the base python it uses can be a bit of a pain to get running at times.

 

[DDK]

/tohitbow {number of attacks granted by BAB} {enchantment on my arrow} {rapid/norapid} {pointblank/nopointblank} {extra attacks at full attack bonus} {misc bonues}

Which normally just comes out as -

/tohitbow 4 4 rapid pointblank

Ooh, script good... umm... are your scripts available to use in other IRC games? I don't understand programming all that well and since I have a Mac, mIRC scripting never interested me. Is this like a bot that I can use in a channel?

Though, we're not usually fussy enough to enforce it. We've certainly never lost xp over it

Eh, it's only something I use when people end up talking more about OOC stuff than IC stuff which mainly happens to people who aren't in the immediate action which is just friggin' annoying, selfish and distracting.

 

[Riveneye]

My scripts are all written in mIRC at the moment, sorry. I have been toying around with the idea to write my scripts in another language, and even to write some code that should univerally work with any weapon, making expansion easy. At best, I'd like to write a program which runs externally to the IRC client, which keeps track of everything, does all the calculations etc, and then create a plugin for the IRC client, so it could access the data from the program. Though, something like that won't be released for quite some time. Well, not from me anyway...

 

[Aeolius]

My preference would be for a live chat game however seeing as the players come from across the world, it might be hard to get everyone in one place for long.

While they require a bit more patience, you might also consider message-based games (play-by-post) or a play by e-mail (PBEM) game.

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

Re: Re: What's the best way to run a game online?

You could try Macray's Keep. It has a message board type function, a chat room, and a dice roller. You can also put players into separate "contexts" so one group can't see what the other is doing (and vice versa).

I have played games there but not DM'ed one (yet), so I can't comment on how it runs as a GM.

The site is Internet Explorer only (not Opera, Netscape, etc.), so that may rule it out for you.