Meldwin's page

About Meldwin

I'm 42 years old and have played RPG's for most of my life, and D&D has remained a constant favorite. My love of the game has really always been about role-playing. That's not to say that I don't occasionally like to knock some heads, but as I've matured, I've found it more challenging and enjoyable to use finesse in order to avoid the usual pitfall that might befall the novice gamer.

The problem I've always found with table top gaming, is that while it's great for the social atmosphere, it doesn't really lend itself to a deeper more realistic campaign. I mean secrets are really hard to keep, and your obviously up to something if you are the suspected thief in the party, and always in hushed sessions with the DM. There's simply no mystery to it, no basis for a rich enough story to keep me intrigued. Throw the realities of life into the mix, like favored adventuring friends moving away, family life, and countless other responsibilities that consume us in a day, and it's kind of difficult to make it happen.

For the last few years, I've been researching and designing a play by post campaign. I looked around at what had been done, researched other attempts, and decided what was available, and in wide use...was in need of a mighty big kick in the arse.

Don't get me wrong, there are some remarkable games running out there, with some exceptionally committed DM's. But damn, the games just seem so lackluster. Where are the battle maps, where are the fully editable character sheets and for some of those sites running multiple campaigns that do supply character sheets, why the hell is it that everyone else can see them?

I am really surprised at how un-advanced the play by post field of RPG gaming appears to be, granted I've only been studying it for the last couple of years, but Google it and what you find is usually the same. Bulletin boards or blog based Play by Post campaigns that for me, just don't seem to be making use of the available tools that the Internet is providing.

There are some phenomenal tools out there and yet so few people seem to be taking advantage of them. Now granted, I have paid a small fortune exploring those tools, but it seems to me that I'm probably not the only one who has. What I've found, is that you can provide, as a DM, an incredibly rich environment. To do this, you have to be single and have absolutely no care in the world, or you need a place where a group of people, a community of gamers, have united and created a template that anyone can use.

What I have done in the two, actually three years that I have been kicking this can around, is to design a web site that could contain this vision. I have explored all avenues and have arrived at something which I believe provides most of the tools that any Player of the Game could desire, and any DM, could use to organize and facilitate a perfect game setting, for a Play by Post milieu.

The structure of the web site is simple and organized, it takes advantage of password protection so only the players (and the DM of course) can see their own character sheets. The players have their own mini site character locations, and allows them access to dynamic character sheets that are fully editable. These mini site locations provide access to knowledge or items that only they would have or know, like maps, a history of who they are, their motivations, and the ability to go back and review game rounds that only they were a part of. This provides them with the basis of who they are and allows them, actually gives them what they crave the most, an air of mystery.

My favorite use of these character sites is that it allows me to run mini side adventures when party members split up. I love to take advantage of supplying each character with a separate map during an action round that shows them the scene as only they would perceive it. I mean how and why should everyone have the exact same picture of any scene as it unfolds, some will have infra-vision and some will not. Let's just hope that the ones with infra-vision can perceive who it is they're attacking - friend or foe? Oh yeah - I do love the confusion, it makes it so...damn fun!

I use a fantastic set of tools as the DM, we have two forums we take advantage of, thanks to Google Groups. One of the forums is just for kick's, while the other is designed for and used as a means of communicating in the game environment, either to the group as a whole or in secret... ;)

I use Hamete Virtual Dice Server to keep everyone honest, well almost everyone - the DM's got to have some perks! The characters make their dice rolls and the results get instantly Emailed to the DM, it totally rocks.

I use, and highly recommend learning how to use Campaign Cartographer, it is by far the best of the map designers available. It's not easy to learn, if your tech skills are like mine, you will have moments where you lose all sanity, but trust me - it's totally worth it!

Last week I discovered that people had actually created dynamic character sheets that could be edited on line! This was a feature I'd been trying to figure out for a while, and in its absence had been forced to make every little annoying change to each character sheet, from hit points, to gold pieces! Oh man, I was so damn happy to find Myth Weavers!

Lastly, I found a site that gives access to 3.5 game rules, Hypertext d20 SRD, is just an absolutely fantastic source for everyone to use.

So here's the thing, I've done a little work on this, created what I think is a new vision for the Play by Post/Email genre, and I would be more than happy to help others do the same. I think Paizo is the perfect community to make this sort of thing happen.

Stop by the campaign web site at http://www.wog-campaign.com, take a stroll, and let me know what you think.