Roleplaying online?


Alpha Release 3 General Discussion

Sovereign Court

I was just wondering if anyone was doing playing Pathfinder using a sort of internet medium. Currently, I'm finding it difficult to entice people to attempt something new, unreleased, with fixes still in the works.

That is why I'd like to try Pathfinder out over the internet if some people were doing it. I hear programs like Fantasy Grounds and Maptools can aid this sort of endeavor.

If anyone is running some play online, let me know! I'd love to try it.


Stratos: You might try posting in the Gamer Connection forum. That would probably be the most expedient way to either form or join a group.

Speaking of playing online, I'm looking to run a Play by Chat (PbC) campaign when the PfRPG Beta rules are released, but I was wondering about the How-To aspect of it.

Spoiler:
I finally concluded my recent 3.5 Red Hand of Doom campaign. It took about 3× longer than I originally expected because it is just so hard to gather a group in-person. While I love meeting around a coffee table or in someone's dining room, my local group is becoming increasingly spread out — younger players are heading off to college, older players buying houses in the suburbs, etc. In addition, I have a number of friends from Pennsylvania and Georgia who would like to join in too.

Since it is far easier/less-expensive for people to hop online rather than drive 30+ miles one-way, Internet Play is looking better and better. Now I've done Play by Post before (over 10 years ago) and I really didn't care for the fact that there was no real-time social aspect to it. It also required far more DM-time than running a live game. In fact, it would have been easier and faster to just write a novel. PbP is therefore simply not an option that appeals to me.

Since I have over a month to prepare, I'd like to hear from some DMs and players who have been in such campaigns to compare/contrast the challenges, techniques and tools required for such an undertaking. Specifically, I'm looking to learn of potential pitfalls that may not be immediately obvious.

Absent Players:
The most pressing one that I foresee is that of players who don't show up regularly. In my Play in Person (PiP) campaign I just finished, this was a pretty big problem. Out of the 7 players we started with, only 3 or 4 could be depended upon to show up every session. This led to either myself or other players having to control the player-less PCs which diminished the role-playing aspects of all characters involved.

To avoid/lessen this problem, the campaign idea I'm considering revolves around the concept of a serial ala Star Trek or Justice League: Unlimited. That is, each player might have a pool of several different characters. When we begin a session, we have a look at who is present and then use characters that are not already involved in a plotline that has been joined by players who are not present that evening. I figure this could be best achieved via a naval or city-based setting.

Techno-Dolts:
The calendar may say 2008, but there are still plenty of people whose IQs are effectively halved when they are forced to use a computer. To decrease the, I-don't-know-how-to-use-this-program factor, I've setup an java-based IRC chat portal on my website.

I figure this will eliminate the annoyance of people not knowing how to configure a microphone for Ventrilo/TeamSpeak. There is no joy like ear-splitting feedback or the rhythm of a bag of corn chips being devoured. This also takes care of dice-rolling (built-in scripts) and leaves us with a transcript of the sessions so people can catch-up even if they've merely stepped away to use the restroom.

I'm hoping to find a script that allows me to automate Initiative, does anyone know of one?

Character Sheets:
Even in my PiP campaign, the official record of all characters was stored in a database that I built. Character sheets were then mail-merged into MS Word templates and printed for use at the actual table (along with a DM-only chart ranking all the characters' stats across many key areas).

For online play, I'm going to attempt a re-do of my character sheet templates that is better-suited for computer-based use (PDF at worst, a context-sensitive hyperlinked document at best).

Other Tools:
To facilitate gameplay, I've already got an existing website complete with gaming forums and a wiki for house-rules, setting-info, OOC discussion, hand-outs, etc.

One important tool that I do not yet have is something to replace the battle grid (see spoiler). Since I'm quite handy with Photoshop and a Wacom tablet, all I really need is a program that can perform screen-captures of a specific application (or a specific monitor since I have dual-displays) and then upload it as a web cam feed. Does anyone know of such a program?

Spoiler:
WotC's gametable will not work for me. I have at least 2 players who are Mac-users (hence the Java-based IRC portal) and last I heard Wizard's product is Windows-only. I guess WotC never considered that even if 9 out of 10 people use Windows, if a single player uses a non-Windows-based system then that botches the use of their solution for the whole group.

What Am I Missing?
So the above represent the potential pitfalls that have occurred to me. What else will I need either in terms of technological tools or DMing techniques to ensure a fun and speedy playing experience for players and DM alike? i.e. Is there a particular way to go about handling turns and dialog in chat that I should be aware of?

Any insight would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!


Stratos wrote:
I was just wondering if anyone was doing playing Pathfinder using a sort of internet medium. Currently, I'm finding it difficult to entice people to attempt something new, unreleased, with fixes still in the works.

The group I part of have decided to try playing PF via email. We see how it goes. We decided this route as a result of our real lives getting in the way, way too often, to have a game session where every one is present.


So I was searching for screen-capture programs when I happened upon the following site: www.JingProject.com.

Basically, it lets You take either a screenshot or record a movie (with or without audio), uploads it to a website of Your choosing and then puts the URL in Your computer's paste buffer (i.e. to paste into chat).

While it's not a streaming application, this may be able to do the job anyway...

Sovereign Court

If you're looking for a person for your online game, I'd be more than happy to join it. If not, I understand.

During the weekdays, I'm available from 19:00-23:30, EST. Weekends are subjective.


I run a game where three of the players participate online. We use a webcam (logitech has a $40 model that's fairly sufficent), and use Skype for group chat and Yahoo Messenger to view the streaming video feed. It works fairly well, actually.

-Steve


Subversive wrote:
I run a game where three of the players participate online. We use a webcam (logitech has a $40 model that's fairly sufficent), and use Skype for group chat and Yahoo Messenger to view the streaming video feed. It works fairly well, actually.

Thanks for the suggestions, sounds like Your group has a solution that works well for You.

As far as for mine, we've already decided against using voice chat in favor of text-based chat. The IRC portal I've established already has that squared away since it doesn't require the players to install any software and GameRadius.org already has a dice-roller script built into ChanServ. :)

Regarding a webcam, I suppose I could point a cam at a flipmat on my coffee table, but that seems like it would be more useful in Your situation than mine (i.e. half Your group is there in-person whereas all of mine would be remote).

In my case, I think it would be more efficient and graphically impressive to have a continuous remote desktop view of a detailed map in Photoshop or Dundjinni. That way, I can erase the "fog of war" as the party moves into new areas without having to go AFK to erase and redraw the flip mats. Basically, I want to do the projector trick only over the Internet instead of onto a table-top.

After searching all day, I've found a handful of possibilities so I'll post an update once I've found something that's as easy for the users as the IRC portal.


Stratos wrote:

If you're looking for a person for your online game, I'd be more than happy to join it. If not, I understand.

During the weekdays, I'm available from 19:00-23:30, EST. Weekends are subjective.

Did You have any luck posting in the Gamer Connection forum?

Just to be clear, I'm not going to be ready to start a game until the later half of August at the very soonest (i.e. I'm setting up technological tools and figuring out a campaign premise still). Even then, in terms of potential players, I already have over a dozen RealLife™ friends who would like to play so I wouldn't want to keep You hanging.

I suppose maybe I should have started a new thread, but this one seemed close enough in relevance so I figured I'd pose my questions in here thinking that people already running a game (yet looking for players) might notice and leave a few pointers along the way. i.e. Sorry for the thread-jack. :(


And I think we have a winner!

Screen Stream by NCH Software

Free utility that allows remote viewing of the current Windows application via any web browser (Mac, PC or otherwise). I was just testing it out by viewing it on a separate internet connection on a computer adjacent to me while a friend in Philly was watching too. Lag time was less than 2 seconds when viewing an AIM chat window. It was still fairly swift while clicking thru the contents of a photo folder using the default preview mode in XP.

/me dances with joy


I use maptools with a few folks.

it's been fun setting it up but time consuming...thank the good lord for PDFs!


Laithoron wrote:

Regarding a webcam, I suppose I could point a cam at a flipmat on my coffee table, but that seems like it would be more useful in Your situation than mine (i.e. half Your group is there in-person whereas all of mine would be remote).

In my case, I think it would be more efficient and graphically impressive to have a continuous remote desktop view of a detailed map in Photoshop or Dundjinni. That way, I can erase the "fog of war" as the party moves into new areas without having to go AFK to erase and redraw the flip mats. Basically, I want to do the projector trick only over the Internet instead of onto a table-top.

Actually, I found that using a flipmat tends to work rather poorly with a webcam. The reflectivity of the mat makes it difficult for the webcam to pick up drawn lines or the grid. Instead, I use cardstock modelling. Many (and I mean many) sets are available over at Worldworksgames.com. It's a really amazing system. Takes some time to get used to, but you can generate incredible effects on a 3d scale.

-Steve


Subversive wrote:
Actually, I found that using a flipmat tends to work rather poorly with a webcam. The reflectivity of the mat makes it difficult for the webcam to pick up drawn lines or the grid. Instead, I use cardstock modelling. Many (and I mean many) sets are available over at Worldworksgames.com. It's a really amazing system. Takes some time to get used to, but you can generate incredible effects on a 3d scale.

Yeah, I can imagine that the glare factor would be a problem, especially since I'd need to turn on lights to make it visible.

The cardstock modeling is a neat idea. I actually used some of the 3.5 cardstock buildings during the urban/village encounters in my recent Red Hand of Doom campaign. Sadly, they all got crushed when the person at whose house we'd been playing was nice enough to reorganize the footlocker in which we stored all our D&D supplies. :-\

Still, I moonlight as a 3D artist (recreating archeological ruins in 3D actually) so now that I've gotten the webcam-like screen-capture thing working I can actually have the best of both worlds. :)

Other than optimizing my character sheet template for online-use, the last tool I really would like to have at my disposal is an IRC script that handles Initiative tracking.

/me is starting to get excited, "C'mon mid-August!"


David Jackson 60 wrote:
I use maptools with a few folks.

I don't see that in the Paizo store and a quick search on Google returns what looks like GPS-based cartography services. Is the maptools You're speaking of something similar to Campaign Cartographer or Fractal Mapper or are You really using something that hardcore? :o


Laithoron wrote:
David Jackson 60 wrote:
I use maptools with a few folks.
I don't see that in the Paizo store and a quick search on Google returns what looks like GPS-based cartography services. Is the maptools You're speaking of something similar to Campaign Cartographer or Fractal Mapper or are You really using something that hardcore? :o

MapTool is a free Open Source program, it's Java based.

You can find it at RPTools.
They have other programs there too, all Java based, so your Mac players should be able to enjoy them too.


David Jackson 60 wrote:

I use maptools with a few folks.

it's been fun setting it up but time consuming...thank the good lord for PDFs!

Hoorah for maptool!

Setup time decreases the more you use it. Furthermore, if you're willing to settle for the quality of map that my group will often use (that is to say, a whiteboard) then just the default maptool map is a step up.

Internet!

EDIT:

Maptool really deserves a better plug from me. I play about ten times more RPGs than I did last year because of it. In addition to the prettiness of such maps that can be found on the Dundjinni Forums are highly inspiring to a GM. Once you've built up a few, you'll find adventures writing themselves.

The tool supports vision, lighting, and fog of war. It's really easy to use these, and it really adds a huge dimension to the dungeon crawl.

Most importantly, there's a dice roller built in, and you can use macros to manage your players stats and hordes of monsters attacking with a single click.

I preach as one of the converted. There is much more functionality than I outlined here, but there are three good reasons above to get over to rptools.

Also, if anyone has trouble with port forwarding this program on a Mac, I can take you through it.

EDIT #2:

If Paizo would allow me to download a campaign file for maptool (a free program) for any of it's modules or other maps that are included, I would be a subscriber right now. In the mean time, I'm waiting for the Beta to drop.

Scarab Sages

yep i use maptools and even gave them about $60 cause i used it so much and want to keep seeing it improve. I run 2 games a week with it and its great, some games takes some setup time but when i need a map in a sec i just use the draw tools and make fast basic maps. I am starting up a PBP game but i am using a basardizd ver of pathfinder changing alot of it in hopes the beta fixes the problems so if ur looking for a prue pathfinder game to play in my games are not the ones u want.

to give you an idea i am running a FR game using Midnight setting rules for magic and feel, and pathfinder to base rules :) its a mush of many house addon rules and want to playtest it.

if interested check out

http://www.thetangledweb.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=121


Wow, that MapTool program looks pretty cool alright! I'm going to have to check this bad boy out...

BTW, thanks for the proper link GentleGiant. :)


Hey cool... I just started a thread elsewhere about a tool I had started working on to act as an electronic battlemat so we could all connect our laptops and have a shared grid... not as powerful yet as the commercial programs out there, but might be better than the technological challenges of sharing a desktop... I'll get some beta's of the DM's module up later this week
EDIT
You might also want to look at klooge

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