D&D Game [D&D Game]

[azekeil]

This (and any future posts) will be marked with [D&D Game] in the subject to allow those who are not interested to skip over them.

For my D&D game, I'm planning on picking up many of the things I've liked about previous roleplaying experiences and combining them and hopefully seeing if they work.

For example:

• While I think background about the world is a good thing, I could never be bothered to read dry lists of historical actions on particular dates, or even potted histories, so why should I expect anyone else to? The obvious alternative is to use modern world history, but that is a) out of genre and b) doesn't suit my desire to escape connections to real life. So, combining my desire to write stories, I think I will write some short stories which should entertain as well as provide some background on the world in which my players will be operating. If I can't be bothered to do that, I'll just hijack another world that has stories written for it :)
• Second, I really really loved the role playing that could happen through online forums. Some of the best roleplaying I've seen has happened there. I'm after some more immediacy though so I might suggest an IRC-based medium, one nick/room for the in-character stuff and one for the out of character stuff. Real-time mediums would also neatly confine the game to a set period of time, which was one of the problems with forum-based methods. Online roleplaying also has the advantage that my players don't have to be local either.
• There already exists open-source software that will allow remote players to share maps and tokens, and IRC and dice bots, etc, so I need to investigate those for use.
• Wikis and the like may be used as well, although that may be a little over the top.
• I've not decided yet whether this should be 4th edition or 3.5.

Comments? Anyone interested in taking part? I doubt this will happen any time soon though.

Comments

[megamole.livejournal.com]

Depends on geography.

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

I'm rather hoping it doesn't - the idea is to use open-source software to play together over the internet.

I'll probably run a one-off play test of this idea soon, to see how it works.

[xidia.livejournal.com]

I could be tempted by an online but synchronous (ie all playing at the same time) game. As you probably know I quite like enough background to escape RL but I'm also not great at learning shedloads of mythology just in case the GM thinks it relevant. Online-wise 3.5 or 4 would be fine. I may know other interested parties - let me know if you're looking for more players?

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

No - that was kind of the point of the story idea - although hopefully I can build a lot of it in to the game itself, feeding the players the info they need as we go. At this point everything's mutable, so the more feedback I get the more chance the game works better for you :)

Yes people are welcome to declare an interest. If all goes well, I'm interested in running this as a full campaign and putting a fair amount of effort in. I don't mind if the timing needs to change or drop off in places, but I would love dedicated players to follow this through.

[nairoz.livejournal.com]

I'd be quite interested in playing - no preferences to edition, although have more experience with 3.5 than 4th.

Also, I looked into the feasibility of free to use tools before, for something similar with my friends - although they're lazy buggers so the plan fell apart, I have a list of useful bits I found, lemme do some digging.

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Cool. I've mostly decided on maptool and some sort of macro framework, but this may make things more complicated than I want.. this is why I'm thinking of having a trial session where we try out the tools.

[nairoz.livejournal.com]

Sounds good to me - rptools were what i settled on too.

What particuarly proved a problem for me was dice rolling - I found this which was working fairly well - lets everyone see dicerolls. Could be an idea if you want to make sure it's totally open - depends how much you trust your players!

I was looking into the tool feasability from a GM perspective rather than a player perspective, so it'll be interesting this time round to see how it works as a player!