Quick Guide to Online Campaigns v0.1

WORK IN PROGRESS!

Since I generally am not in habit of using underlines, chances are, the underlines you see in the posts are hyperlinks for your convenience.


There are kind of games where you meet together, with snacks and drinks, gather around a table, and play. Then there are kind of games where you sit down by your computer, with a headset, looking at an online RPG client, with snacks and drinks.

There probably are more, but that's as catchy as I can make it in my inebriated state.

There are advantages and disdvantages to an online campaign, when compared to old-school types of gathering around a table. Either talking by text, or accompanied by some form of voice communication.

This, so far, has been written based on my personal experience, and is subject to edit based on criticisms, recommendations and suggestions.

An online session typically should involve an online RPG client. They should come with a feature for maps (in image formats), die rollers (essentially random number generators), and a chat. I haven't found any that comes with voice communication yet, which is nice, especially when someone is rather distracted doing something else (like in our case, playing World at War) in middle of a session. So essentially, GM pulls out a map (generally hosted online. I use Imageshack. My former GM used Photobucket) and relevant figures (also images). Players pull out figures. And so on. It's better than it sounds.

Advantages
o Not restricted by area, or time. As long as you can find a time that all of you can turn up in, it's simple. For many, you probably would have easier time finding groups this way. A simple way to take care of the time, for those whom, for whatever reason, this idea didn't occur to, is to convert all the time to one timezone (typically GM's), tabulate it, and then sort it out. Tables are handy. Do whatever you are comfortable with.

o It may be easier to get into character. If you are shy, or just don't want to look too goofy by acting it out when people are actually looking at you, perhaps you will shine better this way. Your lack of dramatic acting skills won't hinder you as much, should you be lacking.

o Less preparation required. No need to prepare the house for guests, or organizing who'll drive and how. Most clients have some form of map display as well, and built-in die roller. It's in the comfort of your home, or your room, and I'm not saying that because I never leave my room there is less pain involved due to bad manners that men (and women) of /tg/ so passionately seem to hate. You also can settle down quicker, and start quicker, wasting less time, if that's your thing.

o Writing skills. For those who have better writing skills than oratory, you may have easier time describing the scene, or an action, using simple text rather than with attempting the classical way. This, of course, works both ways as a disadvantage.

o For those who care, transcripts! Chatlogs can be saved easy for easy reference back to older sessions if needs be.


Disadvantages
o Lacks atmosphere. Some GMs, by stories, go painstakingly set up atmosphere. Lighting. Ambient sound. Music. This is harder to enforce online. Many an epic stories float on /tg/ using just that - lighting, ambient sound, music, voice acting. Having these impaired may make it more difficult to convey the type of environment, mood, and atmosphere you wish to. This, of course, works both ways if you lack such finesse.

o Distractions. You are at a computer. You are not being observed. There's nothing stopping you from taking a 10-minute break to just check something, right? I mean, that guy's been sitting there, trying to think what to do for past 5 minutes. The game will still be there when you're back. That's... kind of annoying for everyone else.

o Reliant on stable Internet connection.. Just like how getting to the host's house can depend on traffic conditions, this relies on you, and the server, to have a stable connection. Like the time when half my players kept dropping out every few seconds because they couldn't maintain their connection. Damn Comcast.. Bad cabling, weather, disasters, and so on can effect this just as much as moving physically to the host's house.



What you need:
o An online RPG client. Popular choices seem to be OpenRPG and MapTools. Some use IRCs with bots for dice rolling, it seems, but that's something I've yet look into.

What is nice to have:
o Voice communication. Such as Ventrilo, TeamSpeak, Skype, or Mumble. It's possible you can get by with voice chat features in X-Fire or Steam. Having voice communication, in personal opinion, can be nice in that if someone is distracted, or has questions, few things can beat good shouting and yelling through the mic (and headset) a polite, verbal reminder. This also can come with advantage of, if you care, keeping the client's chatlog completely in-character.

o A map repository. As the RPG clients more or less only accept maps in image format (generally jpg and png being most common ones), it's good to have a source of maps, as well as a place to host them. Ones I made use out of included RPG Map Share and RPG Life. There is a 1.2GB collection of maps floating around somewhere, which could be of questionable legality in United States, with new Acts and laws coming in and such. Please contact me, and I'll point you in the right direction. As for hosting images, standard practices are to resort to imageshack, Photobucket, Tinypic.

o Players. Or GMs.. But hopefully, we can help fix that here.


Version 0.1, 2015 hours, 22nd Dec, 2010, Sydney time (creation).
Version 0.1b, 2025 hours, 23rd Dec, 2010, Sydney time (elaborations and strikethroughs).
Version 0.1c, 1715 hours, 25th Dec, 2010, Sydney time (more elaboration, descriptive writing and such).

VERY strong advantages and disadvantages. My biggest advantage with online gaming is players get into character VERY easily but my biggest down fail is how easy they can be distracted and they begin to multi-task (when a few cannot). With a voice option for Out-Of-Character talk, it's easier to keep their attention and role calling.

You're free to post a link from photobucket, tinypic, etc and anything considered free and legal in the USA, but due to our copyright and pirating laws we obviously can't provide links and torrents for things sold in the USA (but on the off chance that it isn't sold in the USA then it's fair game. So long as your torrents JUST has images, slides, tokens, whatever I'll allow it OR you can send links to others who desire them upon request. PLEASE CHECK YOUR SOURCES BEFORE POSTING LINKS).

For those wondering what Maptools is: http://rptools.net/

RPtools is a GREAT site, everything is free and it provides programs that you simply just extract from folders and not have to install them. They have library of tokens, maps, textures, and if you got a bite from the Photoshop bug you'll grasp this very quickly. I use Maptool and Tokentool (which makes tokens simply by dragging image, dropping it into the field, cropping, and picking a boarder).

I'll be more than happy to help set up your maptool programs and forward you some goodies to help (such as a free version of Log Me In Hamachi (a program that safely makes a second IP address to protect your computer. It's free, takes a minute to install and very user friendly that business tend to use).

The map-pack, due to the possibility that some of the content may not entirely be legal, will be sent privately upon request.

I never used MapTools, but I did use OpenRPG. It's Python-based (so you install Python libraries and wxPython libraries), comes with "gametree" (for quick access to minis, and apparently, rolls, but I haven't figured out the latter yet), map window, chat window (with a list of "alias" to choose from, to alternate the character talking), die roller (a random number generator, from xd2 to xd10,000), option for grids (grid lines thick, dotted, square, hexagonal, distance in-between, et cetra), "fog of war" for GMs, "hiding" of mini for GMs (from the players), and on. I didn't bother poking much into it save the obvious features. I can't speak for MapTools, but there already are plenty of servers out there that you can easily connect to and start playing, without having to set up things too much (save, say, your "name", and so on).

I'm going to add more things as they pop up, either here, in my head, or some form of trigger in life.

I'll have to start reading up on this. I've never tried an online campaign before.

I will list this as an advantage, but your mileage may vary on this.
I find myself to be more descriptive when I use text. I do well with creative writing, and though I'm a fine roleplayer I find it easier to do over text rather than face to face.
So if you're good with writing stories or describing action scenes, you might do well with online roleplay rather than tabletop.
I also find that online RP is great for small sessions where you can only get together for 3-4 hours or so. Where at a tabletop it takes a few hours to get settled down and reacquainted with the session, people just get refreshments and chips and boom, you're ready to go in an online game.

Roland wrote:I will list this as an advantage, but your mileage may vary on this.
I find myself to be more descriptive when I use text. I do well with creative writing, and though I'm a fine roleplayer I find it easier to do over text rather than face to face.
So if you're good with writing stories or describing action scenes, you might do well with online roleplay rather than tabletop.
I also find that online RP is great for small sessions where you can only get together for 3-4 hours or so. Where at a tabletop it takes a few hours to get settled down and reacquainted with the session, people just get refreshments and chips and boom, you're ready to go in an online game.

That's legitimate. It's funny that how I assumed being descriptive and atmospheric works one way, but not the other.