I’ve been wanting to try running some games on Google Wave, and I think I will start with a short term Traveller game. Greywulf over at Greywulf’s Lair set up some waves showing the sort of thing you can do to set up a game, and I plan on taking what I like from his setup and apply it for my game.
Quinn, a friend of mine over at At-Will, is running a contest. Pitch a D&D 4e game, get a Google Wave invite. Read more about it here:
http://at-will.omnivangelist.net/2009/11/the-waves-the-thing-looking-for-gamemasters/
Submissions close this Wednesday, (the 11th), so if you’re interested, post your pitch on At-Will (100 words or less) and take a shot. (There are a bunch of waves pledged, so there are going to be multiple winners)
I’ve made some pretty noticeable changes to Fighty, and I want to talk about them, so as few people have trouble as possible.
On Wave and mode.
You’re not really supposed to be able to edit a gadget in while viewing a blip, and with Fighty, I’ve learned why. If someone’s dragging the map around, and someone else is working with markers, they get really messed up. Also, the playback feature and the new items feature is practically useless, because every time someone pans the map, or zooms out, that’s a new change.
So, what I’ve done is made the map static most of the time. Here’s how it’s gonna work (for now)
Of you’re editing the blip containing the map (you can tell because you have text formatting buttons up top), everything works the way it always had. You can drag, add and delete markers, and they get updated everywhere. If you pan or zoom, they get updated for everyone in view mode.
If you’re in view (or any other) mode, you can watch. You’re able to pan around, you can zoom in or out, but someone in edit can recenter your map, or change the zoom level. You lose the add marker button. And you can look all you want, without triggering a wave update.
If this is horrible, let me know, this is the best way I can come up with addressing this issue, and it gets what to me seems to be a big usability problem taken care of, so I can focus on fun stuff (like getting icons to work), and maybe even some gaming.
I’m always looking for new ways to play games online better. Recently, I got a Google Wave invite and immediately started looking for ways to wave the game. There are a couple of dice roller robots out there (unfortunatley, robots are pretty slow at the moment), a neat card tool, which simulates a deck of playing cards, and a couple other things.
A friend of mine set up a D&D 4E game on Wave, based on Revenge of the Giants, which I was lucky to signup in time to play. This has already been discussed enough by the DM, gamefiend (see previous link) and one of the other players, Wyatt, so I’m not going to add anything there.
I’ve been spending a lot of time filling in one of the gaps that wave doesn’t do well yet, and given the nature D&D 4E, I feel is important. The battlemat.
So, Fighty is born. It’s a gadget for Google Wave, which uses a custom map from Maplib.Net. It’s a bit of a hack, as I’m not the greatest programmer in the world, but it’s just getting to the point where it is useful.
Let me know what you think.
In high school, I played and ran AD&D, 1st and 2nd Edition. I never used miniatures or any other counters to track position in combat. As time went on, I became a GURPS guy, which had an extensive hex-based combat system.
When d20/3E came out, I was so far away from Fantasy role-play, and set enough in my ways, that I wasn’t impressed with the changes (a gamer not likeing a new edition of D&D, never!). I didn’t really dig into the system till 3.5 came out. I was in the group that was mad that miniatures were listed as required, I mean this is D&D isn’t it? All you should need is dice, paper, and your books…
And I moved on. The funny thing is, sometime between when I stopped playing 2E, and now, traditional RPG’s became a thing that required minis to work. I know this isn’t really true, because I remember playing and having a blast without battlemaps and whatnot.
Just recently, I pulled out my old 1e core books from storage, and went through it. Best I can figure is I either ignored or winged tracking who was and wasn’t in melee, how tough it would be for someone to engage/disengage, and flanking/terrain advantages.
I mostly play 4E these days, and I’ve always so far used counters & maps/tiles to track combat location. What I wonder is, how tough would it be do hold all that stuff in your head, and would it make things more fun?
Are miniatures no different from initiative trackers, power cards, and hit point tracks? Just tools that take some of the cognitive load off the players? And does the clear representation of the battlefield that they provide impair the narrative of an encounter?
Comments welcome.
While away on vacation in South Jersey, I took advantage of the excellent tomatoes available in the farmers markets to make one of my favorite recipes. Fried Tomatoes.
Read more…
I finally got a chance to play a demo of Burning Wheel this weekend, and I’ve gotten over a bunch of my fears about running it. In order to get over the rest of my concerns, I want to run The Sword, a single scene demo scenario. (Also the one I played in for the record.
So, I want to try it this week. I’m do it in the evenings (EST 7-12). Drop me a line (wherever) if you’re interested with when would be best, and when would be right out. We’ll be playing over skype, and using http://www.catchyourhare.com/diceroller/ for dice. If things go well, I’d like to make a habit of this, but there’s no commitment to try.
For those of you who don’t know, Burning Wheel is a fantasy role-playing game. What makes it different (to me) from most others out there, is that since it focuses on what your character wants and believes, you end up with the sort of things happening in the game that mirror fiction better than most traditional RPGs. People new to role-playing games are welcome too, if you want to give it a try, I want to show you (this goes for any games I play).
You can think I’m a horrible person, but when I’m talking to you on
the telephone, I’m hoping you have some sort of emergency, like a
fire, so you have to get off the phone. It’s not personal, it isn’t
you. I just hate talking on the phone that much.
This might strike some people as odd. I like to talk in person, and
face to face, I do a fair job hiding that I’m introverted (usualy by
being the loudest guy in the room). However, when I’m on the phone,
even with people I like, and want or need to talk to, I’m always
trying to come up with a reason to get off the phone.
I think there are a couple things going on here. First, when you can’t
see a person, you lose a lot of visual cues to help move the
conversation along. This cab be crippling to one who counts on those
cues to gauge how the discussion us going. Second, most of the time,
the phone is people wanting something from you. For me, this poisons
the tool for pleasant experiences.
If you’re a company, and I have to call you, you probably won’t be my
first choice to do business with.
If you’re a friend, and will only interact over the phone, expect me
not to call, expect the calls to be short, and expect me to be
distracted.
This isn’t a new thing for me, and most of my friends know it (because
any relationships that very dependant on the phone have withered).
I’m hoping I’m not alone with my hatred of talking on the phone. If I
am or I’m not, let me know.
We started in the middle of combat, outside the Kobold lair. The players easily slipped back into the encounter. I took some time to talk tactics, especially combat advantage and flanking. Knowing the big fight coming I wanted to give them every bit of help in playing the game in order to keep me from having to deal with a TPK. We had a new player tonight, a dwarf ranger, Vita du Eldebjarg.
He leapt out of the woods, killing two minions immediately. The players made short work of the kobolds, and they knew it. A slinger began to move to the lair to alert his cohorts. Calon Lan (the dragonborn warlord) ran to the kobold and grabbed the kobold. (I like the grab rules, I know that Wotc made a big deal of simplifying them, I don’t know how bad they were before, but it was easier than I feared it’d be.)
Vita then runs of into the woods, as the other characters dispatch the remain kobolds. The encounter ends, the characters grabbed the dwarf, and began asking questions. “Who are you?” “Why are you following us?”
At first Vita refused to answer the group. As the group took a more friendly approach, he reveals that there is someone in the lair that he must kill.
They send their rouge, Felix to gather intelligence, before launching their attack. With a fair amount of luck, she was able to get enough information to formulate a plan. The ranger and rouge will wait by the waterfall entrance, while the main force makes an assault on the west entrance.
Shortly after the fight begins, we start running out of time. The wizard dropped his flaming sphere, and used it to great effect to scour some minions. The skirmishers are harrassing the rouge and ranger, who entered the lair as the guards ran to attack the main force.
We ran out of time as the second eve of kobolds became ready, so we took pictures of the map, and called it a night.
My thoughts.
This session went great. Liam, who is playing Vita, had me nervous, as him playing his concept could easily become a fun-spoiler for the rest of the group. It seems that that’s not the direction that Vita is going in, and it should be awesome. (I’d love to share it, but I need to have a discussion with the players regarding PC vs. Player knowlege). In fact, many of the players have begun to develop some interesting backstories. The setting is startig to write itself, thanks to the players.
I’m having trouble with the session format. In a 2 hour slot, there seems to be enough time for a combat, and a small amount of roleplay, I think thy there needs to be a bit more time to have the narrative not feel disjointed.
School’s going on spring break, and we’re not sure yet if we want to have a Skype session, or just miss the session.
I’ll keep you posted.
Here’s a much delayed session report for the second Shadowfell session at Kent.
Before we start, let me talk about the characters a little bit.
We have,
They all shared a mentor, Douven Staul, at different times in their life, and are traveling to Winterhaven to ascertain why he has gone missing. The details of the characters histories and if they know each other have been left open ended. (If you’ve played with me, you’ve probably know how I like the character to emerge from play over being plotted out before hitting the game table.)
Being new to gaming, and short on time, I’m not pressuring the players to fill out detailed character backgrounds. I intend on trying out my Action Point for flashback rule, to provide an incentive, but realize that my players don’t even know yet what parts of gaming they like. (It’s very strange, to instead of making sure that everyone’s ‘type’ is engaged, to try and do things to encourage the trying of different play styles.)
Now on to session #2.
We begin as the players approach Winterhaven, where they scoped out the town, were pretty interested in the tower in town, I think they were at first looking for an oppressive wizard keeping the town under his thumb. The players who’ve had some cRPG experience immediatley started asking around for a questgiver for the Kobold problem. Hope I figure out a way to insert goals that don’t feel like that in the future.
After an evening in town, talking to people, gathering clues about Douven and the Kobold problem, selling the supplies looted from the ambush. I don’t know what I think about vendor trash. With minions, you get bigger battles, which means more non-treasure loot. I’m tempted to do what Gamefiend (from At Will) does, and just gives the value out as loot, but I like the idea of being able to grab the gear and reuse it. Hopefully, it’ll work out, as the dropped gear is so worthless compared to the treasure, and they’ll just start leaving the gear or destroying it.
The following day, they headed out, to assualt the kobold lair (I’ve ommitted the second ambush, and plan on using the encounter later, taking a tip from The Alexandrian). The players took an direct approach, and began the attack.
Players are still having some trouble really working together, as am I with the monsters, in terms of strategy. Concealment & cover are tricky (what does two squares of forest look like for line of sight/fog of war?). The game is flowing smoothly enough that I’m comfortable trying to give better descriptions, and pulling better narration from the players. Everyone’s still trying to find their place, which is okay.
We ran out of time mid encounter, so that’s where we’re going to pick up tonight. Hopefully the party can handle the inside of the Kobold warren.
Next installment, a new ally joins our heroes. Will his dark past come back to haunt him? Can he be trusted? Only time will tell.