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View Full Version : Online Game Tools: What's Missing?



Shhalahr Windrider
2009-02-09, 10:45 AM
When you've been playing a game online, is there anything you've found difficult? Anything that's made you wish there was some sort of software that would make the experience easier and more enjoyable? Have you ever been frustrated when you couldn't find such a utility?

I am currently working on developing a website for various online tools and utilities for use with RPGs. I've got a few ideas for some tools I could develop, but I want to hear other people's opinions. I'd like to try and fill any gaps that there may be in the tools that are currently out there. I'm particularly thinking about utilities that would be useful for Play by Post games, but I would also appreciate ideas for ttools that could be used for general Pen and Paper play.

For the time being, I want my tools to be game system-neutral. This would help make them useful to as wide an audience as possible. It would also make it easier for me to avoid infringing on the intellectual property of others.

So, what's missing? What gaps need to be filled? Let's make gaming easier for everyone.

DM Raven
2009-02-09, 05:33 PM
I'm not a fan of online roleplay. It feels like it's harder to create an atmosphere and really get everyone involved in the game when I don't have them sitting across a table from me. Plus I don't like it when I can't see dice rolls. It's not that I think people are cheating, It's more just a pet peeve of mine. And I hate dice rolling programs...

Vonriel
2009-02-09, 09:32 PM
Plus I don't like it when I can't see dice rolls. It's not that I think people are cheating, It's more just a pet peeve of mine. And I hate dice rolling programs...

This right here is a good start. I can think of a dozen and a half things that a good dice roller should have, but it doesn't sound like you're talking about actually programming one into one of the tools I've used.

Something else would be a good library of tokens/creatures/etc. for the players and DM to use, so that they're not forced to go browsing the webs to try and find the one odd token out there that matches their character perfectly. Bonus points if it integrates easily into the library of an actual tabletop program.

I've got a couple more ideas, but they're mostly on the design-your-own side of things, I think. For your interest, the two programs I've used have been Maptool and OpenRPG.

Prometheus
2009-02-09, 10:05 PM
For PbP it seems like it's a big problem when everyone is online but one person, so it is awkward because they don't know whether they should advance the story or wait. Also there seems to be more players than GMs, so there is time spent choosing between when ultimately the GM has very little to base the decision on. What this points toward is something that would measure the times in which someone is online (either when they are logged in or when they post) and match people up by nearest compatible times. Of course some of the Aussies might feel like they will be discriminated against, but if someone has a schedule that matches (by time zone or just being active at different hours) than they should be able to get the full benefit by being selected less frequently, but also from a smaller pool (which means they are more likely to be selected any given time). Of course, unless you have a thriving RP forum, what you will really need to do this is information from several other popular forums (which they may be skeptical to give, but will get a clear benefit from providing). If those other forums liked it well enough (and their economic livelihood was boosted from drawing this kind of crowd), you might even be able to procure a small amount of money from the extra forum activity (more active games, plus encouraging crossovers between forums = more ad/merchandise revenue).

Some very well put on campaigns are worth reading over just to follow the story. Perhaps their could be a mechanism for rating threads/chatlogs (that are submitted or a present on the web-medium) and searching them by topic (zombie threads for the win!).

Dragonsdoom
2009-02-10, 10:43 AM
I don't know if this will help your decisions or not, but here is what I do for the session that I run over the internet on Wednesday nights:

First off, typing is too slow for my group to get anything meaningful done. I know that it works for some people to play by post or email or IRC, but it is really far too slow for my group.
About half my group is part of the gaming clan I run, and everyone has microphones, so we set up a voip chat conference over Skype (http://www.skype.com) so we can easily converse even if something breaks and a server goes down.
This really streamlines a great deal of the mechanics of the game, because of instead of typing out complicated and long works such as 'initiative', 'failed fortitude save' or 'massive damage check', we instead can instantly relay what happens over the microphones.

The second program we use is very small and apparently rather obscure, and it is called GameTable. (http://gametable.galactanet.com/) Now there are several reasons we use Gametable, the first of which is stability. My group for a while used the popular program OpenRPG, but stopped using it due to clunky UI, a large number of useless "features", and specifically the fact that every single time we tried to get anything done it crapped out and broke, disconnecting and booting players randomly. This was while I was running a personal server on my machine, so at one point we tried running it in a room on a public server, but we continued to have the same problems, and gave up on it.
We continued on to try and find a better solution, including considering designing levels in video games such as PASandbox (http://www.moddb.com/games/platinum-arts-sandbox) to simulate the environment, but eventually settled on Gametable. Gametable is much more stable than OpenRPG; although we still have some connectivity issues once in a while, they are much more rare.

The second reason we use Gametable is the easy GUI, the program is very simple and as such has a nice simple UI. One of the issues we had with ORPG, as I said before was that it was full of "useless features". Some of the stuff that was built into the game was completely useless for us, such as the character sheets and xml spreadsheets, and a great deal of the stuff just plain did not work right or was very clunky, such as the fog of war that did not work right, the map editor that did not work at all, the server system that failed to serve, the entire save system that made me redraw the map every time we crashed, and I think my favorite part was the error that made all the player and monster icons turn into green boxes and gave me popup errors every single time one moved a single square.

The third reason we use gametable is a combination of three minor things; the fact that when the server shuts down, or when the program closes it saves all the date to the server computer, allowing the DM to start the game off in the exact same place as he left off, and the ease of which you can add new resources to the game. Seriously, this is nice. I find a awesome image of a paladin off of Deviantart (http://www.deviantart.com/) or Elfwood (http://www.elfwood.com/), hop into the GNU Image Manipulation Program (http://gimp.org/), size the thing to the right size, slap a border on it, save it as a .png in the pog folder, hit f5 in the program and bam, instant NPC paladin plothook.
The third minor thing is a really nice publisher/depublisher that gives each player his own invisible overlay to the map that can be used in a variety of ways. The simplest use of it is for a caster to figure out his area effects ahead of time without getting in the way of the current player's turn, where a more complex use of it is for a DM to plan out a entire dungeon before the session and only reveal a room or two at a time.

I hope I gave some help or hints of help here, the summary of this whole meandering post is basically keep it stable and simple, with thought going into the UI and you should have something in the end that people will at least experiment with, if not use all the time.
I run this game with seven PCs, so anything that helps me get organized better is a real help.

As a final side note, I personally would get use out of a number generator that automatically rolls six separate sets of numbers, with custom configured dice. So basically a stat generator that works with experimental alternate numbers to generate ability scores. So instead of it always rolling '4d6 drop lowest', I can configure it to roll that, 3d6, or even 2d6+6. I think it would see the most use with DMs who create many NPC based encounters, as opposed to players or DMs who prefer more monsters.

Also, hello to the GITP forums, this is my first post.:smallsmile:

Moofaa
2009-02-11, 04:24 AM
I use OpenRPG, and like Dragonsdoom has mentioned it contains many bugs and features that I don’t use. Making custom character sheets in the program is far too complicated, and don't get me started on the useless map tools. In fact, the only thing the map tool gets used for in my games is for displaying pictures.

By far the biggest problem I have with OpenRPG is that is FUGLY. The GUI is a major eyesore for someone like me that plays a variety of computer games. Who wants to stare at a wall of text and numbers?

If I had the talent, one of the first things that would go is the default windows GUI. I want something totally different that doesn’t look like I am staring at the contents of my C: drive. Look at the UI in games like World of Warcraft, Civilization, etc. They are much more pleasing!

Another suggestion: Move dice rolls outside of the chat area. I think it would be cool to have a "dice panel" where 3-d dice are "physically" rolled and randomly bounce around like real dice. This could be difficult I understand if someone needs to roll 100 d10's or something, but for most rolling of a d20 or a few 6-siders it would really add something to help keep players focused on the game.

Addition of player portraits. I would use a video-game once again as an example. The default WoW interface has images of each characters face next to their name. Just like the game, space next to their portrait and name could be used to track wounds/vitality/magic/status (but it would have to be VERY easy to track whatever you wanted to. I would suggest a small notepad-like space where text can be freely entered/changed by the player and GM)

Multi-media: The ability to play music or sound files for all players would be very nice. I understand there could be some legal issues with this, which is why many modern games that support user mods cannot support MP3's. There might be ways around it.

Include pre-fab graphics/sounds/etc or ways for users to upload these to a database server accessed from inside the program. Saves time on Google-image + editing when I can just click on "browse tokens" do a search for "ogre" and pick one of a dozen variations of "ogre" that user JoeGamer uploaded to the server. The tokens are of course already formatted appropriately and ready to go.

Inclusion of VOIP could be very good, although some users like myself may not be able to use this feature (I have unreliable internet).

Oh, and the biggest feature I could want: The ability to share MSOffice-type files. My groups always use custom character sheets prepared in Word format. It’s a real pain to have to e-mail them to each other and would be awesome if I could click on a characters name and select "download character sheet JohnTheSorc.doc". Making files sharable would be as easy as putting a copy into a specified folder in the programs directory.

I mentioned I don’t use the map feature very much. One reason is personal preference as I prefer descriptive combat to “miniatures warfare”. OpenRPG attempts to include most of the features required for minis, maps, images, free drawing, etc. But its execution is shoddy. If I can play Sins of a Solar Empire with thousands of ships in the game, each responding to the commands of their respective players, why oh why can’t this program seem to successfully update changes for all players without going psycho?

Saving the game state is a wonderful idea. Saving chat logs and being able to easily load them from saves would be wonderful.

If I get bored enough I might draw up a rendition of the UI I am talking about in MSPaint and upload it somewhere.

adanedhel9
2009-02-11, 08:35 AM
One thing that jumps out at me would be a persistent version of MapTools/OpenRPG/GameTable/whathaveyou, aimed at PbP games. Ideally it would have all the flexibility of the existing tools, but iit wouldn't require everyone to play at once. It would allow people to log in on their own schedule, see the most recent map, move their character, make rolls, etc. - ie play out their turn as if they had a battlemat in front of them. All the moves would be stored on the server. At least once a round the DM would have have to log in to check all the player's actions (with the option to revoke actions as necessary) and advance the baddies' turns.

This is probably doable just by leaving one of the said existing applications running, but that just seems like a clumsy way of doing it. Plus, as a gadget-guy DM, I know I would be able to leave MapTools alone if I had it running constantly - I'd be continually tweaking things, waiting for the next response, etc. Ideally this would be a web app, making it accessible to those who aren't at their regular computers. Email integration would be cool, too, to notify the the DM when players take their turns, to notify the players when their turns come up, and to notify the players when the DM accepts or rejects their actions.

I'd also like to see an online character sheet with built-in version control. I've been using my wiki to serve this purpose, but it doesn't have the nice layout of the existing online character sheets, nor the automatic calculations.

Shhalahr Windrider
2009-02-12, 09:46 AM
I'm not a fan of online roleplay. It feels like it's harder to create an atmosphere and really get everyone involved in the game when I don't have them sitting across a table from me. Plus I don't like it when I can't see dice rolls. It's not that I think people are cheating, It's more just a pet peeve of mine. And I hate dice rolling programs...
Well, I don't think there's much I can help you with there.


I'd also like to see an online character sheet with built-in version control. I've been using my wiki to serve this purpose, but it doesn't have the nice layout of the existing online character sheets, nor the automatic calculations.
Version control? You mean, as in it saves the updates to the character stats to make it easier to go back if, say, your character loses a level?

Another_Poet
2009-02-12, 11:19 AM
Version control? You mean, as in it saves the updates to the character stats to make it easier to go back if, say, your character loses a level?

BOOM! Yes I like this.

Here is something else I'd like to see:

Skill Point Calculator
Enter Rogue1/Barb1/Rogue4/Assassin3, set your Int score and click the button. It tells you your total skill points (at the very least) and (if possible) which skills are class skills at which levels. It also reminds you to choose bonus languages and has a complete language list pull-down for each race, and heck if you're going all the way give it a synergy table.

adanedhel9
2009-02-12, 03:56 PM
Version control? You mean, as in it saves the updates to the character stats to make it easier to go back if, say, your character loses a level?

I hadn't even considered the possibility.:smallwink:

Version control does provide a couple other benefits that I can see:

1) Undo button. If you slip up and remove an item, or skill ranks, or what-have-you with the existing online sheets, you're pretty much out of luck. With version control, you can always step back and see what was there before. In a PbP scenario, this could be also be helpful as actions get revoked to roll back spell usage, hp lost, etc.

2) DM control. I can edit my player's character sheets when necessary without worrying about wiping out the player's changes.

3) Character audits. This certainly would be more useful with certains types of games than others, but I could see a DM flipping back through the history to make sure everything's okay. In a game starting at high level, a player could create their character one level at a time to ensure that skill points are properly alloted and no prerequisistes were missed. (I've personally done this on paper for a 17th-level game with a triple-classed character. It was just to much to track to do it all in one step.)

4) PC > NPC conversion. I've been involved in games where previous PCs from the same setting make cameo appearances as NPCs. The DM could be able to quickly grab a character's stats from level 3 even though the previous campaign ended at level 8.