McNum
2014-05-27, 03:55 PM
So, some friends of mine have expressed interest in trying out a pen and paper roleplaying, but there's a catch. We're spread all over the world, so the only way we'd all be able to communicate at the same time would be online. Now the channel we hang out in has a dice roller bot, so that part isn't a problem.
But I'm kind of thinking about the rest of the logistics, since having an actual table does help with a lot of things when playing. So, I'm curios if any of you have experience doing something like this?
The biggest losses I can see from not having a table is the lack of a battle mat or even a dungeon map for when the players are dungeon delving.
I'm thinking combat can be abstracted a bit. Describe your approximate location to the opponents and so on without actually having miniatures. Magic will suffer a little here, but it's pretty powerful, anyway, so if it loses a little accuracy in not being able to trickshoot lightning bolts or similar, well, it'll just have to be.
As for dungeon exploring, maybe do it like old text adventure games? "You stand in a dimly lit room. Two statues depicting a knight and a dragon stand next to a door to the north. A nice carpet connects the northern door to the southern door you entered from. Exits are South, North, and Southeast." Something like that? Since it'd be IRC, the players could scroll up to recheck the descriptions, or something.
I tagged this DM Help, because I'm most likely going to end up as the DM if we play. Got a little experience doing so in real life, I was a clueless newbie DM, though. But that just means I've made a lot of the newbie mistakes already.
As for system, I'm leaning Pathfinder, since it's all available online for free legally. Makes it easier to reference a rule, and I played a bit of 3.5 a while ago. But I'm open to suggestions, it just has to be easily available worldwide.
So, got any suggestions on how to pull something like this off? Or experience doing so that might be nice to know in advance?
But I'm kind of thinking about the rest of the logistics, since having an actual table does help with a lot of things when playing. So, I'm curios if any of you have experience doing something like this?
The biggest losses I can see from not having a table is the lack of a battle mat or even a dungeon map for when the players are dungeon delving.
I'm thinking combat can be abstracted a bit. Describe your approximate location to the opponents and so on without actually having miniatures. Magic will suffer a little here, but it's pretty powerful, anyway, so if it loses a little accuracy in not being able to trickshoot lightning bolts or similar, well, it'll just have to be.
As for dungeon exploring, maybe do it like old text adventure games? "You stand in a dimly lit room. Two statues depicting a knight and a dragon stand next to a door to the north. A nice carpet connects the northern door to the southern door you entered from. Exits are South, North, and Southeast." Something like that? Since it'd be IRC, the players could scroll up to recheck the descriptions, or something.
I tagged this DM Help, because I'm most likely going to end up as the DM if we play. Got a little experience doing so in real life, I was a clueless newbie DM, though. But that just means I've made a lot of the newbie mistakes already.
As for system, I'm leaning Pathfinder, since it's all available online for free legally. Makes it easier to reference a rule, and I played a bit of 3.5 a while ago. But I'm open to suggestions, it just has to be easily available worldwide.
So, got any suggestions on how to pull something like this off? Or experience doing so that might be nice to know in advance?