Dungeons and Dragons Online

[Ultima]

I'm not sure if this is the correct forum to be discussing this in, but I'll try anyway:

I'm interested in starting a Dungeons and Dragons group with several friends I know from various forums around the web. Not knowing them in real life and being relatively young, I am unable to travel to play D&D physically with them, with even more obstacles being posed by the fact that the various players are spread across states, countries, and continents.

Now I've heard of roleplaying games like D&D being held over instant messaging programs such as AOL Instant Messenger. Since AOL Instant Messenger (or AIM) is the main medium for most non-forum related communications, I'm sure it would be easily accessible by all members. However, while AIM is great for instant messaging, I feel that the chatroom features may come up lacking for D&D. Complications may be posed by the need to share maps and grids for combat as well as actual imagery in place of what might be props in a traditional game. In addition, dice rolls can be faked by players, and if left to DMs, who's to say the DM won't fudge the rolls in favor of what he or she wants to happen? A system for rolling dice to be publicly broadcast is not available on AIM, so die rolls must rely on a bit of an honor system instead.

The point I'm raising is that it might be easier to play Dungeons and Dragons in a form where all of the above is possible. My question is: what would be the easiest way to support a real-time chat involving the above? Is there some sort of magical program engineered by elves I'm unaware of that might provide all of the above and more? Some systems that would make a channel for OOC and IC messages? While this program sounds unreal to me, I'm almost confident some internet-goers were anxious to play D&D in the same manner I do and had the same problem... hopefully being skilled in the ways of whatever talent would be helpful in making this program.

Thank you for any help in advance!

- Ultima

[Glyde]

http://gametable.galactanet.com/

http://rptools.net/doku.php?id=maptool:intro


The first one is very basic, but good. The second takes some time to learn but once you do, it's amazing. I highly recommend it.

[Mando Knight]

My question is: what would be the easiest way to support a real-time chat involving the above? Is there some sort of magical program engineered by elves I'm unaware of that might provide all of the above and more? Some systems that would make a channel for OOC and IC messages? While this program sounds unreal to me, I'm almost confident some internet-goers were anxious to play D&D in the same manner I do and had the same problem... hopefully being skilled in the ways of whatever talent would be helpful in making this program.

If you have access to any kind of image editor (i.e. the free GIMP), you can use this site in conjunction with an image hosting site to handle everything... except for character sheets. Then I recommend Myth-Weavers. That site can handle character sheets for a wide variety of systems.

[RTGoodman]

http://gametable.galactanet.com/

http://rptools.net/doku.php?id=maptool:intro

What he said.

Wizards is also releasing their own online game-table, but it's not up yet and will require at least one person to be a paying subscriber to be able to use it. Since it's not out yet, I can't comment on how good it might be, but the above stuff is, as far as I know, free, so that makes it a very attractive idea.

Play-By-Post, as Mando is hinting at, is also very easy to do and can do basically everything you wanted, but it's also a LOT slower since a lot of times people aren't going to be online at the same time (unless you plan on it beforehand). With judicial use of MS Excel, know-how of board code, and stuff, you can easily make a really good-looking game in PbP. (Here's a sample from one of my current games.)

[Ravens_cry]

I prefer chat room or AIM play by post, as it is more fast paced.

[Who_Da_Halfling]

Also, if you're willing to not use your computer for all your notes and stuff, or if you have access to another computer, there are programs that will allow you to display your desktop to people in a chatroom-type session. This will allow you to display maps/items/images/etc. freely while still chatting to keep up the dialogue. As I said, you would have to keep anything you want secret off-screen, either on another computer or on paper (how quaint). I'm not sure if there are any free services that have this feature, but I use webex for work.

-JM

[Jack_Simth]

Also, don't forget OpenRPG ... although oddly, the website appears to be running very slowly at the moment; I suspect it's flooded with update requests. The Sourceforge Entry is doing fine, though.

[Raum]

As Glyde mentioned there are several Virtual Table Top (VTT) packages available. I use Fantasy Grounds.