NerdNightmare

It has been said that whenever a new piece of technology comes out, “someone will try to figure out a way to play D&D with it”.  I don’t know if this is true 100% of the time, but is definitely true for Google Wave. I was fortunate enough to receive a beta invite to the service, and from day one users were attempting to play pen & paper style RPG’s with it.

I play Dungeons & Dragons with friends on a fairly regular basis, but was having trouble organizing a meeting time that worked for all the players. I decided that google wave could be a solution to the problem. And so far, it has worked fairly well. This how-to guide is not intended to be a definitive guide. It is simply a method I came up with that has worked for me and my players.

What you will need:

1. Willing Players – This is a big one, the game will play differently than if you were sitting around a table.  So you need players who are open to a new play experience.

2. Patience – The pace of the game will be considerably slower than normal. I find that you will get through a single round of combat in 1-2 days, depending on how active your players are. If you have ever played a game via e-mail, the pace will be familiar.

3. GoogleWave Access – Now that wave is no longer in Beta, anyone can get an account. And it is FREE. There is a learning curve for new wave users, but it is not too hard to grasp.

4. Dicebot – There are a number dice rolling extensions for wave.  I use Dicey, it is free and easy to use. When a player is making a roll, they simply type out the roll and Dicey gives the result.

(More info on rolling can be found in the how-to play section)

5. Imagination – The best part of playing D&D via wave so far has been the increase in role play. At the table, some of my players are timid when it comes to acting in character. I find that online, they are more comfortable speaking as their characters. They have time to think about what to say and how they want to say it. As a DM, I have found that having more time to decide what happens to the characters, to describe how a location looks, determine how an NPC will speak, etc… has made the game more enjoyable for the players.

6. Game System Knowledge – My players and I use the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons. I have no doubt that you can adapt this guide to use a previous edition, or other Pen & Paper RPG’s. But regardless of what game you play, you will need to know how to play the normal way before playing it via Google Wave.

(For the remainder of this how-to guide, assume I am using D&D 4th edition rules.)

Getting setup:

For the current game I am running I asked my players to create new level one characters. Playing via wave was new to us all. To avoid extra complications I decided that level one characters would be the easiest to manage. D&D 4th edition also has a handy character creation tool that can be found on the Wizards of the Coast website.  It is located here.

Within google wave, create two separate waves. A game wave and a chat wave. You do not want the game to become cluttered with out of character chatter. A separate chat wave keeps things tidy. In the game wave make sure to add the dice rolling extension of your choice.

Next, convert the players character sheets into PDF files. Within the game wave create a “private reply” for each player and post a link to their character sheet. I posted my player’s character sheets on my website. There are many free file hosting options online. Your players will now always have access to their character sheets, no matter what computer they are using. The reason for posting the links in individual private replies is so that the other players will not be privy to sensitive information about the other characters in the party. Remember, keeping secret information a secret is a big part of Dungeons & Dragons.

(I will show the process of creating a “private reply” in the how-to play section.)

Once the game wave is setup, and the players have character sheets and access to google wave, the game can begin.

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For my game, I created a fictional company entitled ‘Party Management Incorporated” (PMI) The players are all contracted adventurers of the company & have been sent to the town of ‘Chistor’ to investigate a series of fires thought to be caused by an Arsonist. To increase the realism of PMI, I built a website for the company and had the players apply for membership before the game began.  PMIonline.info was the result. After the players applied in character on the website, I emailed them a “new hire” package. It was a small zip file that contained a few documents, images, and a contract for their first assignment.

If you are interested, you can download the zip file here.

I jokingly referenced characters from our previous games on the website and in the packet for added effect. The character Reginald Von Garrison was my own character that has become somewhat abandoned since I started to DM all our games. He gets to make cameo appearances every so often though.

Obviously you do not have to go this in depth to enjoy D&D via wave. I however get a lot of enjoyment out of creating the back story to the games I run. And since this campaign was going to be played online, I thought using the internet as much as possible would be fitting.

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Part 2 : How to Play coming soon…