Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Gaming Online

Note that this is not the same as "online gaming", by which I mean World of Warcraft and such things. What I'm talking about here is playing a standard analog rpg (in this case, B/X D&D) online.

I got to do this for the first time last night, and I had a blast.

Everybody knew the game, so we didn't have to worry about that. We got started pretty quickly.

As is typical with 3d6 in order, we had some character quirks:

* The Thief had a higher Wisdom than the Cleric.

* The Cleric had a higher Strength (and a higher AC) than the Fighter.

* The Magic-User (me!) had more hit points than the Thief (I rolled a 4 and had a +1 Con bonus).

Overall, we were a pretty low Wisdom party, so doing silly stuff seemed right up our alley.

We were kind of bummed when we lost the Thief, but he came back as a Dwarf in fairly short order. (And when we lost the Fighter, he came back as another Cleric).

Regarding these last two points, I have to say I was quite pleased to be in a game with experienced, veteran players. Neither of these things was a problem. I've seen a lot of newer players get all bent out of shape if everyone isn't "serious!" all the time. I've also seen them have a harder time with character death.

These guys took it all in stride and kept the game going. That's the kind of player I can get along with.

Naturally, I did my best to be the comic relief. I can't help it; I see funny situations crop up and I can't resist commenting on them. They all laughed, though, so I got away with it.

(Plus they got the inside jokes, too. Party: "Why don't you fire your Magic Missile at the hand coming out of the fountain?" Me: "I'm saving it for the Darkness.")

All in all, it was a very positive experience. We're going to do it again when we're all available, and I'm really looking forward to it.

8 comments:

bliss_infinte said...

I played in an online PBP over at Dragonsfoot a number of years ago and had a blast. In fact, it was my first return game to D&D after about 20 years. It was just as exciting and fun as playing at the table-top those the pace was a bit slower.

bliss_infinte said...

Oh, what did you use for connecting everyone online? Skype? What about dice rolling?

Will Douglas said...

I knew I'd leave stuff out!

We used the Hangout function in Google+. It's a video chat that can handle about 5 people before it goes wonky (I'm told; this was only the second time I've tried it).

For dice, everybody rolled their own. It's not the type of crowd where cheating would make any sense (and based on the die rolls we got, there sure wasn't any cheating!)


Another thing I wanted to mention was the diversity of locations. We had people from Virginia, Saint Louis, Seattle, (I think) Corvallis and me here in Minneapolis. These are people I would never have met if I just gamed locally.

Will Douglas said...

And here's the link to the DM's report:

http://swashbucklershideout.blogspot.com/2011/08/vats-if-mazarin-session-1.html

arcadayn said...

I'm glad you got a chance to try it out! Pretty awesome, isn't it? I look forward to seeing how many of you guys make it through the funnel this evening.

Will Douglas said...

Yeah, me too.

Are you going to roll us characters, or should we come up with our own?

Matthew Miller said...

I was in that game -- I was the cleric with lower wisdom than the thief (there must be something profound there).

I agree that the game was a lot of fun, with good spirits all around.

You're right about how the character deaths were taken with a sense of humor. Also the DM (Ian) went laughingly along with all the crazy stuff we came up with. Overall a very positive experience.

One thing I regretted was that I couldn't hear your microphone very clearly. This was unfortunate since, as you pointed out, much of what I did hear you say provided welcome comic relief. I could hear the others very clearly.

I look forward to our next Google+ session!

~Matt

Will Douglas said...

Hey, Matt, good to talk to you again.

Yeah, part of the problem was that I got a $10 webcam with built-in mike. Not the highest of quality, obviously.

(Also I could learn to enunciate clearly, but....)

I'm looking forward to the next session also! Good times.