The RPG blogosphere has been booming with buzz about Google Wave. While Google Wave has a lot of potential for online real-time or play-by-post role-playing games, best practices still need to be ironed out. Below are some guidelines and tips for using Wave as a medium for role-playing games. While not perfect or definitive, it's a starting point and is subject to changes as Wave continues to develop and as users learn more about it.
If you haven't heard about the Role Play Media Network (RPMN), then you need to click on that link and go there now. Essentially, the RPMN is a Ning [read: a social networking service] site for RPG bloggers, podcasters, artists, publishers, players, and GMs. Berin Kinsman (also known as Uncle Bear) announced the launch of the network Saturday morning, and it has just reached over 300 members!
If you decide to join the network, and there's no reason why you shouldn't, be sure to join the Dice of Life Group, too.
Graham Walmsley is a writer, game designer and actor who is active in the indie and story games community. His book Play Unsafe, which introduces gamers to improv theater concepts as pioneered by Keith Johnstone, was very influential in my own liberation from spending more hours preparing for a game than the length of the game that was actually played. It's filled with pages of priceless advice for the time-strapped Game Master and the player who wants to take his role-playing skills to the next level.
Walmsley has recently published a purist scenario for Trail of Cthulhu titled The Dying of St. Margaret's, and is in the process of laying out his murder mystery role-playing game, A Taste for Murder. A Taste for Murder is a perfect gateway for non-gamers into role-playing because it requires no preparation, has no Game Master, and plays out like an Agatha Christie novel, or a movie like The Cat and the Canary.
Thanks to the magic of Google Wave, Graham and I were able to have a nice transatlantic conversation about ancient alien gods, obscure improvising innovators, and Chekov (not the guy from Star Trek).
Times are hard in Vorpavia. Your group is traveling to the capital city of Osorheiu to look for work. After several days on the narrow road which follows the Lower Vorpa river, you arrive at the village of Chesereu, named for the extinct noble family that once inhabited the ruined castle which overshadows the city.
Now that we have accumulated a list of Google provided tools and services, we need a place to quickly access them all. iGoogle, Google's free personal and customizable portal, is the answer. In this article, we will look at how iGoogle will provide a dashboard interface for almost all of your needs when Gaming with Google.
The definition of the term role-playing game has become increasingly broad and vague, especially since the turn of the millennium when guys like Ron Edwards, Paul Czege and Vincent Baker started deconstructing, analyzing, and recreating them as tightly focused machines engineered to produce dramatic fiction rather than meandering power fantasies. New terms and cyclical arguments to accompany them emerged almost immediately: indie, narrative, big model, creative agenda, stance, simulationism, immersion. Five, ten years later, people are still arguing over what a role-playing game is, what a story is, what simulationism is, and whether some role-playing games are really role-playing games at all.
If you're looking for some affordable RPG supplements for a Halloween game, there are a couple of great deals and steals out there right now. Here are just a few of them. I'll add more as they come to mind.
If you hadn't heard already, Google recently updated Google Docs to allow sharing of entire folders. Any file placed in that folder is automatically shared according to the permissions established for the folder. For example, if you share files with your gaming Google Group, simply create a folder, share the folder with the Google Group, and drag-and-drop any of the files into that folder. Google Docs will take care of the rest.
Update: You can now listen to a recording of the seminar available on Gnome Stew!
At GenCon 2009, Phil "DNAphil" Vecchione, Kurt "Telas" Schneider, and Patrick "VV_GM" Benson of Gnome Stew and Vicki Potter of Tabletop Adventures® presented a seminar titled All Grown Up and Still Gaming (Vicki and DNAphil are also members of the GM-Fu Group). The Dice of Life couldn't make it to GenCon (let alone the seminar), but we were greatly interested in what they had to say. We also knew that many of our readers might feel the same way. Fortunately for us, the group was willing and able to take the time for an interview. Now without further ado...
With Hallow'een just around the corner, it's convenient that John Wick just released a zombie survival game. The Shotgun Diaries is 18 pages of exactly what you need to play a story that feels just like a movie by Luchio Fulchi, Dario Argento, or George Romero.
Disclaimer: This is an idiot review.
Colonial Gothic
Publisher: Rogue Games
Pages: 289
Reviewed: PDF
"There is a secret history, and this history deals with events that took place in the shadows. These events played a role in the history of the American colonies and the Revolution that few know about.
The truth is hidden, and plots are afoot. Events are moving behind the scenes, and lurking in the shadows are agents with their own agenda.
War is coming. The Siege of Boston is lifted, and General Washington is leading the Continental Army to New York. The enemies are many, but as to who they are, you do not know.
Colonial Gothic is a supernatural historical horror roleplaying game set during the dawn of the American Revolution."
We're getting close to the end of our Gaming with Google series with only two more articles after this (three if we get a Google Wave invite). In this article, we'll explore the use of Google Reader in relation to role-playing games. Actually, to be fair, there isn't much that directly applies to RPGs. What Google Reader does allow you to do is create a single place for you to review any new content published via some of the resources covered in the previous articles, specifically Google Groups, Blogger, and Picasa Web Albums.
