Subject: Roleplaying Tips Weekly Supplemental #13: Electronic Gaming & Tools Reviews ***You have received this document because my autoresponder system processed a request with your email in the Reply To field. This is a plain text document with no attachments. If you have received this document in error, report abuse to johnn@roleplayingtips.com. Please note that I cannot help in the cases of spoofed, relayed, ghosted, or forged emails.*** Thank you for requesting: Roleplaying Tips Weekly Supplemental #13 "Electronic Gaming & Tools Reviews" In this file you'll find reader submitted reviews of various electronic gaming applications and tools (1 review so far). If you've written a thorough review about some gaming software or an online gaming tool that you'd like to share with your fellow GMs, send it on in and I'll add it to this document. Thanks! Cheers, Johnn Four johnn@roleplayingtips.com http://www.roleplayingtips.com @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ TABLESMITH Capsule review by Jan P. Müller http://www.mythosa.net "Tables. Yuk, haven't we got enough of those?" TableSmith is a neat Windows program that allows you to use "tables" (in the loosest possible sense) to select or generate random information. You enter different items into text data files and give them a certain probability value, such as "Well, the [trapdoor] under the [carpet] reveals 70% [useless stuff], 20% [money], or 10% a [long lost item]". Each item in brackets would have its own data table where random values would be pulled from. The fun thing is that you can go on and on with this. What can the long lost item do? How much money? What stuff is it that is so useless? What color is the carpet? This would all easily (well - not so easily) be possible with a simple page and a few dice. What makes TableSmith superior is the possibility to let it calculate things for you, look up stats, integrate pictures, and have infinitely (as a figure of speech) many options in a table, like the age or color or former owner of an item, its magical properties and where it's found, and so on. With TableSmith, you can use tables, probabilities, variables, and functions (e.g. a math functions). A very good help file included with the software will introduce you to all this, and goes on to more difficult concepts like parameters (making tables interactive: "Enter your climbing skill here:") and data calls (e.g. accessing files with stats of monsters). The program comes with many tables already, and there are many more on the website. Also, you can program them yourself rather easily. TableSmith helped my GMing by allowing me to prepare each session more quickly (NPC stats and backgrounds, herbs, adventure seeds like "There's a temple of one of the old gods. Strange noise is heard from within", and so on). It also gives me tools to flesh out the world in general. There are calendar tables, name tables, weather prediction tables, random encounter tables, and so on. I also enjoyed programming my own tables, and am rather proud of my tarot table, which let's you ask the cards for guidance. The program is fully-functioning shareware and can be found at www.mythosa.net. Hope you enjoy it! @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ G.R.I.P. = Generic Role-playing for Internet Play http://www.rpgrealms.com/ Review By: The Pit Fiend, David M. GRIP is a play system designed to 'replace the tabletop' and allow players from across the world-wide-web to connect and play in any RPG realm. It's a concept long in coming and has been done in a number of different forms in recent time. You can download the core game control system at: www.rpgrealms.com/GRIP/ which has two formats. One is the Game Master the other is for Players. As a GM I wanted to try out the iGM (as they called it) and see if I could get it to work for my Role-Playing actions. After the unzip and install, which went without a hitch, I began poking around the controls. At first I was unimpressed with the controls, other than the obvious dice-roller which allowed you to design the whole macro in any dice combination and comparison style your game called for. Then I discovered the map design system and how it was supposed to interface with the players module. This was the centrepiece of what made GRIP 100 times better than the MUD/MUSH gaming I had done. Having the simple visual of a map made the game possible to get into tactical situations that did not depend on intricate descriptions that could get lost in the myriad of text outputs. Yet, it still allowed for the 'feel' of the tabletop role-play in having the descriptions as well. Unlike a MUSH system where it is possible to get lost in a text maze, the presence of a map made keeping track of character location and current situation more viable. Even better, this map allowed the GM to use a cover to create the 'fog of war' of the unknown or unexplored part of the map by keeping it blacked out. Once I was familiar with the controls I went on to explore the iPC module. Players have many of the same simple controls as the GM. One good one is the ability to view both the character sheet and the map at the same time (something the iGM controls do not allow). Common chatting is accomplished by typing in the window provided, though only one line of text can be displayed at a time. Whispering is done by clicking on the character (PC or NPC) that you desire to whisper to (of note, the whispering is all visible to the GM). The only problem here is that when a lot of whispering occurs the continual 'pop- up' whisper window starts to get annoying. I then moved on to the design tools that are provided as part of the GM download, available for 60 days free, then $25 for the registration code. I chose to do an ENVOY character sheet as this system is reasonably close to the GURPS system I normally use for RPG. I designed the character sheet after much hair-pulling and going onto a code learning curve (not too onerous and if your are familiar with HTML you should get it pretty fast). I finished the character sheet and was de-bugging it while I began my search for players. Problem #1 Matching schedules. This is the same problem as in-person RPG - if anything, I have found the in-person planning easier than this! First, when I tried to 'log-into' the games posted on the GRIP web locations, none of them appeared to be operating. In fact, the one that drew most of my attention had switched from GRIP to Never Winter Nights as the control engine so I was out-of-luck in connecting there... Problem #2 Connection type. I use a dialup connection which gives me a changing IP. This makes getting connected to others difficult as I need to send them the IP in some way. I chose e-mail as it is the least intrusive to my system. This also meant that every time I had a shutdown or other problem that required me to disconnect from the 'net I needed to update the players of my new IP. Problem #3 Non-techheads wasting the time of techheads. With any mix of players you are guaranteed a variable mox of computer skilled persons. As the number of players grew so did the complexion of tech to non-tech conflicts. Problem #4 More key time to prepare. Once I had begun the connection to the other players I rapidly discovered that I would have to really 'get-on' with my adventure writing as literally, the more details you have done beforehand, the simpler the adventure goes in game play. Solutions: 1) I have come to the conclusion that e-mail is the only way I will get to go on with my electronic RPG as there is more difficulty in getting the GRIP game going and keeping my interest at the times when the other players are available. While with e-mail the timing is when we can do it and everything moves forward at a reasonable pace for those involved. 2) If any type of large game were to be attempted I will need a 'stable IP' type of connection as the dialup became unusable very quickly once there were any problems. 3) Technical skills were less of a factor in GRIP than with MUSH as you do not need to know code to do things, but the learning curve is still there, and since there is less time for learning 'how to do things' in a GRIP game it is much easier to become frustrated both with the non-skilled player holdups and with the techheads getting things confused. Patience is the key here and all must be prepared to show a lot of it, something in short supply when getting into a game was paramount. 4) I have decided to avoid games that require me to spend ever more time at the computer keyboard. I suspect that this is so since I have to chain myself here from time to time to get my work done. In the future I will focus on games that can combine over the 'net but ones that do not require me to have a typing speed in excess of 30 wpm. After an initial burst of energetic fervour in learning the character sheet design language and sending out the finished product to the other GRIP gamers, I tried to connect using the GRIP'net system. After finding it dead I tried playing the given scenarios from the download with one, then two, then three, and then finally five other players at one time. This was when the program started showing significant bugs. The primary one was with the mapping transfer function, which would 'lock-up' my iGM system that was hosting the game. This caused me to have to shut everything down, restart, and send out my new IP all over again. The frustration of doing this for up to three hours at a time for four tries finally ended my GRIP experiment. In the end the lack of technical support for the program (as I tried to contact the designers multiple times via e-mail and still have yet to get a response), and the continual frustrations brought my play test of GRIP to an unceremonial end. One final thought regarding any of the RPG systems using the internet for operation. I think that 'high-tech' games are better suited because of the feel from having a computer in front of you. I tried to do the fantasy thing from the given dungeon scenario--the game just doesn't have the same feel as 'in person' or with miniatures does. Something about the computer screen I think reminds us too much of the current technology. Not that the fantasy game cannot be done using the online systems, but there is something very tangible missing. This is a something that is enhanced in a high tech game using the very same controls. Something about the very presence of the tech makes it part of the game beyond its presence in an 'in person' session. From the other players I have the following comments: A - Map transfer function sucks. B - More beta testing of the iGM module is needed, player system appears to function, but no good without the GM. C - Difficult to see all the screen data unless you have a large monitor. (This was from one of our least tech-skilled players.) D - I found that the character sheet worked well enough. The only part I thought could be changed was the weapon damage where you couldn't put the negative modifier to a weapons damage (eg. 2d6-1 always rolled -1). Didn't get to try it with a positive modifier so don't know if there was a problem there. Other than that and the map problem, I didn't find anything really bad about the system. I'd play with it if you ran a campaign. E - It was not bad on that trial run that me and you did. I think 2 players + 1 GM with DSL connections are acceptable. Once you go past that [number of players], this GRIP system seems to fail. I am willing to give it a few more run in this "group of 3" setup. Here are my other comments: 1. Having players generate characters is good for roleplaying but bad for management. The GM should pre-make the characters (with equipment) and pass them to players. 2. I think the MAP thing should be able to store on the players' side and synchronize during game time. 3. This GRIP system seems to be buggy and poorly tested. Since nobody has the licensed version, we can't tell whether all the problems are due to the trial version. The lack of tech support is another problem. 4. The players are spread across North America and all "family persons". Trying to get all the free bodies online at the same time is difficult at best. One Bonus Comment: (from me David) We also tried out the Rogerwilco system, available in download from www.rogerwilco.com. It was the best part of the gaming event. Were I to find a way to have a decent dice rolling program (that could work over the 'net) and using e- mail to do the mapping, I might just run a RPG over the net using nothing more than e-mail or terminal for text and rogerwilco for the ongoing contact. For another, more favourable, GRIP review: www.castlegk.com/grip/gripreview.html @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Feel free to send in your own detailed review of any online RPG tools or GM aides. Thanks! Have more fun at every game! johnn@roleplayingtips.com End of Supplemental #13 @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@