Last week I ran my first online roleplaying session. It was my cousin’s idea to start it up, as we now live further apart and he was interested in playing in one of my games. Seeing as neither of us had done it before and my other players were locals, we decided to start a one-on-one game using Google Wave. We’ve only played one session, but it’s going really well. The topic of running a game on a wave has already been covered in excellent detail here, so I won’t rehash it. What I will do, is give a brief run-down of how our game went using the advice mentioned in the linked article and why I think you should give Google Wave a shot for your online games.

We set up an OOC wave, Combat Maps wave (using the fantastic Fighty), a Reference wave, and an in-character wave. We played using Savage Worlds, and recruited the services of Random Lee for the dice rolls, which worked well and has a plethora of other dice systems too, including the ability to sort of make your own.

It was a bit of a slow start, so we haven’t had a combat yet, but the OOC and IC waves worked very well and Google Wave’s interface – while it could use some tweaking – allowed me to keep both of these waves open as well as my Behind the Screen wave for secret dice rolls, and my GM’s Reference wave where I had some pre-written character and place descriptions.

Our only problems were the Wave kept crashing for me – I think that’s something to do with my Internet connection, rather than Wave itself – and that our OOC wave was running very slowly after a while. To rectify this, we made a Chapter Index where we linked to each in-character wave (a new one for each complete session) and made a new OOC wave for each session too. It ended up though, that we had a separate instant messaging program open and chatted OOC using that instead, which was much quicker.

In my face-to-face games I have recently been trying harder to describe things using all senses (how the bustling tavern smells, not just that it’s busy and loud; how the rusty old sword feels against your palms, how heavy it feels as you heft it out of the mud, and the sucking sounds it makes as you do; the weird tingling feel you get when you touch the sigil on the locked door).

What I love most about playing in a Wave is that it encourages and facilitates this sort of description. Now, note that I haven’t played a play-by-post or any sort of typing-based pen-and-paper RPG before, so this is probably not news to people who have, but bear with me. Writing some character and place descriptions in advance lets me do this really well and it doesn’t feel contrived in an online space (where florid prose may, in person). It also allows me to prepare to respond, as watch the player type I can start typing my response or developing a new NPC on the spot in notepad, then paste or re-type that into the wave once he’s done.

Form-fillable PDF character sheets like the one we’re using also work well, as you can update and upload them straight into the OOC or Character Generation wave. You can add pictures of characters or places with a quick Google Images search, and even link to sound files or websites with house-rules and so on, pasting them all straight into the wave (for use now and future reference).

It works really well and I recommend giving Google Wave a shot next time you’re playing an online game. I’m not sure how well it would work for several players, but the article I posted to earlier implies that it works fine, and much better than a traditional play-by-post game would. It also has all the benefits of that type of game, in that you can play a “live” session or post a few responses over the course of hours or days.

We’re playing our second session tomorrow and there could be some combat, so I’ll tell you how that goes. We’re playing in my homebrew world of Gahn, specifically in the city of Crenmar. The deities Swift and Tarsis are worshipped throughout Gahn, including in Crenmar, so consider them a sneak peek at the feel and religion of the city. I’ll also be posting more material written for the game, but perfectly serviceable for use in your own home game. Keep an eye out for more posts tagged “City of Steel” for details specific to Crenmar and posts tagged “Gahn” for gods and other things from the world beyond Crenmar.

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