Spanning the Globe

[Camero]

Gamematers -

Do any of you run campaigns via the internet in real time with players across the world or across the country? That is what I will have to do if I want to regroup my old players, so I am looking for ideas of how to do this? They are not big fans of play by post so I was wondering if any of you had ideas of how to use Instant Messenger services or programs like OpenRPG or ScreenMonkey (or different and better programs) and how those have worked for you. Please, share your wisdom, experiences, and ideas...
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"What a wonderful smell you've discovered"

[Gry Sarth]

My long-time gaming group has been scattered around the globe in recent years. We're stationed in Brazil, but now one has gone to live in England and another in Switzerland.

We had been keeping our game on a very slow boil through some e-mail character conversations. But recently we've decided to give actual online gaming a try. So far we've managed to run a single session using OpenRPG, and it went better than expected (granted, we were expecting a disaster). The GM kept the adventure very basic and simple, since we didn't know how things would fare. The software worked quite well, with the only exception being the Fog feature that didn't quite work. It was extremely helpful that the GM prepared a bunch of visual aids to keep on screen when we weren't using actual maps, it helped a lot to keep us in the spirit of the game while staring at a PC screen. Sure, it's not the same vibe as face-to-face gaming, but if it's the best you can do, it's definetly worth a try.

The die rolling system worked very well and the excitement of the wild die was very well preserved. I'd cracked my skull trying to figure out a way to make a functional character sheet for SW D6 in OpenRPG and it worked very well.

The only negative point that really stood out, was when one of the players got a little tired and stopped talking much (oh, we were using Skype as well) it seemed like he was completely out of the game. The thing is, it's ok to be quiet for a while in a real gaming session, but in an online one, if you go quiet for a while, you simply don't exist.

We should have another session soon, so I'll tell you how things progress.
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[hisham]

I GMed these guys last year using IRC. Location: GM - Kuala Lumpur, the Jawa's in Lancashire, England; the Duros' in Phoenix, AZ; the Kerestian's near Manchester, England; female human is in South Korea; male human's in Canada; and the droid's in Austin, TX.

The game was the hardest on the Britpack cause they were playing at 3-6am local time.

For a chat tool + dice roller + customizable character sheets, try this: Galaxy Games Online. No server required, you can host the game with your computer's IP. The only drawback I can think off is that there's no Mac version.
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The Enteague Sector | Cracken's Collection of Crackpots
In D6, of course.