Online Play
One of the great things abut Risus is its suitability for online play-by-chat or play-by-post games. If you have ever played either type of online game then you will probably agree that the pace, as compared to traditional face-to-face games, can slow down to a crawl. Games that might seem perfectly playable on somebody's dining room table become extremely unwieldy was transported to a different medium.
Disregarding the obvious problems of play-by-post games*, play-by-chat games slow the speed of communication in an exponential fashion. Maybe it's because of the slowness of typing (especially for two-finger typers like me) or maybe it's the lack of audio-visual context. Whatever the reason, the pace of these games limits what can be accomplished in a session and scenes with intense die-rolling, rule-checking, and tactical decision making seem to drag on and on. It becomes very difficult to produce that kind of seat-of-your pants excitement that should be possible in face-to-face games.
But this is where Risus comes to the rescue. Combat (and any other action sequence modeled as combat) is typically over very quickly in Risus. There isn't a lot of back-and-forth discussion of rules and tactical decisions are rarely important. Combat resolves into a few die rolls and the narrative abilities of the players involved to make things exciting and interesting. Speeding up combat makes room for more combat (and other cool activities) and hence a great deal more can be accomplished in a given session.
I know folks who love tools like Open RPG. I've personally used Screen Monkey on my Dragonspire game a few years back. But as I prepare for Pirates vs. Vampires, I think I'd like to simplify things a bit. We're going to use iChat with audio and possibly video. That should speed things up a fair bit, though I may miss the transcript. I'm also not going to worry about preparing pretty maps at all (that was another cause of slowness in Dragonspire). For dice, I'm probably going to use a real-time dice-server like Hamete. Other than that, there's nothing to it. No need for fancy character sheets or NPC trackers in Risus.
* I should note that while I love the idea of play-by-post games, I find them impossible to play for reasons entirely unrelated to speed. My problem is that they are always on and that I tend to get into a mode where I feel the need to respond to posts at all hours of the day. For me, it makes it much more difficult to get anything else done.
Disregarding the obvious problems of play-by-post games*, play-by-chat games slow the speed of communication in an exponential fashion. Maybe it's because of the slowness of typing (especially for two-finger typers like me) or maybe it's the lack of audio-visual context. Whatever the reason, the pace of these games limits what can be accomplished in a session and scenes with intense die-rolling, rule-checking, and tactical decision making seem to drag on and on. It becomes very difficult to produce that kind of seat-of-your pants excitement that should be possible in face-to-face games.
But this is where Risus comes to the rescue. Combat (and any other action sequence modeled as combat) is typically over very quickly in Risus. There isn't a lot of back-and-forth discussion of rules and tactical decisions are rarely important. Combat resolves into a few die rolls and the narrative abilities of the players involved to make things exciting and interesting. Speeding up combat makes room for more combat (and other cool activities) and hence a great deal more can be accomplished in a given session.
I know folks who love tools like Open RPG. I've personally used Screen Monkey on my Dragonspire game a few years back. But as I prepare for Pirates vs. Vampires, I think I'd like to simplify things a bit. We're going to use iChat with audio and possibly video. That should speed things up a fair bit, though I may miss the transcript. I'm also not going to worry about preparing pretty maps at all (that was another cause of slowness in Dragonspire). For dice, I'm probably going to use a real-time dice-server like Hamete. Other than that, there's nothing to it. No need for fancy character sheets or NPC trackers in Risus.
* I should note that while I love the idea of play-by-post games, I find them impossible to play for reasons entirely unrelated to speed. My problem is that they are always on and that I tend to get into a mode where I feel the need to respond to posts at all hours of the day. For me, it makes it much more difficult to get anything else done.
Labels: Online Play, Play
posted by Risus Monkey at 9:58 PM
3 Comments:
I have been using Fantasy Grounds and most recently Maptool for games for years now and I have slowly moved away from using all those tools in favor of voice chat (we use Skype) and we use MapTool for hand outs. The more and more I play recently, I have found that to be better for the role-playing experience.
I wouldn't say do not use them, just use them in as much as you need them to help facilitate the playing...and encouraging your game.
Ah yes, Fantasy Grounds and Map Tool both have quite a following (and I was seriously looking at using Map Tool as well). I just think that this time around I don't think I'm going to need map support. We may change our minds, though, once we get going.
That's funny because last night we played a PDQ game and initially we booted up MapTool, then ended up never using it at all.
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