Google Wave: we came, we saw, we played D&D | Hacker News Reader

Google Wave: we came, we saw, we played D&D

arstechnica.com

71 pointsapgwoz24 comments

D&D and all RPGs are still most enjoyable when played around the table with friends. I know that's not possible for everyone, but no technology will ever change that basic fact.

I haven't tried play-by-Wave yet, but was involved in a number of play-by-e-mail games back in the day. I'd say PBeM can be just as fun as face-to-face, it's just a slightly different kind of fun. It's less of a social event, and there's less instant gratification. But a well-done PBeM can be very rich in a way that's hard to do face-to-face. You don't get that instant rush of gaming (very often, anyway) but you do get much more time to think about what you are doing and saying, which can be really helpful for the "role" part of role-playing.

Not true, its where cameras and shit come in. I honestly can't solve the logistics problems of playing DnD with friends in different states weekly :P

I'm starting a new long-distance campaign this week actually. I was disappointed to find that Skype doesn't support multi-way video chat, as my friends and I are in three separate locations.

hahah, at least it's a good demonstration of the possibilities. Honestly I think the best personal use I will find is with my morning emails exchanges with a few friends on the east coast (about 25 emails go back and forth every morning, including links, videos, etc.). We just to do it with a blog but that didn't fit. Chat is too time consuming, but Wave might be just right.

At least it'll make procrastinating more efficient.

Well,

It could also be a demonstration of the limitations. The question with Wave is: will it live up to the hype and replace a wide swath of other communications protocols or will it just be one more protocol? Everything I'm hearing makes it seem like it will be the latter, which is fine, especially if you like D & D.

will it live up to the hype and replace a wide swath of other communications protocols

It's not like POP killed IRC, or HTTP killed SMTP. Different protocols do different things. What serious candidates would there be for Wave to kill?

Heresy! Techcrunch has taught us well that the only way for a new service/protocol/whatever to be born is by tearing its way free out the entrails of another, more mature, not-as-hot-right-now protocol.

Sorry for the imagery, I just thought it fit with the D&D theme :)

Some different protocols do different things. But XMPP, particularly wrapped in the Wave implementation, can do many, many things.

Wave might catch on as little more than an open-source alternative to, say, Sharepoint and Biztalk. (collaboration and workflow automation being the most obvious non-communication uses).

But I don't see why people would stop short and not replace their SMTP/Jabber/IRC/RSS use with Wave once they and everyone they need to work with is using it.

merging Skype and mail sounds good though. If Skype put out a mail client, I'd probably use it.

This is a clever example of one of the millions of things you could use wave for... And they didn't even get very far into the good part - Ideally, Wave D&D would have a robot extension which the DM could use to roll the die, calculate scores, etc.

I could see wave spawning a whole genre of multiplayer, wave-moderated games which take advantage of the ability to move seamlessly between synchronous and asynchronous player communication.

Another example where this could be applied: live fantasy football drafts.

Amazing! As I found it a pain to go to the University RPG club in town, this should be a good alternative.

it avoids the smell and the cheetos are all yours...

I guess since I have never played d and d I would skip straight to distributing porn?

Only if you're attractive.

You've obviously not met many porn distributors yet.

Because nobody else has said it on this thread, let me jump in and recommend Dungeons and Dragons to anybody that hasn't played it. It's a brilliant game that's cocaine for the imagination. Find some fun, witty people who don't have ADD, and a D&D night is wicked fun.

There are non-DND pen and paper RPGs if the wizards and warriors trope doesn't do it for you. Peter Watts pointed out Eclipse Phase[1] recently if transhumanism/singularity/horror are more your style; the PDF is legally available on various torrent aggregators if you want to try your hand without having to convince a half-dozen friends to shill out for a book.

That said I haven't actually played it yet myself, as others have pointed out getting a group of friends in different zip codes into one session is NP hard.

[1] http://www.eclipsephase.com/game

Not to mention the wonderful mouseguard RPG mentioned in that article. Its not free but its a great introductory product as well as a great game all round

And host your campaign on my site! http://www.obsidianportal.com

See the real problem with that is I am probably neither fun nor witty and probably wouldn't be able to handle creating a fake world and exploring said world. I couldn't even play WoW when a friend bought me an account (but thats probably more heroin than cocaine).

WoW and D&D are very different. D&D is a real interactive experience with other people.. and you are not nearly as limited in what you can do.

Assuming you get the right people...

I've played D&D with plenty of people who weren't particularly witty or capable of creating and exploring a fake world.

But if you have fun, you keep trying and get better.

This is perhaps slightly off subject, but does anyone have any Google Wave invites? I would love to be a part of Google Wave but I haven't been invited yet.

Judging from the down-votes I guess not. Oh well.

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