Online Tools, Take 2
Last month I posted about software tools I planned on using in our current game.
It turns out it worked a lot better than planned. All players joined the Google Group we created (see here for explanations on how it works) and I’m truly impressed by participation.
Google Groups are basically a discussion group tool. All members write messages that remained stored on the group’s page. Members have various options to be informed of new messages (CCed, abridged e-mails, and e-mail digests) . All messages can be searched in Google’s well-know way.
There is also a limited wiki-like function where you can create Web pages and link them together. Each page can then be further linked to discussions.
Finally you have 100 MB of space for shared files.
So I created a closed group (members only can browse) and invited each of my players.
I use the discussions for general out of game discussions: Background, rules discussions, player request. Basically everything we use to do by email and ended up losing time digging up afterwards.
Using the web pages tool, I posted all the game-related info (Background, plot lines, house rules, etc).
As for files, we store scans of race and classes writeups for easy reference as well as character sheets and other game related stuff.
Apart from a few bugs, It works real well. And whenever we read a message, we get these funny Google Ads that rip ‘key’ words from our messages and shows appropriate ads. Boy there sure are a lot of WOW gold sellers out there. 
Battlestar Galactica
I know I’m 3 years late but last night I sat down with my wife and popped the 1st disk of Season 1 of BSG. We were hooked after the 1st 5 minutes. I thought the 1st episode was a 2 hour pilot, turns out it was a 4 hour film!!!!!! Now I know why the geeks are all over that show. It’s got very nice space effects and a lot of Sex, geek heaven! The way they presented all characters was flawless. The whole cast is likeble, even the blonde Cylon bombshell. (Although the producers made sure we KNEW she was a bad guy as strongly as possible, I mean killing babies? Come on!)
However, I was surprised at how ‘human’ everything was. If Babylon 5 was about diplomacy and Firefly about teamwork and survival, BSG seems to be about interrelations, hard decisions and leadership. A great show indeed. Looking forward to seeing all 3 seasons.
RPG Software
I’m a complete and utter Geek (I scored Major Geek BTW) sometimes its a huge wonder that I actually got married, but then again, my lovely wife is also pretty up there on the geek scale.
Anywho, being the geek that I am, I’ve always been fascinated by using computers to make my RPG games better. And up to this year (2007) I’ve failed to find anything good enough for me to use consistently. I paid good money for the Dungeon Master Assistant for AD&DÂ back in the 80′s (pure crap) and the D&D Mastertools from WoTC in the 2000s (even worse).
However, my players have found a few decent character sheets and they’ve been happy with them. For DMing however, nothing really was better than a notebook and a bunch of Index cards (To track initiative, Monster HP, magical loot, etc)
However, this year I’ve discovered Wikis and the Google Groups mailing list service. This is good stuff! The mailing list has the potential to be the perfect Game Webpage and has the super extra bonus of being access restricted, so we don’t have to worry about Copyright too much (Most of the cool stuff you want to share about D&D are outside of the OGL and are copyrighted). We have a forum, space to create HTML pages (like a limited-function Wiki) and spaces for files (like character sheets and loot!)
An offline Wiki like Tiddlywiki, I found out, is the also the perfect DMing tool. Since it’s basically a bunch of interconnected pages, it’s exactly like a campaign notebook. I can design adventures and critters and link them all together. And it fits all on a USB stick.
Time will tell if I’ll keep using these tools, but I’m giving it my best shot for the new campaign.
Update (August 24th 2007): The Google Group as been universally adopted by the whole group and the Wiki remains the best tool Ive had for DM prep. I wonder what 4E will offer in terms of online tools?.
