DM'ing

[deadly7]

Haha, I didn't. It's a pain being a DM when nobody's paying attention after putting a ton of work into preparing. Ah well.

I paid attention!

I think an easy remedy to this would be to have two IRC channels instead of one. One can be strictly DM-Player interaction, the other can be player goofing off.

[iago]

Haha, I didn't. It's a pain being a DM when nobody's paying attention after putting a ton of work into preparing. Ah well.

I paid attention!

I think an easy remedy to this would be to have two IRC channels instead of one. One can be strictly DM-Player interaction, the other can be player goofing off.

A better solution is to stick with gaming in real life, where you don't have to deal with the limitations of the Internet.

[Sidoh]

Haha, I didn't. It's a pain being a DM when nobody's paying attention after putting a ton of work into preparing. Ah well.

I paid attention!

I think an easy remedy to this would be to have two IRC channels instead of one. One can be strictly DM-Player interaction, the other can be player goofing off.

A better solution is to stick with gaming in real life, where you don't have to deal with the limitations of the Internet.

An even better solution is iago buys everyone a tablet device of their choosing. I don't know how it'll help the game, but it still sounds like an even better solution to me.

[deadly7]

A better solution is to stick with gaming in real life, where you don't have to deal with the limitations of the Internet.

I think a cool project would be to have an online tabletop platform. The DM could customize the game maps and when the "group leader" says move into/out of a room, walk on a square, etc, the DM's predefined traps, monster attacks, etc. all happen.

I have no idea how to actually implement this though.

[Blaze]

It sucks we couldn't find an awesome whiteboard application back then.. thinking about it, it's pretty easy to do right now in canvas/html5.  Maybe I should look into doing that as a side project..

[Sidoh]

It sucks we couldn't find an awesome whiteboard application back then.. thinking about it, it's pretty easy to do right now in canvas/html5.  Maybe I should look into doing that as a side project..

Interesting!

I'd actually be fairly surprised if something like it didn't already exist. It seems like it'd be rather easy to implement with some node, jquery, raphaël, etc.

If it doesn't, it'd be a pretty fun project.

[Blaze]

We ended up having iago use gimp or something and just keep uploading an image as he draws more of the map.  It would be really cool if you could upload images into the whiteboard, have layers and all that cool stuff... live.  None of that's hard to do these days, either.  Sounds like a very useful product.

[iago]

Games where you wander around a pre-created dungeon and fight monsters is boring. I'd much rather have a more involved game. That kind of stuff can't really be automated.

[Blaze]

Games where you wander around a pre-created dungeon and fight monsters is boring. I'd much rather have a more involved game. That kind of stuff can't really be automated.

I was meaning more like you can have a few room shapes pre-drawn (such as a large dining hall sort of thing), and you can just like, upload that image and then draw a wall to connect it your current map.  Some things can be prefabricated, but you're right, when the entirety of a floor or dungeon is set in stone (get it? stone? dungeon?  I'm hilarious!), it allows for far less freedom, and freedom leads to fun!

[iago]

I played D&D last night, and we didn't use a single drawn map.

[Blaze]

Well, we did when we played online T&T! 

[deadly7]

I played D&D last night, and we didn't use a single drawn map.

I'm confused. How do you know where you're going then?

[Blaze]

I played D&D last night, and we didn't use a single drawn map.

I'm confused. How do you know where you're going then?

"You are in a large, sparsly furnished dining hall. There are three doors, one North, one South, one West.  There is what appears to be a drunk Goblin, who hasn't noticed you, playing with a fire in a fireplace"

[iago]

I played D&D last night, and we didn't use a single drawn map.

I'm confused. How do you know where you're going then?

"You are in a large, sparsly furnished dining hall. There are three doors, one North, one South, one West.  There is what appears to be a drunk Goblin, who hasn't noticed you, playing with a fire in a fireplace"

Or don't wander around dungeons at all.

[Blaze]

You can change that to a forest, an apartment, a city block, anything, and my point still stands, if you do it via the internet at least. :crossarms: