Role-playing games, pen and paper, but online...

I’ve been working on this idea for a while with a friend—it actually arose from developing the current ILX software in 2006 (I think!), and I thought some of you might be interested in it, if you have any kind of interest in pen-and-paper role-playing games. I remember someone at some point on ILX said of Google’s then-new but ill-fated “Wave” project that they couldn’t wait to play an RPG using it, and that stuck in my head too…

It’s an application to support playing of role-playing games by means of an “instant messenger”-type interface and lots of support for the GM—it’s targeted at a single system, which makes it possible to provide all the support—most other online systems try to be as “generic” as possible, which kind of means they wind up spread quite thinly, although with the advantage that they support more systems, but with typically less support.

Obviously, fifteen years is a long time, but I had to wait for technology to catch up—at that time, it would’ve had to work much like ILX does, with whole screen refreshes every time a new message arrives—not ideal, but the various bits of technology that make browsers a lot more like a native application (and a lot better than, in many cases, these day) exist now.

Anyway, here’s a short video that gives an overview of what we made. I haven’t actually played these games since school, so if you do, I would appreciate your thoughts you it. There are some other videos I will post soon.

Any thoughts are helpful, for example:

• Would you use it?
• Does it look like it would work?
• Any thoughts as compared with being in the same room, or any experiences you’ve had with other online systems
• Is “online” really feasible?

All the RPG people I know have gone to video - pandemic + people just moving apart. There are dedicated RPG apps so dungeon maps are visible + live video of everyone + character sheets and other visuals.

This looks pretty slick.

Milo, yes I've seen a few of these things, although to be fair I haven't looked too closely at them. We talked a fair bit about what what “level” to pitch it at—this is somewhat difficult to explain what we mean, but for example, at a certain level, a solution would for example: support video chat for people and that’s all it does, essentially attempts to mimic being in the same room. At the other end of the spectrum, the solution would support every aspect of the game, managing all the rules, automatically altering all of the characters’ attributes, equipment, managing encumbrance, managing when for example spell points recover etc.

These are the extreme ends of the spectrum and of course you can fit anywhere in between. Both ends of the spectrum have their advantages, with the first doing less for the GM and players, but at the same time, you could easily use it to play games of pretty much any type—at the other end of the spectrum, the system would provide heavy support to the GM and players, but conversely would only work for one system/set of rules. Our interest was in producing something in this space—something that provides more support and as a consequence is more tightly bound to the chosen set of rules.

Polyphonic, cheers. Not just me, but I did get a bit better at some of this stuff since I made ILX!

Here's a second video, showing character creation as well as the process of joining a game, which in of itself features some online forum-type stuff, upgraded for 2021:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hwQH7hKAzY

This looks cool. I think you're right to target a single system comprehensively, rather than spreading out and being more generic. Also, while many people may prefer video chat, I like the idea of keeping it text based. It's old-school, I love text adventure games, and you don't have to worry about looking like a fool in front of a camera. Plus the "save and share your stories" element is very appealing to me.

The big thing I'd worry about is if you can compete with a behemoth like Roll20. I've never used that myself (I've not actually played that many RPGs, though I would like to) but it would certainly be the first place I'd think to go for something like this. They don't seem to have Advanced Fighting Fantasy on their systems list, though.

Thanks, Emily. I’m glad you like the idea of the text thing; I think it has a bunch of advantages, but of course if people wanted to go on video chat at the same time, then obviously they can do what they like, so it doesn’t rule that out.

I’ve seen a little of Roll20, and it seems similar to various others in that space—they focus around video chat; having a map that you can reveal bits of, being able to throw dice, and having some character sheets visible. As far as I am aware, the game mechanics aren’t really implemented, or if they are, it’s fairly limited. What we’ve done here pretty much fully covers the rules, such that e.g. combat is just a question of following the UI and clicking buttons when you need to roll dice; the system manages the rest.

The aim for us is to make something where the players can pick it up and play it with basically no knowledge of the rules, and indeed, much the same for the GM. User experience is the key and of course the hard part—making it really easy for people to use. I’m not all that bothered about competing with the existing things, I just want to make the best thing that we can—hopefully if it is really good, then people will want to use it and it will grow. Obviously people for which things like Roll20 work is good for them… I also think that what we’re targeting is actually perhaps people like us—people who actually don’t play these games but might want to. For that to be the case, we need to “lower the bar” to the point where the cost of entry is a lot lower than it is for traditional games (i.e. having to know a load of people who want to play the same game; having learnt the rules etc.). One interesting challenge will be how we let users know that the bar has been lowered before they actually try, because of course they would have to know that first.

To your point about “save and share your stories”, yes I think that’s a fundamental difference of this vs. traditional games, which are ephemeral in nature—if we do it right, then the game will be recorded for all eternity for others to read, just like ILX (except not full of shit).

Roll20 is pretty great for the map part. I prefer Dndbeyond's character sheets for tracking progress though.

What's special about its map thing? We have done a map reveal thing, although so far it's fairly simplistic, that said, it makes it easy for you to draw sweet curves instead of janky rectangles, but beyond that it's not massively sophisticated (yet). I'll post a video that shows a bit of it shortly.

I have nothing to compare it to in terms of specialness, but we went from using a printed map on webcam to Roll20's more automated process, and it made things way easier.

Thanks, I am watching some video as we speak. Will see if I can find out what it looks like.

Looked like a bit of an option-fest, although I haven't got as far as where they use the map in a game (rather than set it up), so will keep searching. There seemed to be a lot of dicking about trying to align a grid in your map to its own grid.

This video shows a fair bit more, particularly around how you create a game in advance, in a modular fashion like a collection of lego bricks that are attached to locations on a map. So you can upload maps, add locations to that map, and then add in content you can use when you play a game to each of these locations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ys9-X7f3o4

Oh and if any of you have any good ideas, please feel free to share them! As I say, we want to make it the best thing it can possibly be, so feedback is welcome.

I'd need to watch a bit more but the mapmaking vid does look nicely intuitive at first glance.

keith story if i missed where you said this but have you used it to play anything yet?

Emily, glad to hear it!

Tracer, with local friends... Seemed to work well, but it's early days yet. Wow, I think the last time I conversed with you was at Claire and Andy's wedding (was a bit hammered)! Hope all is good with you!

Plus it's evolving quickly, so the friends played a version that's changed quite a lot since then... That's part of the challenge/approach; to give it a go and see what works and then try and fix it. The main challenge is the GM needing to be able to manage the current situation ergonomically enough to be able to do it quickly.

Conversely to that, players find it great... It's basically easy for them, so I think we've got that bit pretty much right.

I took a look at a bit of the Roll 20 stuff, and in so far as I can see, it seems to concentrate in a different space. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the space seems to be the more technical aspects—there are multiple videos up there explaining how to match up your map’s scale with Roll 20’s concept of scale, by the looks of things so as you can perform calculations while playing a game to (for example) figure out how far away an enemy is by drawing a line between your character and the enemy on the map. I appreciate some people like this kind of thing, but for me, all this stuff is a total vibe-killer—these types of games I guess live on a form of continuum, and one end of which, there’s storytelling, and at the other end, there’s war games. Much as I say I have no real experience of this stuff for thirty-five years, the move to the war gaming end of the spectrum was happening in the mid 1980s, I guess because it appeals to a certain type of person’s desire for clarity around rules and so on. However, it’s not really what we’re trying to do, which is much more at the storytelling end of the spectrum. I’ve only looked at a bit of it, and it’s possible it’s my preconceptions getting in the way… Will look at some more stuff when I get a minute.

I will take a look Keith when I have a little longer.

From what I understand, Roll20 has pretty in depth rules integration for D&D and a limited number of other games.

I've been running the most recent version of the Star Wars RPG for a couple of months now using Discord for the video/chat function. Game/rules integration is handled using www.rpgsessions, which is dedicated to the system and handles a pretty astonishing amount of record keeping/game play: character sheets, NPCs, advancement, task resolution, initiative, combat, damage, etc. The cool thing is it is fully integrated with the Discord, so you can enter commands from the Discord or the website and the results are synced across both platforms. I have a notebook/Word doc for story ideas, but all in-game stuff is completely in the rpgsessions platform and I don't really use any paper or pencil anymore to track anything.

Also, I hardly use maps - it's theater of the mind, y'all.

Oops, add a .com to that url.

Watching the beginning of the video right now and I would suggest you check out Discord if you're not familiar as it is very robust on the game community angle of things.

Thank you, I'll take a look at these. I haven't looked at a lot of that stuff, although I did have a bit of a search some time ago and it seemed very difficult to find anything that gave me something of an overview of a system and indicate that the systems did all that much. I would be surprised if D&D wasn’t heavily covered/integrated, given its relative popularity, but even in that space I couldn’t find all that much that demonstrated it (some things hinted at deep integration).

It’s interesting what you’re saying about RPG sessions, because in looking at the front page of the website, it kind of implies that it doesn’t do all that much at all, so perhaps it’s underselling itself, e.g. if one of your ten bullet points describing functionality says you can “pass dice to other players”, then it gives the impression it doesn’t have all that much capability! Perhaps they’re all underselling themselves.

I might have low standards as I tend to ignore large sections of the rules (encumbrance, dumb shit like that).

Passing dice is a specific mechanic where one character can try to assist another character with skill tasks. The site lets the helping player add these bonus dice directly to the primary players dice pool.

i have done a medium-size amount of online play since covid, in two different groups -- one has ended up using google meet, one zoom.

roll20 and the forge both seem :
i. an annoying extra step of cognitive load to deal with the interface
ii. like they get in the way of improvisation

but i've used one of them for less than an hour, and the other for maybe five hours. i didn't enjoy it, but it was also a bad system and a bad scenario.

discord never seems to work properly unless one of you set up their own server and read the instruction manuals for the bots. also it's hideous.

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as an interface this presses my buttons a lot more, and i think trying to make a niche killer is a fine idea. i don't know if i'd use it much myself, because i like hearing people's voices, and i don't think those come through in a text box. also, it seems like the design would create a heavy prep load and make it hard to do stuff on the fly--i could be wrong there tho!

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side note: aff is long discontinued but i believe fighting fantasy still has an active copyright holder--are you on top of this stuff?

disregard the last bit! i clearly don't know what i'm talking about

Thank you, that's very helpful.

The aim is to make it easy if you want to prepare a bunch of stuff in advance (the third video up thread goes over this stuff), but also if you just want to ad lib—you can pull stuff in from libraries of content on the fly. You could actually use it quite happily in the situation you describe, i.e. with people on a video call and just use it to do all the technical stuff and bookkeeping, there would be nothing stopping you, but the main mode of operation would be doing it by text.

Usability is such a big thing in pretty much any software. I’ve had a general theory for around fifteen years that you don’t have to have a good idea in software; or at least, the only idea you need is to do anything, but do it really well from the users’ perspective, because so few people do that.

I took a look at a video showing combat in RPG sessions, and to be honest, five minutes later, I was no clearer as to what was going on. That may be because I don’t understand the system it’s implementing, but then if it were really well done, I don’t think I would have to. Still, it was interesting to watch.

Re: your last point, yes we’ve been in conversation with the guy who runs it nowadays.

Is RPG sessions just targeting the Star Wars game then? It's not obvious from the website, although the video I watched was talking about that, although I guess it may just be coincidence you're doing the same thing, PBKR.

RPG sessions targets the Star Wars game and the "universal" version of that system, which is called Genesys. No other games are supported afaik.

One nice aspect is it is incredibly well supported for a "free" software. You can ask questions in the RPG Sessions discord and get responses back in near real-time. I support them on Patreon for like $2/month, which gives some additional features, the most useful being the ability to import NPCs from certain other sources. I find this helpful so I don't have to stat up mine from scratch.

Ah okay, that makes sense. They sound like a good bunch. Perhaps it’s an “early days” thing, where they need to build a community first. I’m afraid I have no idea about the system, universal or otherwise. Actually, that’s not true, I bought the West End Games one in 1987, but I expect that’s long gone now!

Their support model sounds very much like the ILX one, except that I answer no questions ever, haha!

The same company that makes the current SW RPG released a 30th anniversary reprint of the West End Games one with the hard covers and everything.

That's interesting, I remember it being quite an elegant set of rules... Sensible, vaguely realistic but also quite simple (also with a hard cover IIRC), although I think that was probably about the last thing I bought in RPGs.

Yeah, it was considered a pretty influential system.

Hi Keith! Wow thanks for reminding me which Keith you are… that was long ago now wasn’t it.. stirmonster of this bailiwick actually did a DJ set iirc!

Ha yes, I said hello to (other) Keith, but I don't think he heard a word and just smiled, and I'd actually met him before, around 1999 in the 13th Note in Glasgow, as he's a friend of Joss's (who you maybe know?).

I BET Andy wanted to DJ himself at his own wedding but Claire had to talk him out of it.

That is correct lol. I have met Joss in passing but don’t know him really. He seems to be friends with a lot of people I know!

Yeah it would probably be through the B&S mailing list... You know how ILX was original pretty much a conflation of the B&S mailing list and people from alt.music.alternative on Usenet...

Yeah, it was considered a pretty influential system.

Yeah the main thing I remember is that you didn't have to roll dice for stats, you just divided a set number of points out between whatever characteristics you wanted. This seemed like a great idea, given the number of people who showed up with maxed out stats all over the place, except for one that they didn't care about. I've no idea if that was the first to do that, but it was the first I'd read that was like that.

PBKR, it sounds like you’ve had a good experience with the rpgsessions thing… What do you feel that it does well? Are there things you think it should do that it doesn’t? It’d certainly be helpful for us to understand that type of thing. I’d look myself, but I do actually think that’s another problem with a whole bunch of these things, you seem to have to go “all in” with them to even find out whether or not they’re any good! Ideally, you’d be able to figure out what they do and don’t do before you dive in and (it seems) have to invest quite a bit of time learning how they work.

Same for you, Thomp… What have you found has worked and what could be improved?

I think a generic rpg platform will never work as well as something devoted to a specific game (like rpgsessions and what you are trying to do).

Rpgsessions uses a "game table" which simulates the GM and players all sitting around a table and provides an overview of the game with everything the players would have at the table (character sheets, dice roller, npcs, initiative tracker, etc.). The game table provides abbreviate versions of each players character where the main elements a player needs are readily accessible (skills are in a drop down; damage and other status can be tracked). All of this can be viewed in summary fashion for all characters simultaneously, which is very helpful as a GM. If you need further information on a character, you just click on that character and it launches the full character sheet. I feel like it does a good job of providing a lot of summary information without overwhelming you, and all the detail is basically one or two clicks away.

The SW RPG uses a "narrative dice" system of positive and negative dice with special symbols instead of standard numbers. The interface allows you to construct the dice pool by triggering rolls right from the skills section of the abbreviated character sheet. It is very slick and the system does the calculations and just gives you the results. NPC rolls work the same way; they are just triggered by the GM from a GM-only part of the game table.

The other thing is that to the extent you can put descriptions from the rulebooks into the app/site it helps eliminate having to stop to look things up. Spells (force powers), damage, special talents with full descriptions are right on the players' character sheet and usually allow you to interact with the dice rolling mechanism.

good luck!

Great, thank you!

Same for you, Thomp… What have you found has worked and what could be improved?

the majority of my group is people who prefer looking something up and rolling physical dice at their table to having the interface do the work, so i'm probably not the person to ask!

It’s no bother! Thanks for the feedback anyway. It has run around my mind that obviously people who currently do this, like it anyway, the way it is, and so it may be that a certain proportion of our “market” for want of a better word, possibly a high percentage, don’t exist at the moment—it’s possible they will never exist, but you’ve got to try!