By Way of ExplanationI don't know whether any of you are into pen and paper RPGs. I never was for most of my life, but it's something I've come to enjoy here and there over the last however many years, and of course given that most of my closest friends are here at OW, we're always trying to get stuff together. We played a long (around 7 hours) 5th Edition D&D scenario at the meet in March, with I think six people, and it was a total blast. Kman, Pyro, and idol have expressed interest in trying to do another game online. I ran a 4E game for a very short time some years back using RPG Tools, and while it was pretty fun, the amount of work I spent drawing up and scanning maps and such made it a bit tough.
The IdeaSo idol suggested earlier ... why not try just playing together on IRC? It seems like a pretty decent idea. 5E brings back the "theater of the mind" concept more strongly into modern D&D, where the exactitudes of combat can be abstracted without much issue (not that you couldn't do it before, but you know), and it would strip the whole experience down in a way that I can see as being refreshing rather than limiting. The infinite possibilities that spring forth from a collective human imagination are, after all, what make these games so much fun to play when compared to a videogame, since you're not held back by an array of choices inherently limited either by technology or budget. Too, we've got idol to consider, whose internet capabilities make some other software packages less than ideal, and in my experience internet voice chat can pretty well clutter the air and cause discussion to stumble, even aside from what it does to anyone attempting to roleplay a little.
The ProposalSo I thought it would be fun to give it a try and run a test scenario. Is anyone interested? If it goes well and seems enjoyable, at some point we'd hopefully be able to do a full campaign, have a game night maybe weekly, every other week, or monthly, though all I'm planning here is just a one-off adventure for a few players that requires no obligation beyond one (probably substantial) evening of fun.
Obviously this will by necessity be a little different from sitting around a table, and that's the whole point of this: to see how well it works. Idol and I have discussed it enough that we feel it could work pretty well, so we figured why not give it a shot? If we try it and it doesn't pan out, it's not like there aren't plenty of other viable options available, but the convenience and lean, streamlined nature of IRC make it an attractive possibility.
The RequirementsIf this sounds fun to you and you'd like to give it a whirl, just throw a post up here and let us know. We'll work out more specifics depending on who is interested and how their schedule works out for having a game night. Since this is a one-off, scheduling shouldn't be too huge an issue, though obviously your mileage may vary due to timezones, etc. Either way, once we know who wants to play, we'll figure out when we can do it, and depending on past experience with pen and paper RPGs, we'll figure out where to start for the adventure itself. Depending on who's playing and what their preferences are, we might do something serious, something horror-themed, or something funny and/or completely batshit. We'll figure that out down the road.
What will you need?
-- a decent IRC client you can spend some time with (I recommend Quassel)
-- an as-yet-to-be-determined dicerolling script which we'll provide links for when the time comes
-- enough time to sit down and enjoy a game with your friends
-- enough snacks, beer, whiskey, or whatever to see you to the end of the evening
Optionally, it would be great if you had the
D&D 5th Edition Player's Handbook, but it's not necessary. It makes things easier on me if you can create your own character to bring to the table, and if I know that character is balanced, but if you don't have the experience, wherewithal, time, or desire to invest in a book, we can use sample characters from the 5E starter set I picked up (originally thinking we'd use it for the few people I thought would be playing at the meet ... which turned out bigger than expected, so I opted to write a scenario instead), or I can create some for you based on your specifications. The math is all pretty easy, so it's not a problem. Especially given that I don't imagine we'll have that many people express interest. I would prefer it, however, if we stuck to basic, conventional D&D characters. This is a test, after all, and while that doesn't preclude us from having fun, I'd like to minimize the custom classes and races and all that kind of stuff.
And that should about cover it. I'll probably try to throw together some ground rules just to make it a little cleaner and easier in doing this on IRC, but this will be a very casual thing. If it turns into the best thing ever we could continue, or shift the characters over to the longer campaign, but that's not anything we need to worry about now. Now all we want to know is: how much fun might we have playing abstracted D&D 5E on IRC?
Feel free to ask questions here if you have any, or PM me or whatever, and let me know if you're interested.
