Short Circuit's Journal: RPG: Ideal Online RPG Tool

From simple IRC sessions to Neverwinter Nights, tools for playing RPGs online come in a wide variety of degrees of sophistication and automation.

If you were to design (but not necessarily implement) such a tool, what would you want it to do? (Please! Discuss it!)

See also:

• RPG: Column Index
• Brew-Masters article mirror
• e-Tale, an email-based D&D campaign

Simple, but needed...

[Zirnike]

Something like pcgen except with all the files you need open. I'm not going to pay for all the damn files for all the books I already own. Fair use and all.

Even if they just had something like a keycode (UPC number, page/paragraph/word, or something) I wouldn't be so annoyed. Or if they had an easy way to input new classes (last I checked, it was complex to get anything set right)

Complex Chat Room

[FortKnox]

Think 'MUD'... you want a tool were the DM can send the descriptions of rooms and monsters to the players. You want the DM to be able to pick one to all the players to talk to. You want a player to be able to 'whisper' to other players (and always the DM... so the DM can determine if another player heard it), and you want a player to be able to just chat to the DM.

A nice feature, if you want to tie it to a specific system, is to have it so you can enter in all the data for the players weapons and armor

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Open RPG

[Alpha State]

OpenRPG (www.openrpg.com) is looking pretty good, there are some ways I would change it (and may, if I get the time):

- get rid of the map
- more rigid statistics sheets
- automate some game rules
- better usability
- connect with a web-site database for storage

The last part I am kind-of working on now. It will allow campaign and character info to be entered into a website, to be viewed by players and the GM. The same info can then be used in the online game, for example grabbing pre-written descriptions or au

Re:Open RPG

[Short Circuit]

Damn, that is nice.

I might use that at home to organize e-Tale.