Life Chat Rooms

[InfoStorm]

My longest running online game was back in the hayday of AOL when it was strong. We used to meet weekly online and play in the private chat rooms for 3-6 hours at a time. What made it all possible was that the AOL chat rooms had dice rollers build in, so that when someone needed to roll a dice, they just typed something like //rolldice1sides20 or //rolldice6sides6 to get the needed results. Is this too bandwidth intensive or even exist somewhere?

[Moritz]

You should look into the world of MUD, MUX, MOO. There are thousands of places that are stand alone servers which are designed just for your roleplay desires in what ever genre you want to play.

An example of this would be: http://xmenmovieverse.com/

[Ed Zachary]

Wouldn't it be easier to have the players roll the dice for themselves, like we used to do way back in the dark ages?

[Moritz]

I Rolled a 20!

Oh look, I rolled a 20 again!

Oh my god, I'm so lucky, I rolled another 20!

It's like magic, I rolled another 20!

[Ed Zachary]

I Rolled a 20!

Oh look, I rolled a 20 again!

Oh my god, I'm so lucky, I rolled another 20!

It's like magic, I rolled another 20!

As the DM I suspect you are cheating, especially since you rolled all 18s for abilities in character creation and maxed out on hit points. As I stated in the intro for my play by post game, negative karma will find you. I haven't detected any sign of cheating yet, the rolls are averaging around 10 to 11. The game is suppose to be fun, why cheat? If the DM/GM/ST is sharp, they'll catch the cheater.

[Moritz]

LOL. Oh my god, I rolled another 20!

Yeah, I generally trust the players - to cheat.

[Ed Zachary]

Yeah, I generally trust the players - to cheat.

One game I was DMing, we had a 13th level Fighter (Con=18) join us. He claimed 161 hit points.

What's wrong with this picture?

[Moritz]

Yeah, like I'm good with math.

[Ed Zachary]

Yeah, like I'm good with math.

If you think you were good rolling all 20s on a d20, he was rolling 21s.

[Moritz]

Ok, lemmie do this long hand..

18 con = 4 points per level. So that is 13 x 4 = 52

Fighter is d10 , so that's 10 x 13 = 130

So, 130 + 52 = 182 max hit points.

What am I doing wrong?

[Ed Zachary]

Ok, lemmie do this long hand...

18 con = 4 points per level. So that is 13 x 4 = 52

Fighter is d10 , so that's 10 x 13 = 130

So, 130 + 52 = 182 max hit points.

What am I doing wrong?

I'm an older gamer, this was pre-3.0.

18 con = 4 points per level. So that is 13 x 4 = 52

Fighter is d10 (level 1 to 9), so that's 10 x 9 = 90

Fighter is 3 (level 10 to 13), so that's 3 x 4 = 12

So, 52 +90 +12 = 154 max hit points.

Sorry, I should've been clearer on that...

[Moritz]

Oh oh, now that makes a whole lot more sense.

I'm thankful for 3.5

[Farcaster]

AOL chat rooms had dice rollers build in, so that when someone needed to roll a dice, they just typed something like //rolldice1sides20 or //rolldice6sides6 to get the needed results. Is this too bandwidth intensive or even exist somewhere?

Its not too hard to do. I was thinking about scripting a dice rolling program into our chat room here, but I've also been considering moving to different software for the chat room as well. I'm still on the fence about it.

[Moritz]

You mean people log into the chat room?

Question: If we were to log into the chat room, would we get credit on the line posting rank? :)

[Farcaster]

Yeah, occasionally people use it. There's no big push for people to go there, I just wanted to make it available if someone wanted to chat live with other PnPG'rs. As far as credit, uhm, no credits for you! You're already #3 anyway! If you want to dethrone Ed or me, you're just going to have to do it the ole' fashioned way.

[InfoStorm]

All I can say is that if The chat rooms here had an inline dice roller, I'd happily start DM'ing a weekly game. I had a BLAST on my online game, and it lasted over two years. Also easier to play for those of us whom have wives who wants them at home and 3 year olds who demand attention.

[Ed Zachary]

Just curious, why is the lack of a dice roller holding you back?

[Moritz]

Ed, maybe he believes as I do, "Players are prone to 'fudge', 'cheat', or just bend the outcome to their advantage."

"Oh my god, I rolled another 20!"

Normally when I run an online game, the dice are coded. I don't always use them. But in the case of more than one player, it may be good to keep everyone behind a die roll.

[Ed Zachary]

Then I consider myself blessed to have been associated with honest people.

If you can't trust those you game with to be honest, then why game with them?

I know, you rolled another 20.

[Moritz]

How did you guess?!?!?! You must be psychic!

[Farcaster]

I have to agree that a dice rolling program would be very useful. Sometimes players, just like GMs, fudge their numbers a little. Its just human nature. Having a dice rolling facility just makes it easier for everyone to know that everything is on the level.

[PhishStyx]

Online dice rollers can be pretty nifty. Could it have additive options or perhaps access an online saved character sheet and do our addition/subtraction for us?

I know you love how much work I'm creating for you.

[Moritz]

Phish wants:

1d6+4-12+17/3*77+1d2/2

And after that roll, it'll tell us whether or not the fighter has three or four fingers remaining.

[PhishStyx]

Phish wants:

1d6+4-12+17/3*77+1d2/2

And after that roll, it'll tell us whether or not the fighter has three or four fingers remaining.


Actually, I'm thinking about a system where I could input my character sheet and the dice roller would know that I have Strength 5 (or 18 for D&D) and a skill of 4 with swords and add them to the dice roll automatically.

Yeah, seems like a lot of work to me, too.

[Moritz]

For something that detailed, you may want to look into something like http://www.fantasygrounds.com/

Now, if Farcaster wanted to host a separate program such as that on his site, that would be pretty sweet. Not at all sure how it would work though.

[InfoStorm]

Keep It Simple.
The basic roller with number and sides and maybe a single modifier is all that is needed. (i.e. //rollside#sides#add##) I don't want to have to deal with charts of pre-rolled numbers or modifiers for what players said they rolled. Hitting my d20 macro to feed in ' //rolldice1sides20add ' would make things so munch easier when running a game. Storeing character sheets, etc etc, that's what I use other programs for, like notepad or even Excel. (just an alt-tab away).

IF it got working, be curious to know how many character the chat input like was limited to. (pre-written room descriptions for example)

Also puts all the dice on the 'table' so the players can see I didn't have it out for them when I kill them.

P.S. That FantasyGrounds II program looks sweet, but my pennies are pretty short right now and I have problems making people pay for it because I'm hosting in it.

[PhishStyx]

Sure, but that's pretty costly, and it seems like a LOT more than I really want anyway. Plus, it only appears to work with D20, and much as I know many people think that's the only RPG ruleset that exists, I don't use D20. No really, I don't run any D20 games.

[Moritz]

Well, I'm sure Farcaster will have the dice setup in our chat room one day soon which will mean that we can actually play real time games. And heck, he may even go so far as to let us create our own rooms. Next we'll have a ventrillo like setup where we can have live audio feed and then soon after that it'll be video conferencing baby!

[PhishStyx]

I'm pretty sure it already allows new rooms to be created.

[Farcaster]

I'm pretty sure it already allows new rooms to be created.

It does. :)

Well, I'm sure Farcaster will have the dice setup in our chat room one day soon which will mean that we can actually play real time games. And heck, he may even go so far as to let us create our own rooms. Next we'll have a ventrillo like setup where we can have live audio feed and then soon after that it'll be video conferencing baby!

I actually looked into the web conferencing thing not too long ago. There's this cool software would work great, BUT it requires Adobe Flash Media Server 2 for the low, low price of $4500 smackers. Ouchie! We're not at that point yet. But, there are options out there if you want to do web and audio conferencing with multiple people. Yahoo will let you do that for instance (although the refresh speed and resolution is somewhat limited.)

I've been meaning to make a dice roller for the site anyway. I actually did a pretty good one using VB.net, but since this site isn't run on Windows, I can't take that code and use it in an ASP page. Ah well. I'll build one though, eventually :)

[Moritz]

Oh oh oh oh. I found this:

http://www.mebeam.com/