I've been out of the GMing game for a couple of years, mainly because my regular group split and moved to the 4 corners of the UK. I've recently tried lookin into ways to run a game using the internet to keep the group together and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions as to what programme/website is useful for this.

I want a Virtual Table/RP Website that is easy to use, cheap (tho free would be better) and has everything a group would need to play with out being in the same room/house/street/town as each other. I especially want something that will work well with WH40KRPG.

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated as I am really up for running a new game.

Cheers

H16HP01N7

Slightly off topic but something I'd like to see is someone construct a technique to run a campaign via Twitter. Maybe use a hashtag to make the messages between GM and PC's a uniform stream (and DM's could be used for communications intended to be discreet between players or GM). Maybe create a rolling room at rolz.org to keep a public log of everyone's dice checks.

I highly suggest using Maptools . I have yet to use it between other players ( I use it to keep track of certain things) but it is a great free program. Use it in conjunction with Skye and youll pretty much be set

Lucien Kallus said:

I've been trying to get MapTools to work all day, but another player can't seem to connect to my game (which is just a test game for the moment). It keeps displaying a Timed Out message. It's a pity, because I was really enjoying the Map Creation stuff I had even in the default version. Any suggestions on a fix and I'll be set. (Once I get some more Sci-Fi Map Textures lol)

I suggest going to the forums and asking there. They will be able to help you with the technical side

Well, my gaming group includes two English caps from the other side of the country, a swedish lad, a two blokes and a lass from Finland so the internet really can make magic happen. Personally we use a combination of Skype and MSN for playing out our mission. Skype for it's quick discussion handles all the OOC stuff and hilarious banter while MSN is purely IC stuff, including most of the narrative description.

For the ease of letting things flow and a massive distrust of online dice rollers (they are not random, and derp like you wouldn't believe) the GM is also the dice controller. They roll for everything and relay it back. Any worries that "****, I coulda rolled that better myself" faded away a while back. So far we've played a hell of a lot of games and all have gone swimmingly.

Aside from not having a map utility, IRC rooms are pretty ideal for this kind of gaming. Skype multiway calls are good for any verbal discussion, but the dice utilities that you can use through these rooms is handy.

TehNuffster said:

It is true that the random function used in all programming isn't random. It's close enough, though. The math behind it is annoying, and some values may return more often by a slim margin (.001 times more often?) because there are certain decimal values that cannot be returned out of all of the mathematical permutations involved in the random function. Really, getting a 94 on a percentile roll 1001 times to the 998 times you'd get a 95 is a minor impediment. Especially since people take for granted that the dice they use are perfectly balanced and do not also have a small deviation. (hint, they're not perfect either)

IdOfEntity said:

I have played all of my games in the last six months (Dark Heresy, Deathwatch, Pathfinder, D&D 3.5, Legend of the Five Rings, Exalted…) via IRC and Skype. The loss of maps hasn't overly limited my group's gaming, so we haven't bothered with MapTools. We typically use Skype for descriptions and actions, while dialogue and GM descriptions get typed out in IRC. Dice rolls are handled by a dicebot RNG.