Slack

When I had this idea to run a game and knew that we were going to be doing it all online I knew I needed something where we could share thoughts, photos, and side chats. Ideally this would have been in the same program as we were running our video but it didn't have to be.

Off the bat, Ben recommended me Roll20.com which is built for exactly this. I spent a couple of days faffing about with it and came to two conclusions:

1) It is an incredible tool for running online RPGs
2) The learning curve for the use of its features is so high for brand new players that I didn't want to use it until we were all more comfortable with the game as a whole.

So I've pocket roll20 although I'm slowly pulling into it some maps and homebrew applications for when we do, likely, switch to it.

I thought about a FB group, but FB knows too much about me already and while it would allow for some of the functionality of sharing photos and things, it wasn't an easy thing to setup in the way I wanted and I could see it getting unwieldy very quickly.

I already use slack for both work and school - I wondered if it could be used for this as well?

Dames and Dragons was born.

At first, we had only two channels other than 'General' and 'Random' which were 'gamemechanics' and 'datetimediscussion'. The first was where I asked for input on the type of game. If anyone had strong opinions on the setting or what system we used. In the second we hashed out availability and if we'd meet every week, every other, and at what times. It was there that we decided to meet "early" because we had east and west coast people.

I knew when the game started I would add a 'game' thread which is somewhere I could drop photos, sketched, maps, notes, etc for the players to see during the actual game. There's something to be said for "You roll over and see a dog." versus "You roll over and see this:"

 

Which would you prefer? Obviously the above.

Another thing I did was think about language a lot. There is, as is common and for ease, a common tongue that basically everyone speaks. But all the races (including humans) generally have their own language as well.

What if.... every language but common has its own slack channel? And they are private so the only people in the channel are the people who speak that language. That way, I can speak whatever gibberish I want* and write translations in slack for the people who can speak it. Then they can decide, in character, how much they want to pass on to the rest of the group.

For a group with more experience I might not have even thought of it - because keeping in character and out of character information separate is a skill that comes with time. But for this very new group of players I thought it would add some fun. So we have channels for all of the languages they speak. Some have only one person in the channel (and me) others three or four.

* I went onto google translate and looked up languages that sounded like what I thought that race might sound like. Then I translated the Gettysburg address into the language and have it on hand. No one is going to keep enough track of things to actually care that we're saying the same things, and the address is long enough to provide me with a good chunk of dialogue at a moment's notice.

When we start a game, my players have google hangouts (we're looking at others but this worked for now) and slack open. Some have their character sheet online while others printed.

I have both of those plus my big binder of common things and Scrivener and a folder of things I may need to drop in slack. Hence, the second monitor I picked up last night and will try out as soon as my adapter arrives.

And that's where we are logistics wise. I'm open to questions and comments here and you can also find me on twitter @nerdheroine