Non-MU* online roleplay

[Arkandel]

Hey folks,

So I've been wondering if any of you have ideas about how to address the following situation:

Some friends and I are trying to set up a non-MU* online campaign, taking turns to ST for each other. However our schedules don't quite match very well so we may have to pick an asynchronous way of posing at times, while at others it'd be nice if players who can play together at the same time get to do so.

E-mail seems like a bad idea since there is no obvious way to designate separate scenes or segregate RP into 'rooms', plus bringing people in afterwards will be a pain without forwarding them endless threads after the fact.

Google Docs could work with a shared document, but I'm curious about all the roleplaying web sites out there - has anyone used them for something like this? Do they have any cool features we can take advantage of? Or do you have experience/ideas about setting up online campaigns in a non-MU* setting?

Thanks in advance.

[Glitch]

You could try storium, @Arkandel. It allows for posting as slowly or quickly as you want, though it doesn't have the room separation and it holds to its own mechanics. You could potentially use a private wiki too, with creative use of namespaces and categories. I think google docs could work too, but it might be a little harder to organize, though folders and well-dated documents could probably swing it.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

I've played on and off with friends using a combination of Roll20 (which has a ton of really nice mechanics for dice and stored character sheets) and a private wiki. Roll20 doesn't quite work for me as a MU* replacement (the lack of private rooms and the 'everything gets dumped into one giant text scroll that's hard to break into individual logs' are what keeps it from being that for me), but I like some of what it does a great deal.

There's also Dreamwidth journals, things I do not play on, but there's a pretty big RP community that seems to use them enthusiastically. I have old RP buddies who've migrated to it, though I enjoy the real-time improv aspect too much for it to have much appeal for me.

[Songtress]

Jcink as a forum host would be good.

[Griatch]

You could try a vanilla Evennia install. Without further modification you'll have
chat/pose capabilities, can build/describe rooms. You also have npc puppetting, channels etc but it sounds like you more want the writing parts.

While it could be (pretty easily) added, there is no rp logging out of the box, but if you are willing to use a separate mu client, that could be handled that way (currently our web client doesn't log).

If you could succinctly list what kind of features you'd want from your environment I could look into making an Evennia tutorial for how to add in eventual missing features.
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Griatch

[Arkandel]

I've been thinking about relaunching my web-MU project. So let's see:

1. A web-based interface supporting a 'grid' - i.e. multiple rooms players can pose in.

2. Permanent sheets per character with customizable stats and a way for admins to view and set them.

3. PMs between players.

If there's a tutorial supporting that for Evennia, @Griatch, then I could figure out the rest from there. I haven't coded in python in forever but it could be fun.

[Griatch]

@Arkandel said:

I've been thinking about relaunching my web-MU project. So let's see:

1. A web-based interface supporting a 'grid' - i.e. multiple rooms players can pose in.

Hm. So what do you mean by "grid"? A graphical map? Or just the ability to move between multiple rooms using move commands? If the former, that would require some custom javascript coding in the client, it's not something in there at this time. If the latter, this is standard out of the box in Evennia.

2. Permanent sheets per character with customizable stats and a way for admins to view and set them.

This would be handled by a few custom admin-commands coupled to a sheet display that can be created using one of our utilities. A nice little project.

3. PMs between players.

Already in there.

If there's a tutorial supporting that for Evennia, @Griatch, then I could figure out the rest from there. I haven't coded in python in forever but it could be fun.

I'll probably not make a tutorial for extending the web client with a graphical map at this point (if this is what is desired) but I'll look into a tutorial on how to combine the various parts of Evennia into something fitting this particular (and comparably straight-forward) use-case.
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Griatch

[Arkandel]

@Griatch said:

@Arkandel said:

I've been thinking about relaunching my web-MU project. So let's see:

1. A web-based interface supporting a 'grid' - i.e. multiple rooms players can pose in.

Hm. So what do you mean by "grid"? A graphical map? Or just the ability to move between multiple rooms using move commands? If the former, that would require some custom javascript coding in the client, it's not something in there at this time. If the latter, this is standard out of the box in Evennia.

No, no need to be graphical at first (although I could add it later so there's a visual way to move around that doesn't require a CLI of any sort). Just a standard set of commands to move manually around, 'teleport' to a specific room and summon people over would be more than sufficient.

2. Permanent sheets per character with customizable stats and a way for admins to view and set them.

This would be handled by a few custom admin-commands coupled to a sheet display that can be created using one of our utilities. A nice little project.

Right. It'd be necessary for any ST - or staff doing CGen or sheet management for spends, etc.

3. PMs between players.

Already in there.

Great! Ideally this could include custom made channels - one of the most annoying things about paging is CCing multiple players at once.

If there's a tutorial supporting that for Evennia, @Griatch, then I could figure out the rest from there. I haven't coded in python in forever but it could be fun.

I'll probably not make a tutorial for extending the web client with a graphical map at this point (if this is what is desired) but I'll look into a tutorial on how to combine the various parts of Evennia into something fitting this particular (and comparably straight-forward) use-case.

That'd be awesome!

[Griatch]

@Arkandel said:

No, no need to be graphical at first (although I could add it later so there's a visual way to move around that doesn't require a CLI of any sort). Just a standard set of commands to move manually around, 'teleport' to a specific room and summon people over would be more than sufficient.

Digging rooms, moving between them, creating/destroying objects as well as things like @teleport is in the default command set. There is no "summon here" out of the box, but having a custom command to teleport a list of people over would not be hard to add.

Great! Ideally this could include custom made channels - one of the most annoying things about paging is CCing multiple players at once.

As I recall, the default emit command can target any number of recipients at the same time. Since the server does nick-replacement on the command line, you could (using the @nick command) make a nick for a group of players and use that to address them (the emit command will get all the target names as usual).
Channels are otherwise included by default. In fact, the messages are standardized, so you send the same "type" of message object both as PMs and to channels, only difference is how they are redistributed.
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Griatch

[Arkandel]

@Griatch said:

As I recall, the default emit command can target any number of recipients at the same time. Since the server does nick-replacement on the command line, you could (using the @nick command) make a nick for a group of players and use that to address them (the emit command will get all the target names as usual).
Channels are otherwise included by default. In fact, the messages are standardized, so you send the same "type" of message object both as PMs and to channels, only difference is how they are redistributed.

Once the basics are in place I can expand the functionality through javascript/Ajax/whatever to give it a nicer interface but really, the objective is to move away from every person involved in a group having to manually copy/paste the list of recipients and edit it constantly or be given error messages ("I don't recognize Bob") when someone logs off.

[Griatch]

@Arkandel

This would all be Python.

Is the plan to only have a single group of players or multiple groups working independently in different parts of the grid?
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Griatch

[Arkandel]

There are three cases here.

1. Fixed groups would require permanent channels. Say, you have a coterie of vampires - you don't want to have to check who's on just to chat with the other members, all you want is do something like "co Hey all!" and whoever's logged on sees it.

2. Occasional groups such as when a Storyteller running a scheduled event is trying to coordinate with the players who showed up for it. There's no need for this one to be permanent as long as it's easy for one person to add/remove players from the participants' list instead of every person having to edit their recipients individually.

3. Very crowded rooms need an equivalent of MUSH 'places'. Then instead of everyone having to endure everyone else's spam RP can be broken down into circles ('booth in the corner', 'at the bar', etc) for both IC and OOC communication.

[Glitch]

Yeah, but that all seems like it'd be beyond a version 1 need. Channels are available, @nicks are possible for lists of recipients (though obviously this doesn't solve the temporary channel thing) and places code is assuming scale that isn't necessarily going to materialize, so I hardly see it as an immediate need.

Generic character sheets with settable values and a roller are the real version 1 needs, I believe. To be followed by task and task tracking, perhaps forums (though that can definitely start or stay as web-based). Convenience functionality, like making it easier to page certain people, shouldn't be a priority.

[Arkandel]

Sure, sounds good.

[Griatch]

@Arkandel

I wrote a rather lengthy tutorial that covers most of the things you want. Alas I'm traveling for Christmas and won't have time to work on it before New Years ... so it's thus not fully complete nor tested and may likely contain bugs in example code. But if you keep in mind these caveats you can peek at the current state here:
https://github.com/evennia/evennia/wiki/Evennia-for-roleplaying-sessions

It will have to do for now. Enjoy!
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Griatch

[Tanyuu]

Sounds like an alternative has already been found, but I'll mention this in case anyone else stumbles across this post with a similar problem.

I remember there being some roleplay sites that sprung up when Tumblr did some changes to how it formatted posts and people there panicked. None of these were built with MUs in mind (I have trouble enough finding communities that allow for ads for MU*s on there), but something that sprung out of that could work for noncoded RP in a pinch.

This was one that stood out to me due to its no frills look and there being no need for registering, but there's no function for rooms and the like. I've yet to use it. The admin has stated they do skim logs to make sure nothing illegal is happening, which I can understand as there's probably underage users using it.

[Arkandel]

@Griatch Thanks! I'll take a look at it as soon as my workload allows it. The holidays are almost upon us.

[Griatch]

I cleaned up the mentioned Evennia for running tabletop rpgs tutorial a little. Still not tested nor fully complete but the concepts should be sound for those that want to toy with it.
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Griatch

[Songtress]

Plenty of Forum(Play By Post) platforms. Jcink lets create message boards and have accounts (that can be linked together in a ''Player" to "Character" account and allow for switching, Most forum gamers use this sort of model.

Jcink is also Free.