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Triage
September 20th, 2010, 01:47
I did have a half-hearted look for a post that was similar to mine, so just point me at it if the discussin i'm bringing up has already been done.

Basiclly i've played games for a while. I'm kind of like a junky in the way that i'm looking for an rpg experience "the way it used to be". Not with archaic old rules, but in terms of atmos and game immersion. I'm playing in one game at the moment that is teaching me alot with FG@. Unfortunatly i had to drop out of another one which i think would have answered alot of the questions i have at the moment. I very much want to GM a game myself and i'm mostly worried about the atmosphere than rules or story.

The question i have would be; "What techniques do you use with FG2 to promote immersion?"

eg. Skype/Vent/whatever; Can a game keep rolling if this is used only if needed? Could players get by with having to emote what their characters are doing and only using Skype if absolutly nessecary. How would game play go if only the DM could initiate Skype communication?

Valarian
September 20th, 2010, 07:50
I've found that just using the text chat promotes immersion, and encouraging the players to use OOC as little as possible. To describe their character's actions through emote and action text. The game runs slower than across a table, due to it being written rather than verbal communication, but I've found resulting stories to be better than I've had across the table. No embarrassment factor to get around.

That said, I've not tried Skype with FGII. I would guess only using it for OOC queries would be fine, and add a level of player interaction above the character interaction in the text.

Callum
September 20th, 2010, 15:24
I find that making the chat window purely IC (all speaking, actions, etc.) is very helpful. If you have Skype or some other voice comms (like Ventrilo) then you can have OOC chat on voice only.

Griogre
September 20th, 2010, 19:27
Like Callum, I have found that using the chat window for in character conversations and voice for rules questions, out of character questions, combat descriptions, area descriptions and quick clarifications seems to work well.

Some people swear by all chat, no voice games for the RPing. I have played in some and while it was quite enjoyable the pace was very slow and resolving rules questions and confusions was painfully slow.

While I think the all typed chat game has more immersion, I also think it can be the most frustrating game type when a player is confused or needs a rules question answered. The pacing is slow and the GM needs much more preparation time because unless he is a very fast typist, the GM should input read aloud text.

At the opposite end is the voice only game. I don't think those work that well either with more than several players. VoIP is not the same as a conversation around a table because of the missing visual cues. Face to face people can tell when someone is about to speak or have a conversational pause while on VoIP people step on each others conversations and eventually only several people end up speaking excluding some players.

Using chat for in character RPing and VoIP for the rest is a compromise that seems to work well for me.

Stitched
September 20th, 2010, 20:36
The last few games I played, where voice was an option, I found people to be generally shy and didn't speak much. The GM, however, did the majority of the speaking but since I was looking for the "at a table" experience, I found the silence to be a little disconcerting. I guess it depends on the group and what you are used to.

Our GM also was toying with streaming music, in a separate channel, in the background to lend "mood". The suggestion he offered was "Radio Rivendell", a web-based fantasy soundtrack station, which I have now started streaming in the background while we play.

Doswelk
September 20th, 2010, 21:42
On my Savage Open Games, we use VOIP, but players can have "in character" arguments in text, basically anything that is not critical to the game but in character they want to do is usually in chat.

Triage
September 22nd, 2010, 01:52
Thanks for those comments guys. From what i've read i think i'll try all chat when i run my first trial game.

Tips such as having plenty of read aloud text in all chat games was good.

Are there any other tips like this for full chat games?

eg. I suppose it's best to expect players to not to check rules to see if they can do things, rather, just let them continue and stop them only when the DM a problem?

Griogre
September 22nd, 2010, 04:21
In an all typed chat game you need to give typed feedback in combat for you characters to understand what is going on. You should make a hot key for each character that says they were hit, ie "Eru was hit!" and another generic one that says something like "The monster missed!" This is important not only for the character hit but very important for the other players since they can't tell in many rulesets if another character is hurting at all, yet alone how damaged he is. Depending on your system you will want to hot key other combat cues you use all the time, IE "Roll initiative!" After a few games you will probably have a good feel on phases that you use all the time in combat and those are the ones you want hot keyed. Depending your ruleset hot keying emotes might work for you.

Fast non typed communication shortcuts becomes very important and pointers can be very useful so make sure you know all the short cuts for the points you are likely to use. You might want to consider always making the characters request permission to move because it draws that white line show how the character is moving and this can be helpful not only for counting the move but showing the other players what that character is doing.

You want your players to use targeting rings so everyone knows who is attacking whom. Also I would be very hard nosed on forgotten modifiers or unnamed modifiers to hit or damage. In an all typed game it can take forever to explain what that plus or minus is so get your players in the habit of using named modifiers or disallowing the mod. Make sure they know how to use /mod for 4E or /die for other rulesets.

Make sure you know what the right click radial does on the chat window. In particular putting up a quick "Halt" is very useful. Also make sure you know how to use the twin chat buffers. They are there for an all typed chat game and allow you to interrupt typing something long to answer a something quickly and then go back to typing the long message. In general knowing what all the chat window slash commands are for that ruleset can be useful. The GM using the vote command can help prompt a party to make a decision and and move on.

One closing thought. I ran an open table 3.5 Rappan Athuk game where anyone could show up and play that did not require the players have a mic, but I did require them have speakers. As a GM it really will save you a lot of time if sometimes you can just ask players questions and give combat descriptions even if they can't talk back.