Busy Games

[VenomousFiligree]

My last few games have been very busy, mainly due to great players RPing their socks of :)

My game last night was especially so. A rules lite narrative style game with 6 good RPers meant the chat screen (GM? :) ) couldn’t cope! There was also a fair bit of OOC banter, which I’ve never minded previously, but in this case did lead to the chat window scrolling even more quickly.

It was suggested that we go into “combat rounds” despite not being in combat (at the time). I initially wasn’t comfortable with this, but went with it. I think it worked well?

We were all learning a new system as well and although it was rules lite, there were still questions being asked. What was good to see were other players helping each other with rules questions, thus taking the load of the GM (always good in my books!! :) )
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So any others tips from GMs running “Busy” games?

[unerwünscht]

We have been talking about trying to add a 2nd chat window to our games, the main one for story and in game stuff, and an OOC window for everything else.

This would help with 2 things, the first being cutting down on extra text getting in the way of the story frame, and 2nd it would help with people like me who always forget to hold down the OOC button.

[dlinacre]

I really enjoyed the session, though I think I may have been guilty of the excessive OOC chat (it was my first ever game online, so I'll know for next time what's appropriate and what's not :-p)

Not having previous experience to draw on, my 2 cents (pennies?) probably are only worth just that ... but I thought both combat rounds and free-for-all worked well. I think we RP'ed a lot more in the free for all part at the beginning, but I also agree that unless the GM had scripts prepared for every eventuality, then six people each with their own ideas were making it far too chaotic for any GM to handle, so we were forced to backtrack a couple of times.

Overall I think combat rounds were the way to go, it paced the game and made everything fairly straight forward. But I agree that next time the initiative order should be rearranged every now and then to spice it up a little.

Good game, and I can't wait for the next one! Shame it's two weeks away! :(

[phantomwhale]

I've tried to keep Skype for OOC banter, such that the chat log only has "in-game" stuff (and maybe a FEW OOC jokes, but hey). Can't say it's perfect, but I can usually scroll back no more than a few lines to pick up the plot when it gets over my head.

[VenomousFiligree]

I wasn't too worried about the ooc, I had made a conscious decision not to have voice. The main issue was the shear volume of RP! What would be nice however is an OOC filter! :)

Another factor that hampered things (that I forgot to mention) was the player disconnects. These in themselves weren't an issue it was not being able to kick the PC to allow the Player to reconnect

[mr_h]

The best way to handle the OOC chat I've found is voice comms for OOC. So much easier and cleaner.
I've used Skype, Ventrillo, and Mumble (I have a server I run Mumble on, if anyone ever wants to use it, its free for all).

[Slipshod]

My group has decided that the chat window is for the OOC commentary/peanut gallery, and the voice channel is for the in game stuff.

It happened pretty organically, and I think it's an extension of how we play as a group (most of the players and I have been in the same group off and on for 15 years or so). We're heavy on the one-liners, colorful commentary, and trash talk, and moderate on the in-character RP. We're used to the GM and active player in combat being the only ones talking, so everyone else immediately jumped on the chat channel to start joking around. Outside of combat, nobody wants to focus on typing, they just want to RP like we normally do around a table.

The only bummer is that we don't have a good record of the game, just a log of people making jokes. Other than that, I really like it. Combat moves quickly, and people don't get bored waiting for their turn.

[Bidmaron]

Feature request: Build in voice chat to 2.8 with a version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking built right in to transcribe the voice into the chat window, automatically color-coded and annotated for each character. In version 2.9, please include a voice inflection detector so that you can register which accent is for which player character, and then if you speak in 'normal' voice it is automatically flagged as OOC in a separate chat log. I can't believe this doesn't already exist in the program!