jordangreywolf (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jordangreywolf) wrote2017-08-18 01:21 pm
jordangreywolf) wrote2017-08-18 01:21 pm
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[Fallout] Scenario #1: Wok-a-Doodle
My Iron Kingdoms RPG campaign is on hiatus now until Necronomicon is over (in October), so I'm using our once-every-two-weeks game session to "play-test" some Fallout-themed scenarios for the convention. If by chance you plan to play my Fallout games at Necronomicon this year (or at my house), please skip over this, because there will be SPOILERS.
Backstory:
The "Long 15" is a stretch of former superhighway that now serves as a major merchant caravan artery running from Dayglow (formerly San Diego) in the heart of the New California Republic, all the way to New Vegas in the Mojave Desert. The roadway is traveled far more frequently by pack brahmin and cargo rickshaws than by cars or motorbikes, but either way, there are travelers who need to stop along the way for a bite, or for a safe place to shelter the night (or retreat from rad-storms or raiders).
The Wok-a-Doodle was a Chinese-American restaurant amid a cluster of small business sprung up in an unincorporated rural area off-ramp near one of the cloverleaf interchanges -- in other words, far enough from the urban sprawl that it was relatively spared from the nuclear fallout. 200+ years later, some entrepreneurs have set up shop in the old restaurant, tuned up its fusion-powered kitchen, and have started serving wasteland delicacies and relatively radiation-free drinks to traders, mercs, NCR soldiers, and other travelers along the roadway. As with any post-apocalyptic food venture, squirrel-on-a-stick, molerat chunks, radscorpion legs, and grilled radroaches are on the menu, but the real attraction would be the chicken dishes (as befitting the Wok-a-Doodle's name and logo).
The trouble is, there was an ... incident lately with the chicken pens out back, resulting in an escape of the restaurant's entire flock of mutant poultry. There's a large caravan scheduled to stop by for the night, so the proprietor will pay top caps to anyone who can bring in as many radchickens as possible before sundown -- preferably alive, but at least in edible condition.
Note: I might need to find a less mercenary motivation. If the PCs are doing this "for the caps," they could get distracted by other things that could potentially earn them money. ("Hey, let's loot this stuff! It's worth FAR more than chickens!") Maybe the PCs are all good buddies with the proprietor of the Wok-a-Doodle, as they've stopped by there before? Maybe one or more of the PCs was responsible for the radchickens getting loose? ;) Or maybe the proprietor is offering something special in compensation that can't be bought with money/caps.
Format:
I plan on set this up as a sort of "open air dungeon." That is, on one side of the board (GM's side) is the facade that represents the Wok-a-Doodle restaurant. I plan to have a large plastic "pavement" board set out to represent nearby streets, a Secret Weapons Miniatures Tablescape "sidewalk" board to mark off a large "block," and then various ruined buildings occupying that block. The PCs would have free rein to explore the building neighboring the Wok-a-Doodle (the automated Laundr-O-Mat on one side, and the old martial arts studio on the other), the debris-strewn streets, and the ruins the next block over.
The stated objective is to capture mutant chickens -- preferably alive (for more caps), or at least to retrieve their carcasses (serving as a disincentive to, say, disintegrate them into glowing green goo with heavy plasma weaponry). However, I'm not averse at all to some other "story" to be revealed once the PCs start poking around. I mostly just needed some sort of initial motivation for the PCs to start poking around the area, and it's up to the players whether they stick to that or not. (After all, the money they get paid for this scenario isn't going to matter much for the long-term, since this is just a one-shot scenario.)
At its most basic, I suppose I could just define this as a bunch of locations that the PCs can explore at their leisure, either traveling in one big pack, or splitting up and taking their chances with one-on-one encounters. The "time until sundown" is a bit squishy. The hard limit is "how much time we have left to run this scenario," but it also serves as an in-game cap on "time-hungry" options a player might have. (E.g., "I am going to start building a nuclear reactor from spare parts." Sorry, champ, that's going to take a while!)
I've been trying to track down some cockatrice minis to represent the "chickens." I suppose I could make the punchline be that these aren't really "chickens" by any stretch of the imagination at all, and I could substitute in some neo-velociraptors or some other creature that might be more challenging to deal with.
Overall Layout:
My initial idea was to have the central area be a "city block" occupied by various building ruins. The more I think about it, though, the more I think this whole area ought to be more like some sort of roadside open-air mall (the sort of thing lining the highways along I-95 and I-4 nearer to me), possibly with multiple eateries, but also some other businesses catering to travelers. Maybe an "outlet mall" store, maybe a service station, etc.
In that case, the central area might well just be a huge parking lot, with buildings lining the edges. However, I don't want to end up with a whole bunch of "dead space" in the play area. I think I'm probably going to have to start setting up the table over this weekend (I can leave it up, I suppose, in advance of next weekend's game) and get a feel for how much space I have to work with. (It should be comparable to the space I'll have at the convention, as I asked about table sizes at the hotel.)
I don't plan to decorate the INTERIORS of any buildings (or large vehicles) in any detail. Rather, if the action moves into one of the small buildings, I'm planning on treating things as more "theater of the mind" for what's going on in there. Mostly, the minis will be there for handling what happens if the action spills outside into the streets, and for marking WHICH building the PCs are visiting (especially important if they split up -- which I predict there's a good chance of). Basically, once you're inside the diner or the frosty bar or the Laundr-O-Mat, then everyone is in range of everyone else. Melee? You charge and swing. Range? Start shooting. Grenade? Uh oh. Time to dive out the window, because EVERYONE inside is going to be in the blast radius in this enclosed space.
I have a few very loose encounter ideas:
The Laundr-O-Mat
The Laundr-O-Mat has a robot (Mr. Handy) on duty 24/7 ... and has done so for the past 210 or so years. This Mr. Handy is just a little bit unstable, and is something of a clean freak, even as he's incapable of doing much about it in his current state; he's run completely out of Abraxo cleaning powder.
I see this as a "brains or talkie or fight" type of situation. This Mr. Handy is a bit unstable. The techno-expert could "hack" the Mr. Handy and draft him as a robotic ally while poking around the rest of the ruins. The "face" in the group could rely upon his or her charisma bonuses to talk to the Mr. Handy and persuade it toward some end. The "fighter" type could just clobber Mr. Handy if he's too much trouble (though that's probably the least interesting outcome).
Also, a random thought is that this Mr. Handy has been attempting to concoct an Abraxo substitute, using other chemicals salvaged from the area, but to no avail. However, someone with a chemistry background could make use of the stockpile to make some "acid bombs" or the like.
Roleplay-wise, I need to work on my "deranged British butler" accent.
Martial Arts School? Szechuan BBQ?
Actually, I'm not even sure that's what this is. This was from a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles play set originally, that I transformed into this street scene. Why NINJAS would feel at home in "Chinatown" (as per the original stickers on the toy set) I don't particularly know. (But then, why were there Samurai and Monks and Ninja in AD&D? Maybe I'm over-thinking it.)
I have a vague idea of throwing in some sort of turtle puns somehow here. Like, some Adolescent Genetically-Altered Assassin Terrapins. Or something stupid like that. Not totally sure where to go with that. Ack. And I'm going to try running this next weekend? What a mess.
Actually, I suppose what it COULD represent is where the radchickens were originally kept (interior rooms transformed into chicken coops?), and where they managed to escape from, hence why they spilled out into the street/lot right in front of the restaurant, as they came out the front door or windows.
Travel Service(?)
I have some "Mars Attacks" ruined scenery pieces from Mantic games, and I've assembled a few into ruined brick wall segments (along with some other ruined brick segments done in resin). One of my plug-in store signs is a "Travel Service" sign (images lifted from Fallout), but it could just as well be something else. What possibly could be interesting to find in such a place, other than a mutant chicken or some other random nasty creature hiding out? And why would this be something at an open air mall like this?
Okay, I think there's a good chance I'll swap out the sign and replace it with something else. I could imagine that for campaign play, an interior for a place like this could be fun to decorate with retrofuturistic travel posters (maybe signs extolling the virtues of visiting the "natural springs" at the moon colony), but for this setup it'd be wasted effort.
The Diner
A small diner with two entrances (front and side). Possibly suffering from a radroach infestation (which is what I did the last time I had a roadside post-apocalyptic diner). Good place for some Nuka-Cola vending machines, and thus a chance to get a Nuka-Cola "power-up," such as a new shipment of "Nuka Quantum" (depending upon the game, and the variety, Nuka-Cola grants various perks and drawbacks).
Poseidon Fuel/Fusion Station
Old Poseidon Energy service station, serving both gas-powered and fusion-powered vehicles (by offering pricey fuel as well as coolant). The main purpose of this would be that it's a natural spot for a "McGyver"/tinker member of the group (such as Junkyard Dawg) to find a workbench where he can try modifying gear or cobbling together custom devices to deal with whatever situation the PCs have gotten themselves into. There'd also be an excuse for a hacker in the group (likely Bonnie Clyde the Vault-Dweller and Jack-of-all-Trades) to crack a terminal to open a safe or supply cache. This might also be an interesting spot to have a suit of power armor. Accordingly, it's probably infested by radscorpions or other nasties. ;)
If I recycle my last diner setup, it could also have a "Dine-o-Matic" pie dispenser. (Basically, in Fallout 4, it's this bubble-domed display with tiers of heavily-preserved pie slices, and if you activate it, a robot claw comes down and TRIES to pick up one of the plates to put it in the out slot. An in-game "Easter egg" of sorts is that if you keep, keep, KEEP pushing the button and trying, eventually (after several hundred tries) it will actually pick up the pie slice and deposit it in the slot where you can finally (FINALLY!) get your slice of perfectly-preserved pie.
(no picture ... yet)
Frosty Bar
I've got a Plasticville O-Scale "Frosty Bar" -- not a complete structure, but at least MOST of it. it's basically an outdoor stand with a counter up in front and several stools, and some big letters up top that spell out "FROSTY BAR," with a very, very retro look. It definitely fits with the "open-air food court" type theme. As for what might be special there ... I suppose the fusion-powered refrigeration units are still working. Maybe Junkyard Dawg could use his McGyver skills to convert the refrigeration units into a sort of "Cryolator Lite" weapon that can deal frost damage and slow down targets. (It would deny the "fresh, never frozen!" claim on the radchicken meat, but could still come in handy as a way to defeat the nasty poultry AND keep it in a cookable state, once it thaws back out.)
Possibly an alternative spot for Nuka-Cola vending machines and a stock of Nuka Quantum.
I might also try some sort of "outdoor cafe" type area with some tables, and tattered remains of "umbrella" shades.
Other random feature ideas:
* Phone booths. While lots of things in this setting look very retro, the phone booths in this game lean more toward the retro-FUTURISTIC angle, often with kiosks of multiple clear "sound dome" or "sound bell" structures over the phone area, and hints of some kind of video-phone type operation (though of course in monochrome). Aside from looks, it'd be a good spot for spare parts for techies aiming to do some on-the-fly McGyver-ing.
* Vehicles. Nuclear-powered vehicles in the lot mean: a) a chance for huge explosions if someone shoots it and ruptures the fusion containment shell; b) a chance for someone to get a vehicle running, then use the thing to RUN DOWN radchickens (running them over); c) both of the above, especially if there's a collision; d) loot in the trunk (use for lockpicking skill).
* Caravan Camp? Maybe in the midst of all this, there's a small trader camp (maybe just one brahmin -- not sure if I want to kitbash too many of those two-headed cows! -- or some other mutant beasts of burden), where PCs could attempt to "buy on the fly" (trade "treasure" items they find in exchange for useful tools). Although if I do that, I need to give the PCs some motivation other than "capture chickens and get paid," or spending lots of money/loot on better gear (to capture those chickens) might seem counter-productive.
Backstory:
The "Long 15" is a stretch of former superhighway that now serves as a major merchant caravan artery running from Dayglow (formerly San Diego) in the heart of the New California Republic, all the way to New Vegas in the Mojave Desert. The roadway is traveled far more frequently by pack brahmin and cargo rickshaws than by cars or motorbikes, but either way, there are travelers who need to stop along the way for a bite, or for a safe place to shelter the night (or retreat from rad-storms or raiders).
The Wok-a-Doodle was a Chinese-American restaurant amid a cluster of small business sprung up in an unincorporated rural area off-ramp near one of the cloverleaf interchanges -- in other words, far enough from the urban sprawl that it was relatively spared from the nuclear fallout. 200+ years later, some entrepreneurs have set up shop in the old restaurant, tuned up its fusion-powered kitchen, and have started serving wasteland delicacies and relatively radiation-free drinks to traders, mercs, NCR soldiers, and other travelers along the roadway. As with any post-apocalyptic food venture, squirrel-on-a-stick, molerat chunks, radscorpion legs, and grilled radroaches are on the menu, but the real attraction would be the chicken dishes (as befitting the Wok-a-Doodle's name and logo).
The trouble is, there was an ... incident lately with the chicken pens out back, resulting in an escape of the restaurant's entire flock of mutant poultry. There's a large caravan scheduled to stop by for the night, so the proprietor will pay top caps to anyone who can bring in as many radchickens as possible before sundown -- preferably alive, but at least in edible condition.
Note: I might need to find a less mercenary motivation. If the PCs are doing this "for the caps," they could get distracted by other things that could potentially earn them money. ("Hey, let's loot this stuff! It's worth FAR more than chickens!") Maybe the PCs are all good buddies with the proprietor of the Wok-a-Doodle, as they've stopped by there before? Maybe one or more of the PCs was responsible for the radchickens getting loose? ;) Or maybe the proprietor is offering something special in compensation that can't be bought with money/caps.
Format:
I plan on set this up as a sort of "open air dungeon." That is, on one side of the board (GM's side) is the facade that represents the Wok-a-Doodle restaurant. I plan to have a large plastic "pavement" board set out to represent nearby streets, a Secret Weapons Miniatures Tablescape "sidewalk" board to mark off a large "block," and then various ruined buildings occupying that block. The PCs would have free rein to explore the building neighboring the Wok-a-Doodle (the automated Laundr-O-Mat on one side, and the old martial arts studio on the other), the debris-strewn streets, and the ruins the next block over.
The stated objective is to capture mutant chickens -- preferably alive (for more caps), or at least to retrieve their carcasses (serving as a disincentive to, say, disintegrate them into glowing green goo with heavy plasma weaponry). However, I'm not averse at all to some other "story" to be revealed once the PCs start poking around. I mostly just needed some sort of initial motivation for the PCs to start poking around the area, and it's up to the players whether they stick to that or not. (After all, the money they get paid for this scenario isn't going to matter much for the long-term, since this is just a one-shot scenario.)
At its most basic, I suppose I could just define this as a bunch of locations that the PCs can explore at their leisure, either traveling in one big pack, or splitting up and taking their chances with one-on-one encounters. The "time until sundown" is a bit squishy. The hard limit is "how much time we have left to run this scenario," but it also serves as an in-game cap on "time-hungry" options a player might have. (E.g., "I am going to start building a nuclear reactor from spare parts." Sorry, champ, that's going to take a while!)
I've been trying to track down some cockatrice minis to represent the "chickens." I suppose I could make the punchline be that these aren't really "chickens" by any stretch of the imagination at all, and I could substitute in some neo-velociraptors or some other creature that might be more challenging to deal with.
Overall Layout:
My initial idea was to have the central area be a "city block" occupied by various building ruins. The more I think about it, though, the more I think this whole area ought to be more like some sort of roadside open-air mall (the sort of thing lining the highways along I-95 and I-4 nearer to me), possibly with multiple eateries, but also some other businesses catering to travelers. Maybe an "outlet mall" store, maybe a service station, etc.
In that case, the central area might well just be a huge parking lot, with buildings lining the edges. However, I don't want to end up with a whole bunch of "dead space" in the play area. I think I'm probably going to have to start setting up the table over this weekend (I can leave it up, I suppose, in advance of next weekend's game) and get a feel for how much space I have to work with. (It should be comparable to the space I'll have at the convention, as I asked about table sizes at the hotel.)
I don't plan to decorate the INTERIORS of any buildings (or large vehicles) in any detail. Rather, if the action moves into one of the small buildings, I'm planning on treating things as more "theater of the mind" for what's going on in there. Mostly, the minis will be there for handling what happens if the action spills outside into the streets, and for marking WHICH building the PCs are visiting (especially important if they split up -- which I predict there's a good chance of). Basically, once you're inside the diner or the frosty bar or the Laundr-O-Mat, then everyone is in range of everyone else. Melee? You charge and swing. Range? Start shooting. Grenade? Uh oh. Time to dive out the window, because EVERYONE inside is going to be in the blast radius in this enclosed space.
I have a few very loose encounter ideas:
The Laundr-O-Mat
The Laundr-O-Mat has a robot (Mr. Handy) on duty 24/7 ... and has done so for the past 210 or so years. This Mr. Handy is just a little bit unstable, and is something of a clean freak, even as he's incapable of doing much about it in his current state; he's run completely out of Abraxo cleaning powder.
I see this as a "brains or talkie or fight" type of situation. This Mr. Handy is a bit unstable. The techno-expert could "hack" the Mr. Handy and draft him as a robotic ally while poking around the rest of the ruins. The "face" in the group could rely upon his or her charisma bonuses to talk to the Mr. Handy and persuade it toward some end. The "fighter" type could just clobber Mr. Handy if he's too much trouble (though that's probably the least interesting outcome).
Also, a random thought is that this Mr. Handy has been attempting to concoct an Abraxo substitute, using other chemicals salvaged from the area, but to no avail. However, someone with a chemistry background could make use of the stockpile to make some "acid bombs" or the like.
Roleplay-wise, I need to work on my "deranged British butler" accent.
Martial Arts School? Szechuan BBQ?
Actually, I'm not even sure that's what this is. This was from a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles play set originally, that I transformed into this street scene. Why NINJAS would feel at home in "Chinatown" (as per the original stickers on the toy set) I don't particularly know. (But then, why were there Samurai and Monks and Ninja in AD&D? Maybe I'm over-thinking it.)
I have a vague idea of throwing in some sort of turtle puns somehow here. Like, some Adolescent Genetically-Altered Assassin Terrapins. Or something stupid like that. Not totally sure where to go with that. Ack. And I'm going to try running this next weekend? What a mess.
Actually, I suppose what it COULD represent is where the radchickens were originally kept (interior rooms transformed into chicken coops?), and where they managed to escape from, hence why they spilled out into the street/lot right in front of the restaurant, as they came out the front door or windows.
Travel Service(?)
I have some "Mars Attacks" ruined scenery pieces from Mantic games, and I've assembled a few into ruined brick wall segments (along with some other ruined brick segments done in resin). One of my plug-in store signs is a "Travel Service" sign (images lifted from Fallout), but it could just as well be something else. What possibly could be interesting to find in such a place, other than a mutant chicken or some other random nasty creature hiding out? And why would this be something at an open air mall like this?
Okay, I think there's a good chance I'll swap out the sign and replace it with something else. I could imagine that for campaign play, an interior for a place like this could be fun to decorate with retrofuturistic travel posters (maybe signs extolling the virtues of visiting the "natural springs" at the moon colony), but for this setup it'd be wasted effort.
The Diner
A small diner with two entrances (front and side). Possibly suffering from a radroach infestation (which is what I did the last time I had a roadside post-apocalyptic diner). Good place for some Nuka-Cola vending machines, and thus a chance to get a Nuka-Cola "power-up," such as a new shipment of "Nuka Quantum" (depending upon the game, and the variety, Nuka-Cola grants various perks and drawbacks).
Poseidon Fuel/Fusion Station
Old Poseidon Energy service station, serving both gas-powered and fusion-powered vehicles (by offering pricey fuel as well as coolant). The main purpose of this would be that it's a natural spot for a "McGyver"/tinker member of the group (such as Junkyard Dawg) to find a workbench where he can try modifying gear or cobbling together custom devices to deal with whatever situation the PCs have gotten themselves into. There'd also be an excuse for a hacker in the group (likely Bonnie Clyde the Vault-Dweller and Jack-of-all-Trades) to crack a terminal to open a safe or supply cache. This might also be an interesting spot to have a suit of power armor. Accordingly, it's probably infested by radscorpions or other nasties. ;)
If I recycle my last diner setup, it could also have a "Dine-o-Matic" pie dispenser. (Basically, in Fallout 4, it's this bubble-domed display with tiers of heavily-preserved pie slices, and if you activate it, a robot claw comes down and TRIES to pick up one of the plates to put it in the out slot. An in-game "Easter egg" of sorts is that if you keep, keep, KEEP pushing the button and trying, eventually (after several hundred tries) it will actually pick up the pie slice and deposit it in the slot where you can finally (FINALLY!) get your slice of perfectly-preserved pie.
(no picture ... yet)
Frosty Bar
I've got a Plasticville O-Scale "Frosty Bar" -- not a complete structure, but at least MOST of it. it's basically an outdoor stand with a counter up in front and several stools, and some big letters up top that spell out "FROSTY BAR," with a very, very retro look. It definitely fits with the "open-air food court" type theme. As for what might be special there ... I suppose the fusion-powered refrigeration units are still working. Maybe Junkyard Dawg could use his McGyver skills to convert the refrigeration units into a sort of "Cryolator Lite" weapon that can deal frost damage and slow down targets. (It would deny the "fresh, never frozen!" claim on the radchicken meat, but could still come in handy as a way to defeat the nasty poultry AND keep it in a cookable state, once it thaws back out.)
Possibly an alternative spot for Nuka-Cola vending machines and a stock of Nuka Quantum.
I might also try some sort of "outdoor cafe" type area with some tables, and tattered remains of "umbrella" shades.
Other random feature ideas:
* Phone booths. While lots of things in this setting look very retro, the phone booths in this game lean more toward the retro-FUTURISTIC angle, often with kiosks of multiple clear "sound dome" or "sound bell" structures over the phone area, and hints of some kind of video-phone type operation (though of course in monochrome). Aside from looks, it'd be a good spot for spare parts for techies aiming to do some on-the-fly McGyver-ing.
* Vehicles. Nuclear-powered vehicles in the lot mean: a) a chance for huge explosions if someone shoots it and ruptures the fusion containment shell; b) a chance for someone to get a vehicle running, then use the thing to RUN DOWN radchickens (running them over); c) both of the above, especially if there's a collision; d) loot in the trunk (use for lockpicking skill).
* Caravan Camp? Maybe in the midst of all this, there's a small trader camp (maybe just one brahmin -- not sure if I want to kitbash too many of those two-headed cows! -- or some other mutant beasts of burden), where PCs could attempt to "buy on the fly" (trade "treasure" items they find in exchange for useful tools). Although if I do that, I need to give the PCs some motivation other than "capture chickens and get paid," or spending lots of money/loot on better gear (to capture those chickens) might seem counter-productive.
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Are you thinking about doing online gaming again? I thought you'd pretty much given up on it as too slow.
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However, Digital_Rampage is trying an experiment (a pricey one) with doing an online game using Fantasy Grounds (instead of MapTools/RPTools) for the online mapping, and TeamSpeak for our communications (though we also have a chat-log for recording die-rolls and other details as necessary). We've used TeamSpeak a lot for our multiplayer Minecraft games. The OverWolf interface adds a nice little feature by tying it with the Fantasy Grounds interface so when a player is speaking, his or her PC icon gets a "speech-balloon" icon for a quick visual guide as to WHO is doing the speaking. (If there are enough people, that part can get confusing, and I can't always pick apart everyone by voice.)
Real-time communication has its pros and cons, but it's pretty close to the same limitations we'd have at a game table -- with the primary exception that in real life I could in theory take one of the players aside and into the front room to discuss something as an aside, or secondly that I can supplement my verbal communication with gestures (pointing, eye contact, expression, etc.).
No longer shall we be wondering whether a player is 5 minutes into typing up his 20-minute mini-essay that's going to let us know whether he's going to attack Minion A or B this combat round, or whether he's shouting orders to the others, or going Full Defense, or what-have-you -- and only by INTERRUPTING his process can he let us know he hasn't simply gone off to make a sandwich. You can ask, "Hey, you still there?" and reasonably expect the person on the other side to say, "Yep, still here!" or we've got a problem.
Also, Digital_Rampage isn't big on typing. He regularly mangles the spelling of my name (first or last or alternate or nickname).
Now, I may still avail myself of some typing in the course of the game. My plan is to play a bard, and as part of that, I'm likely to subject the other players to occasional bouts of bad punnery and even worse singing -- but there's no way I'm going to make people sit through an entire "epic poem" I've composed about the party's heroics. Life's too short for that. Instead, I'm likely to spam the log with one of my compositions, or submit a note window (I'm still familiarizing myself with the options available) that other players would be free to look at (at their leisure) or simply ignore. The ability to send text messages to each other also fills the role of virtual "note-passing," and since I'm a fairly fast typist, I'll certainly avail myself of that option when I can, but not at the cost of making people wait through many minutes of silence for me to resolve a round of combat action.
The end result won't be a "log" that can be posted for posterity to others to read. As the party bard, I MIGHT attempt to put together some sort of synopsis for the benefit of those players who can't make it any given session, but my own work schedule might hamper my own attendance. (We're doing this Sunday evenings, and sadly Sundays are NOT sacred to my workplace, as I often have to travel on Sunday in order to be ready for a project early Monday morning at a client's site. For whatever reason, Saturdays are far more likely to be spared.)
Now, I realize that isn't going to solve all problems. There's still the matter of, if I ever want to run a game with TuftEars again, we're going to need visual elements as a primary mode of communication. But I'm still looking at all the features of Fantasy Grounds and the suite of programs (TeamSpeak, OverWolf, etc.) that might be layered upon it, and what implications this might have for solving some of the problems that arose from running things exclusively through a single-channel text-based medium such as a MUCK. TuftEars might not be able to take advantage of an audio channel, for instance, but a major improvement would simply be if our text window had a Skype-like "so-and-so is typing..." indicator to simply LET ME KNOW that something is on its way. Or, by having multiple chat windows, one could be the primary "log" window where all the in-character action takes place, and another could be the parallel "OOC" window ... and in such a setup, even if we WERE still typing up half-page masterpiece poses, at least the GM could still "ping" you, and you could take a moment to click the "Yes I'm still here" button or perhaps even answer a question in another window without losing your place.
I don't know. It could be a big boon, or it could be a cumbersome nightmare. We've done nothing so far other than just to tinker around with some of the map features and write up characters, so there's a lot to be explored yet.
Another area Digital_Rampage is interested in is that of making an "electronic game table." Even though Digital_Rampage is the very one who introduced me to Hirst Arts block casting, and has been a major contributor to the bloat of my miniatures collection for the past decade and a half, he is a much tidier person than I am (he has a much easier time getting RID of stuff, it seems), and he has often voiced proposals about how we could replace the heavy, fragile 3D terrain with "virtual" terrain by various means. At first, the idea was to have a ceiling-mounted projector pointing straight down at a table, to PROTECT a battle map that would be managed on a computer, and we'd use physical miniatures to place on the table within that "terrain."
But more recently, with the improvements in flat screen TVs (wider range of vision, lower prices, bigger sizes), he's been floating the idea of building an electronic game table that is based around a big flat-screen TV with wide angle viewing. The idea would be that a laptop could be hooked up to it and could have a view that's scrolling across a battlemap that might very well be much larger than the table itself, but as the PCs explore this way or that, the GM could simply "scroll over," rather than asking players to take a 5-to-10-minute "screen loading" break for the GM to clear away all the scatter terrain and tiles, and set up new ones for the new area. Another interesting factor would be that the GM could even zoom in or out, making scale a bit more flexible (e.g., switching from hand-to-hand skirmish to vehicular action). I could therefore use Photoshop to create new maps and elements, and it would be a LOT easier to store that than an ever-expanding library of terrain pieces.
And anyway, Digital_Rampage has been more into building terrain pieces for miniatures wargames, or glorified boards for particular miniatures-focused board games, rather than pieces made expressly for RPGs. So for a wargame, it might be a castle here or a windmill there, or some sort of refinery or bunker -- whatever you feel like making that'll fit the scene and give some options for troops to hide behind or perch on top of -- but there's no Quixotic quest to have terrain to represent EVERY POSSIBLE SCENE where the action might take place in an RPG, say. Similarly for board games, his creations are typically a 3D recreation of whatever game board pieces were originally included in the game -- and out of necessity, that's going to be finite.
That, and he usually did this in cooperation with a game store, as he had friends running stores -- but all of those have since then closed down, or have moved on from miniatures gaming to focus on more lucrative markets such as for collectible card games. A lot of his creations have either ended up back in his hands (and he's had to figure out what to do with them), or got sold off in bulk with the sale of the store.
So, while the crafting part of making buildings can be fun, what's NOT so much fun is the feeling that you HAVE to keep making new scenery in time for next week's game, etc., or that you have to keep on devoting more and more space to storing everything. Therefore, I can greatly sympathize with his quest to find some sort of electronic solution.
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Ooh, I hope the new tools make online gaming more practical for you! I don't know that I'll ever overcome my dislike of conference-call communication enough to do that kind of thing for fun. I have a much easier time interacting with people in person than using voice remotely, alas, and I don't think it's just that seeing faces helps. :/
I've done some very limited RP inside of Google Docs, which has the advantages of:
Main disadvantage with multiple players is that the only clue about who's typing at a given time is the color of their cursor. Still, works pretty well.
I hope the twenty-minute poses are an exaggeration. <_< My benchmark was 4 minutes, and that's still a pretty slow pace. (I think you usually responded in 1 or 2 minutes. No one could ever match you. :D )
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But that seems to be the pressure for the online games: Polish each and every exchange, like it's part of a shared novel-writing experience, except there are no take-backs, no edits once you hit ENTER. I could put up with it when Sinai was really hopping, my brain was firing on all cylinders, and I could be juggling multiple Holodecks, so if one player was taking his time, that was fine, because I could probably throw something into the next Holodeck over. (Although that's hardly fair: I would be constantly engaged, but it meant that necessarily the players would end up waiting on ME.)
I find it fascinating that you managed to use Google Docs for RP purposes. That seems like a very outside-the-box sort of approach. :)
And as for conference-call style gaming: No, I don't want to say that I LIKE it, either. I suspect that Digital_Rampage has lined up TOO MANY players for the conference call aspect to work well. I'm going to have to rein in my usual impulses, and try not to scramble for too much "spotlight," so as not to be needlessly disruptive, adding to the noise.
My preference is still for face-to-face and tabletop. In a perfect world? Eh, we'd have teleporter gates and could visit each other effortlessly. :) (Okay, so I can already imagine how that might NOT be a perfect world, depending upon who has access to such technology, but ... meh.) But my hope is that it can make the online experience (which is the only way I have to play with people who can't make it to my house for gaming) LESS BAD.