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Duck in a Top Hat

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Hey everyone. Lately I've been itching for some good roleplaying, and quite frankly, my friends in the real world just can't scratch it. I only have one or two friends who can take tabletop games seriously. We went through a phase playing Fiasco, which supported gonzo play well enough to keep my friends interested for a little while. I adore Fiasco and would recommend it to anyone on these boards. We've also made a couple attempts at D&D campaigns which have all collapsed (I usually DM because I don't trust anyone else to do it well, but I don't have much experience myself, and frankly it's too draining for me to sustain for long).

 

Naturally, my thoughts turned to these forums when I started thinking about roleplaying, and I started feeling a lot of nostalgia for the AIMHack campaigns we did. A friend and I have agreed to started looking for a good RP group online, because we're pretty fatalistic about finding good groups locally (we live in Salt Lake City). We could probably find a group easily on Roll20, but almost every open group uses voice chat, and I think I would prefer to play through IM. It's hard for me to inhabit a character with my voice, and I usually can't think fast enough to roleplay out loud. (That's another reason I have trouble DM'ing).

 

So I guess I have a number of broad questions, ranked in order of descending idealism.

 

1) Would anyone here be willing to form a group and play some kind of RPG with us over IM? Me and my friend are really flexible in our schedules, but I understand that this is the most idealistic question because I honestly can't promise that either my friend or I will be able to take the reins as GM. We could still probably find some good GM-less games, even one-shots like Fiasco. Honestly I think it would be really great just to play some Fiasco with y'all.

2) Anyone planning or flirting with the idea of starting another AIMHack soon? Shoot me an email and I'll do my best to sway you ;)

3) Does anyone know where besides Roll20 we might look for groups? How would we go about finding a good group to play on IRC or AIM? Know any good games for this? (I think it might be difficult to convince an outside group to adopt AIMHack especially if I'm not GM).

4) Is voice chat role playing really as bad as it sounds?

 

I read about the game Ehdrigohr on Offworld (fantastic site for offbeat gaming news). It sounds really amazing, but might be a little tough to play online and would require a willing GM. Honestly, it's sounds awesome enough that I could maybe be pressed to fill that role.

 

EDIT: A multitude of grammar, spelling, URL mistakes... squashed?

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1) Dantius' Aimhack campaign is in fact still going to happen, once one or two more people have availability changes. You could join us there, and then maybe we don't need those other people. :p

 

2) I've been toying with the idea of starting a World of Darkness or Shadowrun campaign for a long time, or trying to start a smaller Engine Heart or Paranoia game. It's the sort of idea I'll surely never ever carry out and wouldn't go well if I tried. Kind of had voice/video chat in mind, though. . .

 

3) Sorry, I can't really help.

 

4) That depends on what exactly you mean by bad. It's less insulated. It's much faster. I like those.

 

Aside: When I first saw that Offworld article, it [censored]ing INFURIATED me for using "Dungeons and Dragons" as a name for any roleplaying tabletop game. :p

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As a card-carrying member of My Meatspace Friends Don't Play RPGs Anymore, I feel your pain. I actually bought the rulebooks for Fiasco and Microscope a while back, with the intention of starting monthly-ish game nights here. But I also wanted to set up some web services to streamline play, which is why nothing has come of that plan (yet). You'd still be able to play those sorts of games on chat/Google Docs/wiki/whatever, it would just be a bit messier.

 

Adding voice chat with Mumble or Skype or whatever would add a different dynamic to games. Not necessarily better or worse, just different. I've thought about throwing in voice chat the next time we play something like The Resistance.

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@The Brazen Book: I did see Dantius's campaign thread, I just assumed it was already well underway at this point. :p My hesitation on joining that one is that I've never done sci-fi roleplay and it sounds much more involved than a normal AIMHack, as far as campaign goals and everything.

 

Fair enough about the article title, although I do think they chose "Dungeons and Dragons" to convey the specific style of RPG it is. Fantasy, GM-based, etc.

 

@Dinti: Perhaps I could help with setting up web services? My friend suggested we could pull off Fiasco with Roll20, which personally, I have never used. Or we could just try it without them, and see how it goes. I also have the Fiasco Companion which includes extra playsets we could use. I think Fiasco on AIM would work reasonably well, with at least a google doc for die rolls.

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I would be willing to join up with you all over IM. As for finding a GM, I've done it before and have been planning to do it again sometime. I've been seriously working on a Zombies 3 campaign for a while now. The thing is, if I do run it (and that 'if' is more like a 'when') I'll want to use the "AIMhack variant" that I've been developing alongside it (how much can you change the rules before it stops being an AIMhack variant?), and I'd really like to use MapTool. I don't know how you feel about those.

I'm not sure about voice chat. I've never tried it before, but it really doesn't sound appealing to me.

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@Duck: Fiasco can definitely be played with Google Docs plus chat plus a dice roller. I just wanted to have something that would streamline play a bit (keep track of each player's dice, etc.). Setting up a custom Google Docs template would probably be enough. Something like Spyfall would be a better example for what I had in mind. It's one of the simplest games imaginable, but unlike playing face to face it would be impossible to play online without having someone sit out each round to PM everyone the cards. A more ambitious example would be me wanting to write a Dixit variant that pulls pictures from Flickr or whatever.

 

@BJ: At this point, AIMhack is a generic trademark. :p

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