Sick.
(Is this not how you expected this to start? It ties in together - trust me.)
After losing my voice completely on Monday of last week, I was at my doctor's office Tuesday. Got some antibiodics and a steroid prescribed to me. I then went on my way and had a week off with no talking (Lisa was in heaven). Come Monday of this week I went back to work... for a few hours, but had to leave early because my voice was failing again. Out of the steroids and concerned that there was something wrong with me other than my original diagnosis I went BACK to my doctor that Tuesday.
(Quick add: having health insurance again is a gods-send...)
So I get to sit in the waiting room for a bit, no biggie. I pick up a copy of... hmm... I think it was Time Magazine, and I notice this headline on the cover about an article on something called "Google Wave".
(Promised you it all tied-in.)
Curious I checked out the article, and... well... noted it as something for future curiosity, but didn't think much about it. Later I was speaking with my friend Eric who was really excited about having finally found a group of gamers in Madison, WI where he's going to school. He mentioned that the group wanted to try using Google Wave as a means to host roleplaying games since they all live a fair distance from each other.
Whaaaat? This bore a little more investigation.
So when I got home from getting my new steroid I did a little google-fu and quickly found Google Wave's demonstration videos. I started to watch so I could see what this app was actually meant for.
I'm impressed.
Imagine fusing e-mail and instant messaging with document publishing and pretty much every other form of communication used through the internet with the exception of voice. That's what you get with Google Wave. You start a new conversation (or as they call it, a Wave) and then add recipients who then get to see the Wave live. From this point they can send replies (like normal e-mail), if multiple Wave members are online they can respond instantly, just like an IM (and you'll actually see what they're typing AS they type it no "Grant is typing" messages that might mean I'm typing to someone else or responding to you). You can go into previous messages and post a reply mid-message to draw attention to the fact that you're only responding to that particular point (a bit more organic method than the current "all comments after the whole body of text" method we currently use). You can even go back and edit a previous post; say you're planning a trip with someone and using a Wave to create a list of activities to do on that trip... by editing the original message those new ideas can be compiled in one spot (easier to reference), and someone can post a reply right under that idea (issuing a complaint or focusing a question), or even edit your idea further to build on it. If you want to know what the ORIGINAL post (or any earlier post) looked like, they have a "playback" feature where you can revisit the history of the Wave.
Pictures can be uploaded, blogs and social networking sites can be added as members of the Wave (allowing instant posting of that Wave to the blog or network site... which others can then in turn use to interact with the Wave)... It looks like a great business application for communication and facilitation, and I can see it having a lot of private user applications as well.
So now I'm all excited about it, and want to try it out. The only problem is, Google Wave is available by invitation only, and they're hard to get. Mostly just developers and industry folks at this point. But wait, didn't I say Eric & his friends were going to have inivites? I sure did! And I coolly asked for one. The deal was this: I play in the game, I get the invite. I've accepted the offer, though I haven't gotten my invite yet (hell, the offer was just made last night at around 10:00). Just to play it safe, I've requested an invite from the Google Wave staff as well... hopefully going both routes will get me one!
(Anyone reading this have invites to send out? I'll take one!)
How would gaming work over Wave? Well, I've got a few things to iron out. First, there's no dice app. This isn't such a horrible thing; there are lots of dice apps online. Second, we'd need a way to see encounter maps... which I can post a pic, but I'm not sure about updating to facilitate combat in an organic manner, unless Wave already has an image editor built into it. (I guess I could always make the images layered and use GIMP to change different layers to match, but that will take some time.)
Other than those technical details (and I confess, they aren't insignificant) here's how I see a game session running:
(Assume that anything starting with a > would be text in the Wave.... '>' is only a place-holder to show where the Wave starts.)
1) I (assume I'm running it for the moment) start a new wave:
> Game Session October 22, 2009
2) I post a quick recap of the previous session as part of my first post to refresh everyone's memories.
> Recap of previous session: Last time you decided to explore the rumors of a haunted castle in the Thundercrag mountains. To reach the mountains you had to brave the dark forest of Venomleaf. Here's a quick list of what happened:
- You first heard the rumor while at the Greenscale Tavern in Wyrmoth; apparently the former lords had amassed a large horde and then turned on one another in greed, murdering each other. Now their ghosts haunt the castle.
- You reached the Venomleaf Forest with no problems; you had a small encounter with a merchant who tried to swindle you, but you saw through his lies and didn't buy any of his fake charms.
- You navigated the forest, but discovered that it was inhabited by a tribe of feral elves. You stumbled into an ambush (failed that Skill Challenge!) and ended up getting captured.
- The elves were going to have you for dinner, but their shaman came up with an alternative; you retake the daughter of the tribe's Chief from the green dragon Venomleaf, and they'd provide you with a guide to the mountains.
- You found Venomleaf's lair and have explored through two levels of it, facing some guardians (plant monsters and other such creatures) and traps.
- We ended the session with the party at the top of a flight of stairs going deeper into the lair, and you each made Perception checks to hear the sound of loud, heavy breathing and smell the rank, foul air down below.
> When you decide to go down the stairs: The darkness down below is oppressive. The stairs wind, making your torchlight's reach quite limited. Drops of condensation fall periodically, startling you at times. The air grows more foul the lower you get. At the bottom of the stairs you find a large set of double doors - wide enough for three of you to squeeze through at one time. The doors are carved with ornate images of a dragon clutching a forest in it's claws while smoke or fumes spread from it's mouth.
What do you do?
4) At this point my job is done, and the players get to interact. Now, someone might want to edit my recap and point out their favorite part of the last session; I'll represent that with a new '>' and the speaker with [name]: to represent that the Wave would identify the speaker.
> Recap of previous session: Last time you decided to explore the rumors of a haunted castle in the Thundercrag mountains. To reach the mountains you had to brave the dark forest of Venomleaf. Here's a quick list of what happened:
- You first heard the rumor while at the Greenscale Tavern in Wyrmoth; apparently the former lords had amassed a large horde and then turned on one another in greed, murdering each other. Now their ghosts haunt the castle.
- You reached the Venomleaf Forest with no problems; you had a small encounter with a merchant who tried to swindle you, but you saw through his lies and didn't buy any of his fake charms.
- You navigated the forest, but discovered that it was inhabited by a tribe of feral elves. You stumbled into an ambush (failed that Skill Challenge!) and ended up getting captured.
- The elves were going to have you for dinner, but their shaman came up with an alternative; you retake the daughter of the tribe's Chief from the green dragon Venomleaf, and they'd provide you with a guide to the mountains.
> [John]: You're insane.
- You found Venomleaf's lair and have explored through two levels of it, facing some guardians (plant monsters and other such creatures) and traps.
> [Grant]: Me too! Had a lot of fun coming up with that one!
- We ended the session with the party at the top of a flight of stairs going deeper into the lair, and you each made Perception checks to hear the sound of loud, heavy breathing and smell the rank, foul air down below.
5) You can see above that I've included multiple responses to indicate the more organic, conversational nature of what I foresee with a gaming Wave. Future responses would be similar in nature.
Like I said, right now I'm not sure how you would handle combat maps and dice rolling... I have tools to do all of that online, but let's face it, that won't really test out using Google Wave for this sort of thing, now will it?
Another feature I like is that I could post the whole session right to this blog, allowing players to review the whole thing whenever they want, even if they're not signed into Google Wave, and also allowing my blog readers (the whole, what, 1 of you?) to see the session as well, and possibly comment.
So to sum up: Google Wave looks like a great app to facilitate conversations, and I really can't wait to try it out!
End of Demented Rambling.
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