Thursday, March 8, 2012

Starting to play LotFP with my online friend

When I played mmorpg Perfect World I met new people. Even though I haven't played PW for a long time I still have some friends left from that time. One of them I am good friends with.

He has never played traditional rpgs but I have talked about them quite a lot. He has created a character for my YDIN game and knows the basics. We were planning that I'd run him YDIN test game but it never happened.

Yesterday I talked with him in msn and asked if he would like to play Lamentations of the Flame Princess with me and it was ok.

How will we do it? I got this idea using Google documents. I will create new document and give him priviledges to modify it. If he is also in the document, we can both write it same time and there is also a chat box next to the document.
The chat box is used for off-game talk. For example rules, what he should roll and general explanations and for additional details. The document itself is used for the game text. Basically similar to farp (forum action role-play) but in real time.

I as Referee will use cursived text to separate my writing from his. I will write what Referee's usually talk during the game. Here's an example how it would work.

Referee: You will see smoke from a bonfire in the distance. Air smells like burning corpses.


Player: I will cautiously advance trying to stay low.

[In chat window:
Me: Okay, roll for sneaking. 1d6
Him: Okay... got 1
Me: Success]

Referee: You manage to stay hidden in shadows and bushes and see some dark ritual in practice. Hooded cultists are burning freshly sacrificed human corpses.


And so on...

I also created quick rules for LotFP taking simply the parts player might need. For example how to roll to hit, how magic works etc. I also will create new document for character sheet he can view from Google documents and edit there so he doesn't have to download or print anything.

I haven't used Google documents this way earlier and am eager to try it out in practice.

First quest of character will be located in a small village plagued by rumors of huge dog in the fields. Some rumors talk about werewolf. Major of the village asks character to break legs from the rumors as people refuse to work late in fields. Are the rumors true or is it just superstitious blabber? Is there a huge dog or wolf plaguing the town or is there an actual werewolf...

I will ask him can I post the game here. It will be interesting to play with first timer and I'd like to share the experience here.

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