Online GURPS

[Henchman99942]

I started a facebook page dedicated to an GURPS campaign that is to take place online. I got folks to join the group, but nobody followed through with actually gaming. The people who joined were fans of the TV show upon which the genre of the campaign was based (The Venture Bros), but seemed intimidated by the idea of actually playing an RPG. The game was to take place using SKYPE and I actually did run one adventure but the only person to show up was the supporting GM.

Has anyone done any online RPGing using GURPS? Are there tons of folks doing online pen and paper RPGing using systems OTHER than GURPS? Or did video once again kill the radio star? (Did flashy MMORPG computer games kill pen and paper?)

[mlangsdorf]

I've been involved in online GURPS games for the last 5 years. I ran two long term Dungeon Fantasy campaigns, an short Monster Hunter game, and I've been playing in a DF campaign for the last 18 months.

It's certainly possible to do. Starting with a more popular genre and getting a semi-stable group of players may help.

[reddir]

http://www.myth-weavers.com is a site dedicated to Play-by-Post gaming.
They don't like people advertising games that won't be taking place on their site (so no skype-only games), but there do seem to be many games going on, some for a long while.

http://www.rpol.net/
I don't have any experience with this one, but its another Play-by-Post site with a lot of activity.

I'm not sure where one might find games that run on Skype or other chat servers.

[DaveD]

Originally Posted by Henchman99942

Has anyone done any online RPGing using GURPS? Are there tons of folks doing online pen and paper RPGing using systems OTHER than GURPS? Or did video once again kill the radio star? (Did flashy MMORPG computer games kill pen and paper?)

I've run a seven month long GURPS campaign online using Roll20. I recommend that site to act as a virtual tabletop which can provide a nice way to handle maps and handouts for the group. There are other people who have run GURPS campaigns that I know of on that site, so it can be done.

Online gaming is a lot like face to face gaming - most people are going to be interested in the big dogs (D&D/Pathfinder). But if you have a killer campaign idea and are willing to try multiple sites to get players, you should have no problem filling up a group.

[Gigermann]

Fantasy Grounds is another virtual tabletop program, and although designed with D&D in mind, has a well-developed GURPS ruleset that's been in use for years. I've been playing with an online GURPS group since '10 using FG.

[Henchman99942]

Thanks to everyone.

The group I am trying to wrangle are not gamers. They are fans of the TV show. So there is zero chance of getting them to DL a virtual table top and learn it. they don't even know GURPS rules.

The campaign in question is one of verbal interaction and problem solving. So SKYPE should work in this particular case.

Play by post is not something that I am interested in. Real time, even if only through voice chat, to me is a million times more interesting.

I will check out the links suggested when the house quiets down tonight. Thanks again for the info.

[Rocket Man]

I've been running an IM GURPS Supers campaign for a couple of years now; we currently use a Trillian real-time chat program and an online die roller. Similar tools have allowed me to run an In Nomine game for even longer than that!

(Why Trillian? Because it archives chat history by date, allowing transcripts, and you can have it archived on your machine rather than in "the cloud." It's also searchable. We used to use Yahoo! but after it went to cloud-based storage, access sometimes became difficult due to problems on Yahoo's end. Even finding the right file to access became a challenge because it was user-based rather than date-based.)

For me, the biggest challenge hasn't been the tools but the scheduling -- you know, the perennial problem. :)

[Phantasm]

I use IRC for most of my games, and have for the past 15 or so years now. It helps when the players are all over the place; my one campaign had to juggle players in Holland and Israel alongside those in California and Nevada. There's a GURPS IRC channel at irc.sorcery.net, #gurps; quite a few folks there are in Europe, others the States.

[demonsbane]

Originally Posted by Henchman99942

(. . .)So there is zero chance of getting them to DL a virtual table top and learn it. they don't even know GURPS rules.

The campaign in question is one of verbal interaction and problem solving. So SKYPE should work in this particular case.

For what is worth, the aforementioned Roll20 virtual tabletop doesn't need to be downloaded nor installed: it just runs in your Internet browser, with a free account.

Also, since you are mentioning Skype for voice, Roll20 optionally implements voice chat (and webcams).

(I prefer to use only text chat, but that is just my preference.)

—

Fantasy Grounds + the GURPS ruleset is also very good –and can be used along with Skype–, but yes, this VTT needs to be downloaded and installed.

[ClayDowling]

You might try out Google+ and Google Hangouts as a good way to manage the communication. It can be done with text and/or video. Also works from computer, smartphone or tablet.