In the spirit of investigating how well games work, I've started to look at all the different types of playing that people get up to as well as the ones that I know best. One thing that has more or less passed me by so far is the phenomenon of online playing in places like Roll20 and Google Hangouts.
I'm not much of a technological person, hand in the air on that one, I'm from the age before the internet, I remember when 2mb an hour was a good download speed, I remember when CD's took longer to burn than they did to play, and if they didn't crash halfway through, you were doing well, so when I say that I'm new to the whole thing, I really mean it.
However, theoretically anyone can do this, so got a webcam, got a microphone, and...
So the first game was one with Paul Mitchener running a game of Mindjammer: Far Havens, my fellow players were Glenn (who I've known forever), Declan (who I've known a while), Josh, and Tore (both of whom I'd never met). There was a little delay while the technology did it's best to get in the way and we had problems from my speakers causing feedback because they were too close to the Microphone to Paul losing comms halfway through and Tore's computer overheating at the three quarter point, requiring him to leave early.
The second game was with Nigel Clarke running a game of Blades in the Dark, something that I've been looking forwards to playing for some time, my fellow players were Julian (Who I've known a while), and Andy (Who I'd met at Expo briefly). The tech didn't get in the way this time, but we were all new to the game, so there was some running around to get it going in the first instance, but no more than any other first play of a new game.
My first overwhelming impression was that of a frontiersman standing on the edge of a canyon and looking out at the untamed wilds, I'd never considered this world before, never thought to stand and wonder what else could be there, and there, standing on the edge of forever, I found that I wanted more...
Technology is a niggle, sometimes not being able to hear people (or accidentally muting them), sometimes losing connection, sometimes having the images of people flick about so much you wonder if you're going to lose your eyesight (first lesson is to keep the camera on only one person at a time rather than letting the machine display whoever's making a noise), and the use of onscreen dice rather than those rolling buggers I have millions of was a bit of a revelation, but on the whole, it was little different from any game I've played in...
And at the end, in the quiet words of Julian, "Time to go home?"
No need, we're already there...
Enjoyed this a lot, I'll be looking to do it more and report back as it goes...
