Noob question of the month.......

[Lighthorse00]

Hi all, time for a noob question...........

I am one of those old AD&D players whose playing buddies have scattered to the nine winds (and three time zones) all across Australia. We were all chatting the other day and said wouldnt it be great to have a decent game again, but time zones and real life (particularly WAGs and kids) seem to have put that idea to the sword..........but clearly many other much smarter people than I have faced this problem. I have seen forum posts, banner ads and many game titles that entice me to get involved and/or pay money, but which one to play??

So as I have never yet been dissappointed with the collective knowledge base of the TOG forums.....can anyone give me their thoughts on a game for;

1) 3-6 players all over the country.
2) Sometimes playing at the same time, other times turn based?
3) AD&D or similar rules as we all still have the old books and know the rules well enough?

We have tried playing the first neverwinter nights module via a server. that seems ok, but we all know the game play......?

Thanking you in anticipation of any responses!

Cheers

[zero]

Well, there is Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach which is an MMORPG set in the Eberron campaign setting using modified 3.5E rules. It's decent enough as long as you play in a group of friends who don't want to rush through it. It's a pay-to-play game though.

Apart from that you could play actual pen & paper (A)D&D over a virtual tabletop application and some voice communication software...

[fantomas]

I use Skype & Vassal to roleplay with people in the US, UK, NZ, Czech republic etc. The game we play uses cards like TORG, but custom designed for the game (a pulpy Call of Cthulhu called Heroic Cthulhu). Before Vassal we used OpenRPG, which is an open source free application that has dice rolling & allowed the uploading of maps & pics etc. There are other commercial ones out there, but I cannot comment on how good they are.

With Skype we tend to find 5 people is the limit before it gets too hard due to not having visual queues as to when people are going to speak. I have heard of people using Teamspeak etc as well. You could also try out Voon Voice chat.

[Lighthorse00]

Thanks Zero and Fantomas, I will take your advice on Vassal and Stormreach and do some further research, I appreciate the insight

Cheers