Are you one of the bzilions of geeks who enjoyed the two Batman games by Rocksteady Studios? I know I am. Now, are you also a huge TMNT geek? I thought so. There is a rumor going around (sadly not very substantiated) that Rocksteady Studios could be developing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game next. When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. It could be dark and gritty like their Batman games, and the combat could be very similar. Insert the Foot Clan, the TMNT rogues gallery, and a healthy bit of nostalgia, and I’m sold.

This rumor is so awesome I actually avoided any Bebop and Rocksteady puns.

I doubt it’s true at all, but it made me happy just thinking about a TMNT game made by the fine folks at Rocksteady, and I thought it was worth posting if only for discussion’s sake. So, what would you like to see in a TMNT game in the style of the Arkham Asylum series? The Party Van? Pizza power-ups? Ace Duck?

There’s no shortage of ways to enjoy retro video games these days. Most people these days pay to download games on their game consoles or play digitally acquired ROM files with emulators on their computers. Either way, it sucks playing retro games with a mouse, keyboard, or any game controller that wasn’t designed to play that game.

I’ve seen plenty of USB adapters that allow you to connect your NES, SNES or Genesis controllers to your computer, but the Retrode is a unique gadget. It has slots that take SNES and Genesis game cartridges, as well as plugs for controllers. If you have emulators on your computer, you can plug it in and play the games from the cartridges via the Retrode’s USB interface. At first I didn’t understand the appeal, if you still need an emulator, what’s the point?

I guess the Retrode is a tool for people who still have lots of retro games and hardware laying around but don’t want to rely on a 25 year old console to keep enjoying them. One of the best things about the Retrode is how it doesn’t need any drivers to work on your computer.

The Retrode is cool, but it will run you $85. If you’ve got some old controllers and copies of Yoshi’s Island or Comix Zone laying around, it might be a cool gadget to try out.

‘Tis the season for giving and apparently EA is feeling very generous. All of their games for the iPhone and iPad are on sale for either 99 cents or free. The discount even includes “big ticket” items like Madden NFL 12 for the iPad which regularly sells for $12.99.

I’m looking to pick up a few of their games I don’t have yet, like The Sims 3 and Trenches II. Even though I don’t have an iPad (yet) I’ll probably buy a few of those enhanced apps. I also recommend the very entertaining Spy Mouse HD. The cat-and-mouse puzzle game is a ton of fun. Touch Arcade has an abbreviated list of the EA games included in the holiday sale along with their regular prices for comparison.

If nothing excites you in the EA catalog, try Gameloft. This publisher is also doing a 99 cent sale. They’ve got some good licensed games like Spider-Man: Total Mayhem, James Cameron’s Avatar, Fast Five the Movie: Official Game and Iron Man 2. Once again, we give a tip of the top hat to Touch Arcade for providing a list of all 17 Gameloft games included in the sale.

The 48-hour, rapid game development event known as Ludum Dare is wrapping up its twenty-second event this weekend. Ludum Dare, from the latin phrase “to give a game,” is a video game development competition started by Geoff Howland in 2002. Participants must produce a game from scratch in just two days time. Each entry must come from a single person and tie into the event’s theme. The theme of the most recent competition which ends on Sunday is “Alone.”

Entries can be found on Ludum Dare’s website. There are over 700 submissions in the main competition. You can also follow along with the #LD48 hash tag on Twitter. Contestants come from all walks, from students to professionals. While all entries in the 48-hour event are open source, there’s also a 72-hour “Jam” competition where contestants can keep their source code private. The Jam competition isn’t as strict and even allows team creations.

Minecraft founder Markus Persson, a.k.a. Notch, made a game called Minicraft. It looks like a NES or Gameboy Advance version of his wildly successful world-building game. Like many of the submissions, you can play his Java-based game online. Others have to be downloaded to be enjoyed.

Another notable entry comes from Shaun Inman who made Sinkhole, a HTML5 game. Inman previously developed the popular iOS game The Last Rocket. Rusty Moyher of Box Cat game fame, made an interesting little game called Audire. It’s a Flash-based game so don’t try playing this one on your iPhone or iPad.

While this is my first brush with Ludum Dare, I’m excited to experience the other submissions and see who will be championed winner. The 48-hour competitions happen three times a year. The next event will be held in April.

Apples to Apples has come pretty far since it first got published in 1999. It’s currently the (give or take) third best selling board game on Amazon, and you can’t go to a department store without seeing the red boxes overflowing from the shelves, especially around the holidays. Well, the Apples to Apples empire just grew even larger, because now you can buy it on Xbox Live Arcade, and it’s a pretty nice digital version of the game.

Apples to Apples is definitely a party game, and playing online with strangers or with your friends is the best way to experience the Xbox version. For some reason when I downloaded the game I chose to play the single player version first. It’s an interesting take on the game, but it’s frustrating and is not the main attraction. I would be surprised if a lot of people who end up buying this game even bother playing the single player version. Rather than relying on the player/judge system that Apples to Apples is known for, the single-player version is all about picking the card that is the best match to the “judge’s card” based on the theme of the round you are in. It is a little confusing, and not a whole lot of fun.

But like I said, the main draw here is the multiplayer game. The Xbox Live version plays just like the board game. Each round one of the players is picked as a judge, and everyone plays their red cards and waits for the judge to pick the one that they think fits his or her green card the best. The thing that’s great about Apples to Apples is that it isn’t all about picking the right card. You can try to play to the judge’s sense of humor or playing style and play the card that you think they will pick. The same goes for the Xbox version, and with the voice chat feature it can be just as fun as the board game.

There are a few extra game modes thrown in that I haven’t had time to try yet, but they sound fun. You can play bonus cards that change up the game and keep it exciting. You can get a good idea of the gameplay by watching this video.

Overall, if you’re a fan of Apples to Apples, I think you’d like the Xbox Live version. It’s 800 Microsoft points ($10 or so) right now, and if you’re like me and don’t have a lot of opportunities to play board games with people anymore, the video game version is a great way to still get to play.

Voltron is back to defend the universe once again in a new downloadable game Voltron: Defender of the Universe on Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network. Children of the ’80s like myself will remember Voltron as the hit animated show about five mechanized lions that combine to form a super robot known as Voltron.

The game captures the old Anime import extraordinarily well. The show’s intro, complete with the voice talents of Peter Cullen (Transformers), leads off the game and has you recalling those afternoons you spent in front of the TV watching the cartoon. Instead of traditional cut scenes, the game uses subtitled footage from the series. It makes for a nice segue between missions and helps give the semblance of a storyline. An nice touch, when you pause the game and then return, you’ll hear Mr. Cullen’s “And now back to Voltron” announcement. It’s the same line he delivered when welcoming kids back from a commercial break on the classic series.

The game puts you in control of one of the mech animals galloping through a variety of scenarios. You use your left thumb stick to maneuver and the right one to fire the back-mounted gun in any direction. You also have the power to do melee swipes with the shoulder buttons and a lunging attack with the right trigger. By far the most efficient and convenient weapon is the gun. Basically, you move around the terrain any which way and use the gun to fire at enemies from all directions. The other moves seem cool but are hardly worth the effort to pull them off reliably.

The camera following your movement is a little too distant for my tastes. I’d rather get in close on the action. The opposing foot soldiers and mech warriors are too small to be discerned. Perhaps the producers just wanted to show off the well-designed landscapes and environments they’d created.

Playing alone, you’re just a lone wolf—or lion rather—on your mission. Four players can compete together, each as their own character. At the end of each level, there’s a boss battle that has you forming together to do battle as the massive Voltron. I’ll admit that after a dizzying amount of gameplay as a traipsing mech lion I was ready to finally play as Voltron. However, action as the big guy is rather limited. You’re pitting against the boss in a Pokemon-like series of turn-based actions. You pick your move and then time it perfectly for major damage against the scary opponent. In return, you have to hit the appropriate button at just the right time to defend yourself. After such a big build-up, I was rather let down.

The real key to this game is the co-op play. I didn’t get a chance to experience it myself so I can only imagine a four-player team-up would be lots of fun. If you’re a Voltron fan from days long ago, the game’s $10 price tag is probably worth it to relive your old favorite. If you don’t have any of that nostalgia, it’s best to stay clear of this mediocre game.

I vividly remember when I first encountered Halo way back in 2001. I was working with a bunch of serious gamers at the time. A couple of them picked up the new Xbox on the morning it launched on Nov. 15.

One of the guys bought the new console and a few of the initial games before coming into work. I went into his office to check out his haul. He showed off two the games he considered to be the best, NFL Fever and Project Gotham Racing. He’d bought a third game on a whim. It was Halo. “It’s supposed to be pretty good,” he said giving his justification for the purchase. Looking back, that was the understatement of the decade.

In the months that followed, my coworkers and I convened at lunch to play a little on the Xbox. Halo quickly became the lunchtime favorite. Not the campaign with the sci-fi storyline but the multiplayer which pitted player versus player. Our lunch sessions would sometimes spill over to after work. Other friends would often stop by to join in the fun.

Halo began to rule our world. No longer was it “Hey, what are you doing for lunch?” The question, or command rather, became “Hurry up and eat so we can play.” We knew all the maps by heart, the placement of each weapon on every map and the quickest route to pick up the best one. Damnation. Hang ‘Em High. Rat Race. Prisoner. Those were the names of the “boards” that logged the most hours. I was so obsessed with Halo that sometimes at night I would dream about playing the game.

Multiplayer matches were done via split-screen. Each player had his corner of the TV to watch. As we got more advanced, it became easier to sneak a peak at an opponent’s screen and locate them for an easy kill. Elaborate cardboard dividers were devised and attached to the screen to prevent this type of cheating.

It worked surprisingly well but then we got the bright idea to have another Xbox and TV on-site. With two copies of Halo, we could link the game sessions for a small scale LAN party. Just when we thought Halo couldn’t get any better, “Team Slayer” over a System Link connection became the greatest thing ever. Each team would occupy an Xbox with an ethernet cable stretched between them.

I had an infant son at home as did a few of the other guys. Our lunchtime and after-hours play became like our tame version of “Guys Night Out” on lives that were otherwise dominated by feedings and diaper changings.

We tried most of other FPS games that came after, each promising to be the “Halo killer.” None of them could match the precise control and style of Halo. Of course we eagerly anticipated Halo 2 and it became a quick replacement.

But then some of the guys found work elsewhere and our lunchtime games fell by the wayside. Halo had come and gone as a dominant force in my leisure time.

Fast forward several years and my young son got an Xbox 360 for Christmas. I couldn’t resist trying Halo 3 but was left a little unfulfilled. The experience got so diverse and online play just too sporadic compared to playing with the guys at lunch those years before.

My son did eventually pick up Halo 3 and loved it. It became something of an obsession for him. I guess he gets that quality from his mother. I fueled his passion with the subsequent releases Halo Wars, Halo ODST, and Halo Reach.

The newly upgraded Halo: Combat Evolved “Anniversary” game was released this past Tuesday to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the seminal game. I had to buy it to see the revised versions of the original multiplayer maps and updated campaign. I’m happy to say this new 360 version does not disappoint.

Best of all, the world of Halo comes full circle — no pun intended — as now I can play the original game on the 360 with my son. Those glory days playing Halo at lunch nearly a decade ago pale in comparison to the time I can spend with my new multiplayer teammate.

Previously: Post #2 in our Google+ D&D Experiment

It’s been a very educational week in the land of Google+.  We’ve learned quite a bit about running a campaign within the G+ infrastructure.  Some good lessons, some bad.   Let’s get to it!

The One Where Google Hates Me

Last time I told you about the use of custom hashtags to help separate your D&D posts from your animated .gifs of cats.  They still work great…if you remember to use them.  Sometimes in the heat of an adventure it’s very easy to forget to add your hashtag to a post, meaning it can easily get lost among all the other posts or if players only use the saved search to find the latest game posts.  As I suggested before, if you could create an exclusive Circle, where the only posts that would appear in that Circle were meant for that Circle alone, then we’d be in business.  Sadly, Google developers are not hanging on my every word yet, so that feature hasn’t made it into the latest round of updates.

So, I thought of another solution to this problem: Have everyone create a separate G+ profile only for D&D.  I doubt you could use your character name – I’m sure the folks at Google would recognize “Rothar the Destroyer of Worlds and Lover of Puppies” as a fictitious name – but there are plenty of ways you could come up with a name that would pass inspection.  This would allow you to create a campaign Circle and then every post would be game-related.  You could even create multiple campaign Circles if you’re a hardcore player.  Although if you have a friend that is playing in more than one campaign with you, his/her posts will show up in both campaign Circles, so it’s not a perfect solution, either.  However, if you’re only playing one campaign at a time, or you play with completely separate groups of people, this would be a pretty good way to do things.  But if you get caught by the Google Detectives for having a fake profile, leave my name out of it.

It’s All About the Story

My method for telling the story in a G+ campaign has been to have the DM start every thread.  I usually start a new thread whenever we change locations, which means my descriptive text serves as a sort of anchor.  If you’re familiar at all with writing movie scripts, it’s like putting the scene indicator (SCENE VI: Ext – Daytime) at the top of a scene.  Under that, the players post about what they’re doing, including attacking an enemy or attempting to pick the lock on a door.  This allows them to maintain a constant context of where they are, what they’re doing, and it’s easy for them to scroll back through previous posts to see what’s in the room that might be useful.  This is a great way to play, but, as I’ll point out later, is not without its flaws.

As you can see in the screen shot below, there are 21 comments on this post, so quite a bit happened in this room (We had our first encounter!  And no one died!  Well, except for a zombie…) before I posted a new thread after a player decided to go through Door #3.

Where Are We Again?

As you can see, the beginning of every new “scene” is also a good opportunity for me to post Google SketchUp pictures.  To recap, I’m using SketchUp to help give the players a better visual sense of their surroundings in order to help them explore more thoroughly.  I started by creating pretty detailed models of the Blood Diamond Clan’s headquarters:

However, now that we’re in the hidden mines of the Clan, my SketchUp drawings are a lot less detailed; really only showing the basic layout of the walls, doors, and rooms, leaving most of the description up to me, the DM.  You could easily add every conceivable detail to the SketchUp drawing if you want, though, depending upon how much time you have on your hands.

While I do have a few rooms that are more detailed than this, my main concern with showing the map is for the players to be able to see where they are, but also where they’ve been.  Because the worst thing in a play-by-post (PbP) campaign is for someone to be gone for a week’s vacation, only to come back and have no idea what’s happened while they were sunbathing in Acapulco (Yeah, like gamers ever go out in the sun).  By showing pictures of the dungeon as the adventure progresses, players can easily catch up just by scrolling through the pictures.  Plus, if your party winds their way through the catacombs and come to a dead end, they can just look at the map and say, “Let’s go back to the torture chamber and go right instead of left this time”, again without having to scroll through a week’s worth of Google+ posts to figure out where they made their fateful turn.  It just makes sense to provide an efficient a way to play when you’re doing PbP, and having visuals is the best way to do it.

The most obvious advantage to using SketchUp, though, is that it’s in 3D.  I can spin around the room to show things from the most informative angle.  If there’s a treasure chest in the far-left corner, I can turn the room around, take a screen shot and post it so that the players can see it.  But if there’s writing on the wall in the near-right corner, I can rotate around and show them what it says.  You can also raise and lower walls at-will to give you the best vantage point possible (I’ve done this on the screen shot below to show you what I mean).

The treasure chest was there all along!

Of course you don’t want to reveal your entire map all at once, which is why I’ve added a “Fog of War” ceiling to my dungeon as a separate, editable component.  That way I can show the floorplan as the adventurers make their way through the dark, dank passageways of the Mines of the Blood Diamond Clan, but don’t have to show them what’s coming up around the next corner (Surprise! Beholder!).

For example, here’s a shot of a few places the party has been.  At this point they have to choose to enter either Door #1, #2, or #3.

As we saw previously, they chose Door #3 (And won a brand! new! car!!).  This is what they’ve explored so far from a different angle.  It looks like they’ve been stopped by a cave-in down the side corridor (pillars are a lot easier to draw than spheres in SketchUp), so they’ll have to backtrack and hit the main corridor instead.  Thankfully, the Fog of War is in place so they’ll still be surprised about what’s waiting for them down that hallway.

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

Dice rolling is still proving to be the one big stumbling block for D&D on Google+, but at least its manageable now.  The main thing to consider is your method of gameplay, which will decide how you post your rolls to G+.

Even though Greg from The Unseen Servant was kind enough to add a +1 button to his website last week, my friends and I have found that it doesn’t work in practice for the method of gameplay we’re using.  Sharing with the +1 button creates the roll as a separate post, outside of the conversation that gives it context (this is that flaw I mentioned earlier in the scene-by-scene thread storytelling method).  So while we are still using The Unseen Servant for all of our dice rolls, we’ve found that writing our roll results into our latest post, as well as a direct link to the roll on Unseen Servant, has been the best way to go for now.

Here’s an encounter using links to our rolls on Unseen Servant:

That being said, if you have a separate D&D Google+ profile as I suggested above, the +1 button becomes relevant again, because your gameplay method could be different.  With only game posts going into the campaign Circle, you wouldn’t need to try to fit every interaction in that room under a single thread.  Instead, every action could be its own separate post, just like on a message board.  In that case, the +1 button on Unseen Servant is a perfect solution.  It really just boils down to how you want to play and organize the posts in the campaign.

Sorry, Google…

Long story short, most everything we’ve run into so far that is making this a difficult experiment could be solved by exclusive Circles that would only show posts shared to that Circle, or creating a separate Google+ profile for playing D&D.  Creating a separate profile may not be in everyone’s best interest (and Google would really prefer you not do that), but that is clearly the cleanest solution thus far.  You can still play D&D using your main G+ profile, but between having to use hashtags, saved searches, and the inability to easily share online dice rolls, it requires a little more work.

For Next Time

Now that we’re well into the campaign, I feel like we’ve already learned the mechanics of running a D&D adventure in Google+.  From here on out, it’s pretty much just the same things over and over again (although that’s when the fun really begins in D&D).  So with that in mind, my next post will be a solid wrap-up of our experiment in a sort of cheat sheet format.  That way you can come to one page and see what we suggest you do if you’re interested in running your own campaign.  I’ll include links to websites, links to Google Doc templates that are worth a try, SketchUp resources, a couple of different dice rollers that we’ve tried, and a handful of other useful tips, tricks, and solutions for Dungeons and Dragons on Google Plus.

Until then, keep your blades sharp and your shields at the ready!

Previously: Post #1 in our Google+ D&D Experiment

Our adventure has officially gotten underway!  The three main characters – Finora the Wolf Slayer (Fighter), Oraine (Ranger) and Gerrex (Cleric) – have met with the head of the largest shipping company in the port city of Enathal, a man by the name of Suzdal Razin.  Razin’s daughter, Kythera, was snatched off the streets along with some of her handmaidens, and thus far, all signs point to the Blood Diamond Clan as the most likely culprits.  Local legend holds that the Clan has a secret mine where they harvest precious gems.  To supply their workforce, rumors say they kidnap unsuspecting citizens to use as disposable slave labor.  Could Kythera have become the latest victim of the Clan’s nefarious operation?  Or is it all just an urban legend meant to add to the Clan’s already dark reputation?  The adventurers are heading to the Clan hall now to look for clues and to meet up with Tyrion the Monk to complete their party.

As someone who hasn’t DM’ed a game in over 20 years, it’s been so great to get back to storytelling.  And thus far, Google+ is holding up pretty well as a method for playing.

Circles

The reason I thought G+ might work for a play-by-post campaign is the concept of Circles.  Creating a Circle with only the players in it has definitely helped cut down on the clutter; however, if you’re a busy poster like I am, it only helps so much.  Players still have to search through a lot of non-game posts to find the next in-game information.  To that end, I was really excited to see Google recently added the ability to search Google+ posts.  It may not be perfect, but we’re using a custom hashtag (#robsgplusdnd) to designate our D&D posts and, in conjunction with a saved search for that hashtag, it’s working out pretty well.

So if you want to see what’s up with the game, you just click on that saved search and it takes you right to those posts.  The search results default to the Most Popular posts for the hashtag, but you can easily click Most Recent to see the latest posts.  It would be nice if you could set one or the other as the default, but that’s definitely a First World Problem in the big scheme of things.

While the hashtag search has worked well, I also see this as a real opportunity for Google to make G+ an invaluable tool with a few tweaks to the infrastructure.  It would be really great if you could create an exclusive Circle that only includes the people you’ve invited to join.  And, more importantly, the only posts you’d see in that Circle’s Stream would be ones that were shared with that Circle specifically.  This would eliminate the need for hashtags and really help filter out pictures of cats and funny YouTube videos that you might otherwise post, and only show relevant updates for people in that Circle.

For D&D, this would mean that you could create a Circle with your campaign name (e.g., Blood Diamond Clan) and the only posts you’d see in that Circle would be in-game posts.  You could even create a separate Circle for table chat (e.g., Blood Diamond Clan Chat) so you could discuss things outside of the game, but still relevant to the campaign.  The key, of course, is that this would have more applications than just D&D.

Businesses could use these exclusive Circles to coordinate work on a project even if the participants are in offices that are thousands of miles apart.  Students could create an exclusive Circle for a school project and be able to work on it without having to actually get together.  A close group of friends could use exclusive Circles to communicate without having to mention each other in every post.  It would be ideal for high school classmates coordinating for a 20-year reunion.  You could share relevant Google Docs, photos, +1’s, links, and join Hangouts with the people in your exclusive Circle, creating a great way to filter out the noise, but still have all the advantages that the Google Plus infrastructure has to offer.  It seems like a lot of people could really use such a feature, not just us D&D geeks.

Dice Rolling

As I mentioned last time, dice rolling is one aspect of playing on Google Plus that is a little impractical.  You have to use a separate site in order to roll and then manually post your results.  While a Chrome extension would be ideal, if you have to use another site, I mentioned that it would be nice if you could +1 rolls to your D&D Circle.  However, as of the last time I wrote, there was no way to do that.  Well, a lot can change in a couple of days…

Greg of Smash-Co Communications, the creator of Unseen Servant, the website we are using to keep track of our rolls, saw my first post and decided that adding a +1 sounded like a good idea.  As you can see in the screen shots below, there’s now a big +1 button next to the roll result!  From there it’s just a matter of deleting the +Public share and adding in your +D&D Circle instead so that the rest of the world isn’t utterly confused as to what “[1d20+3]=14+3=17” means.  So if you’re considering running your own Google Plus D&D campaign, here’s a really great, simple solution for you to not only post your roll results directly to your Circle, but it also keeps a running tally of all rolls for the entire campaign.  (Thanks, Greg!  You’re awesome!)

Next Time…

Soon, my adventurers will be entering their first mapped-out location, the Blood Diamond Clan hall.  I’ll be posting my Sketchup photos for them to examine the building and let me know where they would like to explore next.  I’ll be sure to post these photos here at Top Hat Sasquatch as well so you can see how I’m using Sketchup in this campaign.

Until then, keep your blades sharp and your shield at the ready!

As a wee lad, I rolled my fair share of 20-sided dice while battling imaginary monsters at slumber party sessions of Dungeons & Dragons. As with many first gen (or arguably second gen) gamers who started playing after they got their hands on those famous red books, D&D has always informed who I am, but has not always been a driving force in my life.

I lost interest in wizards and warriors in high school, it completely dropped off my radar in college, and I tried to play a campaign with some like-minded dorks in my 20′s, but it never really came back full-force like when I was 12 years old. Instead, I’ve gotten married, became a father, have a full-time job (and a couple of part-time ones, too), so D&D simply cannot be as important to me as it once was. But that doesn’t mean I want D&D completely out of my life, either. And I’m not alone.

Recently there’s been a real resurgence in D&D as older fans have started to feel nostalgic towards gaming. Most of us have kids and playing is not only a great way to spend some quality time with them, but it also gets them off the internet, the iPad/iPod, or to put down their DS, and do something that requires a little bit of imagination and creativity for a change. Some OG gamers who may not have kids simply want to get back to something that was a great excuse to hang out with a group of friends and have some fun. Unfortunately, with my busy lifestyle, I don’t really have time to schedule a live session with my nerdy friends once a week. So, for me anyway, play-by-post is a better solution.

For those of you not familiar, play-by-post is essentially playing D&D via message board posts. The DM says what’s going on, you give an opinion on what should be done, everyone in the party discusses it, and then the DM says whether or not it worked. Battles run in much the same way – you say you’re going to attack the kobold, you roll some virtual dice to determine if you hit and what kind of damage you’d do, you post that to the message board, and the DM responds, telling you whether or not it was a successful attack. It can be a somewhat long process to play-by-post, but when you have so many other things going on in your life, it’s easier to check the board once a day than trying to get everyone together to play a live session for an hour or two every week.

So with that in mind, ever since I got my Google+ invite on June 30, I’ve had it in my head that it would be a really great platform for running a play-by-post Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Get a couple of your buddies, add them to a D&D Circle, and then post all of the adventure-related entries to that Circle. I started searching for someone who was doing just that and it appears that everyone else is focused on using Hang Outs to play. That idea makes perfect sense, but it’s not perfect for my lifestyle. So since no one else was doing it, I decided to just do it myself.

To that end, this week I’ll be kicking off a Google+ D&D campaign called, “The Mines of the Blood Diamond Clan.” My adventurers – three willing friends of mine – are going to be searching for a young woman that has been presumed kidnapped by the notorious Blood Diamond Clan, a mafia-like group of dwarves that control the precious gem syndicate in the Cor Myn region. There are rumors that the Clan has a secret mine where they force slave workers to toil away, unearthing the gems the Clan uses to gain wealth and power; it’s believed this young woman has become one of those disposable servants. The party will be going in search of her and these mythical mines, but, as you might expect, they’ll get more than they bargained for in their quest.

Part of the goal of this is to use as many Google products as possible to play. That way everything can easily be shared via G+ and everything is in the cloud for access anywhere in the world. Obviously we’re using Google+ for all of the gameplay posts, but we’re also using Google Docs to share our character sheets. I’m also using Google SketchUp to draw all of my maps. Thus far I’ve drawn up a floorplan for the Blood Diamond Clan headquarters (see the image below) that I’ll be sharing with the adventurers, complete with stone walls, wood floors, furniture, and decor (like the treasure chest further down the page).  It will be a truly 3-D environment that they can explore for clues to the disappearance of this young woman. I’d love to be able to just give them the 3-D SketchUp files and let them walk through the building, spin around rooms, zoom in on things for detail, etc., but I don’t believe any of the other guys have used SketchUp enough to know how to do this. How cool would it be to have a tiny inscription on a table that you’d only be able to read if you zoomed in on it in SketchUp? Maybe next time…

Unfortunately, the one aspect of the game that I can’t use a Google product for is rolling the dice. Ideally, there would be a Chrome app that would roll for you and allow you to +1 post the results to your D&D Circle. But I’m no programmer, so I have no clue how to get that done. For now, we’re going to use Unseen Servant, a really cool website that allows you to create a campaign, have everyone assigned to that campaign, use it to roll your dice, and it saves every roll to the campaign. I trust my friends to be honest with their rolls, but I’m also trying to make a road map for other people to follow. Not everyone is so trusting, so I needed a solution that would make everyone accountable and every action recordable. Again, this is where a Chrome dice roller would be ideal, but this is the best way to solve this problem at the moment.

I thought it might be fun to keep you Top Hat-wearing cryptids updated on how the game is going. I’ll discuss some of the highlights of running the game through G+, as well as any obstacles we’re running into as well. I’m really seeing this game as a proof of concept, so there’s going to be a lot of in-game evaluation of what’s working and what’s not working in an effort to find the best solutions. And, of course, there will be an extensive post-game debrief to see what I might do with the second adventure, as well as what others might do if they’re interested in following our lead.

So stick around as we dig deeper into The Mines of the Blood Diamond Clan on Google+. And if you have any suggestions, please respond in the comments. I’m really looking to make this sort of a road map for others to follow, so any input is greatly appreciated.

Until next time, keep your blades sharp and your shield at the ready!