Great observations. I've had limited time to play around with Wave so far, but I agree that it needs moderation, multiple panels, and faster-loading in order to overcome the chaotic fudgecluster that it now is. Given how these technologies evolve, I'm sure that it will get there.

(Reply) (Thread)

You know, this sounds somewhat... familiar?

Edited at 2009-10-28 03:46 pm (UTC)

(Reply) (Thread)

I think Will's got it. I'm watching a couple of RPG waves and using it a bit as an OOC communication band for one of my campaigns. Optimal usage is not at all clear to most.

GUMSHOE is the first good match that came to mind for me, as well. I may roll out my Delta Green 2010 game via Wave.

(Reply) (Thread)

Do you need an invite? I have a couple left.

(Reply) (Thread)

I guess I need an invite whether I like it or not.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

lol.

MachineIV at Gmail dot com. If you toss me an email, I'll send you an invite.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

My friends and I have been playing Wave like this for a couple of weeks. It does combine the best of both worlds of play-by-post/email and chatroom play, with Wiki-play thrown in (and I'm not sure if anyone's ever done that). It definitely needs a moderation protocol. It also would benefit from better graphics handling because there's a lot of potential there, but the buitl in google image search sucks and embedding files explodes the wave size and quickly decreases performance (at least for windows users). A few of my friends have been working on tools an interfaces for it, and I think that's also where the biggest potential lies. We haven't yet begun to see the full possibilities of Wave apps, I don't think. You can also do a lot of stuff with private wavelets, which are like blips within the wave, but only a subset of users can see it, such as the GM and a dicebot, or the GM passing along secret perception results to players, and such.

We found that A Penny For My Thoughts works excellent in Wave. I suspect like Gumshoe and APFMT, Primetime Adventures (need a virtual card dealer, though), Capes, Dogs in the Vineyard, In A Wicked Age, and other games with strong scene framing and player turn order would work well.

D&D 4E could also be amazing. However to make it really shine I'd want some specific tools to plug in. An editable, interactive map (perhaps embedded flash?), a skill challenge tracker, and have it plugged into the compendium where the DM can simply select monsters (with a private blip getting their stats) and put them onto the map and activate their abilities and such, and players can do the same with their own character builds.

And of course, the biggest potential of all is creating new types of games that aren't possible at the table. We've done collaborative stories, time travel stories (wherein you go back to edit previous events as people muck with the timeline) and more things which start to blur the line between roleplaying and collaborative storytelling/writing/jokes.

(Reply) (Thread)

As with all New Techno Hotness, I shall sit back and let the early adopters (which may well include Grace) have at it. Then, in a few months, I'll ask my Technogeek friends "does it suck or what?".

Then, depending upon their answers, I might look into it.

(Reply) (Thread)

The incremental group-editing of the artifact of play is probably the most fascinating part of this. I've always had a cognitive disconnect with presence in play in PBeM and PbP games ("Are we playing now? Is this playing?") and being able to be 'present' in dialogue as well as having document-writing-as-play seems to bridge that gap in a way I'm excited about.

ps. fudgecluster?

(Reply) (Thread)