Role playing... there's an app for that!

Today I'd like to talk about a new app we created specifically for our role playing campaigns.  It's called Dungeon Whisper, and just went live at the app store.

As a GameMaster, you get passed a lot of notes in the course of a night of gaming.  The rogue is always pickpocketing or out right stealing from NPCs and/or players.  Or he might have missed his Disable Device roll and doesn't want to admit it, so he tells the tank to open the trapped chest.  Or players may want to plan some actions in private, like killing the rogue in his sleep.

The most often written note is to explain Listen or Spot checks to players who made their roll so you can keep the players that missed their roll in the dark.  The list goes on, and quite frankly, as a GameMaster, I tire of all the correspondence.

So, we decided to create an app for that.  Gone are the days of note writing, note passing, cheaters listening to explanations when they missed their rolls.  Gone are the days of explaining a spot check when a picture is worth a thousand words.  Gone are the days of asking for secret rolls aloud...

Dungeon Whisper fixes all of this.  And you don't even need wifi or an internet connection to use it.

Dungeon Whisper connects a group of players via the bluetooth connection on their iPhone/iPad/iTouch and creates a chat room specifically tailored to accommodate a complete gaming session.  Here are a few of its features:

1)  Create a profile and customize it to fit your character.  Stats, alignment, even upload a picture from your phone that will represent you graphically in the app.

2)  By selecting CHAT from the main menu you can either start a new chat or join an existing one. Connect up to sixteen players.  Talk to your teammate(s), plan strategy with the entire group, or even plot against an unruly player.  By selecting the player's profile name from the top of the menu, you can talk to them privately, or talk to the group in general chat.

3)  Upload pics from your iPhone/iPad/iTouch and send them to whomever you desire.  To do this, select the 'pic graphic' at the left of your chat window.  You will be prompted to select the file you wish to share and then fire away.  This is extremely useful for GamMasters as they can simple take pics of the dungeons, treasure maps, monsters the party will face, etc. and send them to the party as a whole or to whoever made their specific spot roll.  It's also nice to prepare pics of the geography the players will come across so they can 'see' where they're adventuring as you describe it.  The files sent ingame are automatically stored in the app's library which is easily accessed from the main menu.  Great for saving maps, town locations, names of pesky NPCs...

4)  We've also created macros to use in the app for often used requests.  For example, I ask for Spot Checks and Listen Checks quite often in the course of an evening of gaming.  You have the option of setting up a macro so you no longer need to type this out every single time.  DOUBLE TAP and TRIPLE TAP can be set to do this for you.  Simply go to the settings from the main menu, type in what you want for DOUBLE TAP, and every time you 'double tap' your screen, the text will always send.  EXAMPLE:  I set DOUBLE TAP to "Spot check please..."  Whenever I 'double tap' my chat window, the party or selected player will receive the text, "Spot check please..."

Dungeon Whisper was created because we wanted to revolutionize role playing and bring it into the modern age.  It's a lot of fun and greatly enhances our own campaigns.  In our current campaign, my favorite application of Dungeon Whisper is the ability to have Nightbringer talk to its owner so they can make the decision to obey its whims or not without being pressured by the party.  A close second is using it to allow the demon, Raysiel, to talk with Eric's wizard, Azazel, when he wants out or simply wants to give his 'advice'.  There's no better feeling for a GameMaster than to watch a player receive dire information--such as Raysiel demanding Azazel kill an enemy of his that might actually be currently helping the party--and then see them consider exactly how they are going to proceed without pressure from his companions.  It makes the game more cinematic.

And isn't that why we love role playing?  We all wish our lives were movies...

So check out Dungeon Whisper at www.dungeonwhisper.com or directly here.

Due to scheduling conflicts, we're not having a session this week, so the next few posts will center around the beginning of The Demon Queen Enclave, or I might just throw in an especially humorous Cthulhu session we all shared a few years ago.  If you have a preference, feel free to post your thoughts!

Our adventure begins... ?

Ok, I realize this is the first adventure post, and that it's starting at the end of an adventure, but I am NOT to blame.  George Luca$ is.  For it was he who taught me--at a very young age-- to count funny and begin things in the middle.  Of course he also taught me that absolute power corrupts absolutely, which is the only reason I can imagine for the offal (yes, offal not awful) films known as Episodes 1-3 and Indiana Jones 4, but that's another blog entirely.

Our adventure...  or it's conclusion, to be fair is the subject of this blog.  Before we delve into it, a few things should be made clear, namely the players and their respective characters:

SAM is an experienced gamer who plays a cleric named, Kel.  Kel's a good cleric who's always ready to lend a healing hand, though sometimes he opts to summon Archons and Angels and throw the game into absolute chaos for his less-than-good-allies...

FRAN is Sam's girlfriend irl("in real life") and a relative new comer to the world of role playing.  Fran is catching on to the game nicely and her character, Chrysanth, is a fighter/rogue.  Chrysanth tends toward neutral good, and has a wonderful throwing axe that returns to her hand every round.  Unfortunately, the Dice Gods hate Fran and her character as it seems she's been banished to the realm of Rolling Eternal Single Digits.

BETH is an experienced gamer who plays a ranger named, Kit.  Kit is a dead shot with her bow, chaotic neutral, and is covered in warts.  She's also a sociopath.  Which is fun to watch.

ERIC is our last player of the group.  He's an experienced gamer who plays a cursed wizard named Azazel.  A wizard of the Red Robes (for those Dragonlance fans out there) so to speak, Azazel's true neutral, but carries a terrible secret.  In his search for power, he became possessed by a terrible and powerful demon named Raysiel.  Raysiel is a 12 foot tall, winged monstrosity that is always trying to break free (think the Hulk) of the curse that bound him to Azazel.  Azazel and Raysiel know the only way to break their curse is to defeat Orcus, the Prince of the Undead, so they share an unholy truce so that they may both be free of each other one day...

Now, to catch you up on what happened in the beginning of the campaign (We converted the 4th edition D&D adventure, Demon Queen's Enclave, to 3.5 rules as we all know 4th edition sucks).  The group went into the Underdark to explore a new drow city, Phaervorul, that was rumored to be a free trade city with the surface world.  What they found was a city in chaos.  Demons and Undead were sacking the city seemingly intent on killing all the drow there.  Our party of brave adventurers met the ruler of Phaervorul, the evil drow priestess, Matriarch Urlvrain, and after proving themselves to her, made a deal to travel deep into the realm of Shadowfell to assault the evil city of Deadhold, and defeat Orcus' rising exarch, a drow vampire lord named Zirithian thus stopping Orcus' Undead Horde from wreaking havoc al across the world.  You know, like you do.

Our party did indeed defeat the drow vampire lord Zirithian, and in doing so, claimed his sentient evil sword, Nightbringer.  Nightbringer has its own agenda, but for the time being, allowed Kel to wield him, as they both want to destroy Orcus, Prince of the Undead.  Besides, being wielded by a goody-two-shoes cleric is better than rotting in Deadhold, and Nightbringer is certain he can break the cleric's will if and when he chooses.

So our adventurers trekked back to Phaervorul to get their reward from the drow priestess, Matriarch Urlvrain...

I do believe introductions are in order...

Hello fellow gamers!  My wife and I created this blog to record the adventures of our little gaming group for better or worse.  Most people have a misconceived notion of gamers, role players in particular, and we decided to try and wipe the slate clean once and for all.

As for the life of this blog... we plan to simply record the adventures we play and have played in the past.  D&D, Cthulhu, a smattering of Star Wars perhaps, and maybe just maybe some of the pranks we've pulled online in The World of Warcraft.  We'll split up the prose to showcase both the out-of-game social interaction and a cinematic account of what's going on ingame.  You might enjoy it, you might not.  What matters is that we had a helluva time playing it.  And so could you...

COMMOM MISNOMERS
#1 Not all gamers are forty-year-olds living in their parents' basement.  Some are, true, but most are just regular folk like yourself who simply choose to lose themselves in their imagination once in a while.  I mean seriously, isn't reality lacking sometimes?  It's nice to pretend for an evening that you and your friends are heroes or heroines saving the day and slaying bad guys left and right.  I do draw the line at dressing up though...

#2 Not all gamers use Axe Spray as a substitute for showering.  Now I know this one can be tough to swallow, especially if you've ever been to Comic Con, Gen Con, or any Magic the Gathering pre-releases.  My wife does indeed carry Axe Spray to those events to ward off the random olfactory assaults.  But that's not all gamers.  Personal hygiene is very important.  And I can testify that myself and the group of friends we play with also consider it a priority.  If you, however, are one of the offending party that believe sweat actually bathes you clean, please, follow these instructions.  1) Strip down. 2) Enter your bath or shower.  3)  Turn those metal knobs or whatever strange device you see poking from underneath the spigot.  4)  Enter bath or streaming water, lather up with soap and wash.  And I know some of you might be grinning that grin-of-recognition about yourself right now.  Trust me, not one single person enjoys the mass funk that arises from a Magic pre-release where 100 gamers are stuck in a room with no ventilation.  Just fucking shower.

#3 When we role play we do not dress up.  Period.  If you do feel the need to garb yourself in your black cloak of resistance +2 and hold your keen longsword while you play...  stop.  Just stop.  You're ruining it for the rest of us.  I don't need to see your crappy props.  This game is about using your imagination.  So use it.  Trust me, the way I imagine how your character looks far outweighs anything you could have made or bought at last year's RenFaire.

#4 LARPing is just plain silly.  See #3.

#5 Role players DO NOT worship the satan.  Well, that might not be entirely true, I've never taken a poll and firmly believe anyone should worship whatever imaginary deity they so desire, but I do know that satan worship is not a requirement for role players in general.  Also, we DO NOT sacrifice cats, children, witches, saprolings, etc.  First off, that gets really messy.  Second, why would we?  We are playing an imaginary game so that we can use imaginary magic in an imaginary world.  If there was any real magic in the real world and sacrificing anything gave us access to it, we would not be role playing.

Forgive the plug but...
We recently wrote, produced and directed a wonderful film that attempts to capture what role playing is truly like so that the mainstream uninitiated could see we're all regular peeps.  It is called, Natural 20, hence the name of this self-promoting blog.  It recently won Best Humor Film at Comic Con 2012, and earned my wife a Best Directing Nomination at iTV/Pop Con.  It's also playing at Gen Con this year (screw you Dragon Con) and Action on Film Festival later in August.   Check it out at www.natural20thefilm.com.  Hopefully it will be released shortly (after the festivals), and if we find funding, have plans for a web series that won't look like it was shot on my uncle's VHS camcorder (cough cough nudge nudge, The Guild).