Tools for Apocalypse World Online

I'm trying to get started with a few friends on doing an Apocalypse World game online. We unfortunately all live far apart, and we've got pretty crazed schedules, so we were looking to do a play by post. I was wondering if there were any tools which anybody might suggest using that have been particularly effective for running such a game. I already saw the thread on the relationship maps and have gleefully borrowed a number of useful resources ensconced therein, but I'm still wondering about:

(a) a specific site or system to use to organize it all, especially as Google Wave will soon be no more (assuming I understood those news posts correctly), and

(b) any other tools which help facilitate Apocalypse World in the manner in which I'm looking to play it.

I'm also interested if anybody has any tips or advice for Apocalypse World based on their own play experiences in this fashion. Ultimately, I know that playing in person would be the absolute best experience, but I'm trying to make do with what's available to me, so any help on how to optimize the situation would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Howdy!

   Well, my only online experience with AW has been in Wave, but I've been playing in some other games via more traditional fora. Here are my recommendations:

1) If you can, schedule a regular 'live' session via your instant messaging program of choice or skype if you can swing that. Obviously, one of the draws might be the asynchronous nature of play by post, but you get sooooo much more done in a live chat, and the whole dynamism of interaction and table talk is a lot closer to the real thing

2) Barring that, or in addition to it, in this other game I'm playing, we've used a private message back and forth between GM and player, then post it publicly when it reaches a good chunk of stuff, but our storylines are all pretty independent. For more public storylines, you might just go with a regular forum post format, but I'd a) be super anal about organizing the fora and subfora, and b) establish some pretty clear ground rules about how much you ought to post in a chunk to avoid stepping on any other player or MC toes

3) pretty minor, but make a decision about how dice will work. Will people just roll and post their own results, will the MC roll everything and post it, will every roll be linked to some online roller, or what? With a group of established real life friends, this is probably not a big deal, but it'll be good to have everyone on the same page.

4) For supplementary docs like relationship maps, real maps, character portraits, whatever, having some file-hosting space would come in real handy. Maybe google docs? I know some other suggestions have been made in other threads.

5) A wiki can come in handy for presenting character and NPC write ups, details about the world, et cetera, and might be a handy way for you to keep track of fronts and triangles and all that good stuff

I'm sorry my advice here is so vague, but I hope it helps.

All that stuff seems way overkill.

I've had a good number (all of, actually) my Apocalypse World sessions through simple text chat (and an in-built dice roller, of course), including a crazy game with nigh every playbook used.

After introducing them to Apocalypse World, a number of my scattered friends play it almost every day via nothing but IRC.

For MC stuff - you need what you need, but, well - make a move and never speak its name means you don't have to do any fancy e-versions of it. Paper will suffice.

@Jeff Russell:

That's some good advice, thanks! I understand that doing it live in any capacity will always have a bit more pop, a bit more zest, than doing it on a forum. But unfortunately, I don't know if most of my players can do it live. I'm planning on saying that we'll do it live on saturdays, and whoever shows, shows, though, just to get that in.

Organization wise, from prior experience I probably would've just gone with a cheap proboards thinger, where I can have a number of different folders and threads and whatnot. I would keep your advice in mind, though, about making sure it's all organized clearly. And yes...talking about how long any given post should be would undoubtedly smooth things over, based on past experience.

For dice, I trust the guys, but it's a good point that I should make sure we all know what we're doing, and we do the same thing.

Google Docs actually might be able to do the relationships and shared documents well. I'll have to look into that more.

And the wiki is a good idea. I've always sorta wanted to try one, and never had a good excuse. But here it is! Fantastic!

Again, thanks for the good advice!

@DWeird

This IRC suggestion sounds pretty good, too, but you'll have to forgive my inadequacies. I'm pretty unfamiliar with IRC. Can you set it up so that it essentially is one long conversation, which anybody can log into throughout the day, and throw up a message, so that other people can check it later on? I think the primary thing is I'm trying to make sure that people can log in and put something up when it's convenient for them. If it can do that, though, the IRC definitely sounds solid.

And that's a good point, about the MC stuff not needing to be done in plain view of everyone else.

Thanks for the help! Much appreciated!

Well... In principle? If you log in and stay logged in and idle until someone posts something, you could. But IRC is best used when all the people are online at the same time, so it'd be a hassle.

A forum is probably your best bet. Some of the run-of-the-mill messaging services should have that kind of function, too, maybe? If you do ever do any live play, you can just stick in in the forum.


A thing that I did with friends with crazy schedules: Log in, see who's on, play the game with the ones available (unless someone is REALLY needed for a scene), stuff log on blog. If you're MCing and the game lasts long, I won't guarantee you won't go a bit crazy, though.

Maybe some play-by-post / realtime combo is viable? AW seems easy enough to mold into new modes of play, at least.

I've had good luck using a google group - its nice to have all of your play show up in your inbox, I think it helps keep things going.  Its also really easy to use a google site for your game - they're good for character sheets, setting info, recording custom moves, etc.  If you play with the permissions, you can make the MC the owner and the players the collaborators - you can also selectively allow viewers or just make the site public.

We've been using Skype + Vyew, and it's working really well.  The Vyew whiteboard allows us to jot down random notes, post maps, and basically keep track of all the stuff we'd have on the table normally.  For rolls, we use the Wizards of the Coast dice roller (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/dice/dice.htm).