The Glade 4.0

Google Wave: we came, we saw, we played D&D
Give a bunch of computer geeks a new medium to play around in, and you could probably guess that the first thing they'd think to do with it is... no, not that, we're talking role-playing games.

By Jon Stokes | Last updated October 26, 2009 8:00 PM CT

From the early days of the printing press to the dawn of the VHS era, it's been a cliché that the first thing humans do upon inventing a new medium is distribute pornography with it. While this cliché may hold true for most humans and most media, there is one conspicuous exception: the computer geek. From Nethack to play-by-post forums on the WWW, the first thing that computer geeks do upon inventing a new medium is play Dungeons and Dragons with it—the porn comes later, after the role-playing game itch is scratched.

Thus it was that when I finally got my Google Wave invite and did a bit of poking around, I wasn't the least bit surprised to quickly discover a handful of Wave-based roleplaying games already in progress, and many more in various stages of planning. In the past few days, I've watched games from the sideline and talked to some Game Masters and gamers—there seems to be an emerging consensus that Google Wave has as much RPG potential as any platform since the venerable and proverbial tabletop.

Getting oriented

If you're not familiar with the concept behind Wave, don't worry—it's hard to explain. You have to attempt to use it for something before you get any kind of handle on what it is, what it isn't, and what it probably should be. If I had to describe, the best I could do is this: Wave is a mash-up of email, IM, IRC, online forums, and wikis, all rolled into an experience that sort of resembles (to me, at least) a MOO.

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Wave is pretty awesome. I'm currently participating in the beta. I don't know many other people that got accepted, so I haven't been able to test extensively, but it's really flexible. I can definitely see this being one of the uses.

I can haz beta invite? You know, when they start up the friends program!