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It is a fact universally acknowledged that any new medium of communication will be used for pornography or Dungeons & Dragons. I leave, however, the former to more respectable minds: this is some speculation about how to play D&D and its cousins here.
Don't we - precisely as a result of the above processes - already have plenty of ways to asynchronously play RPGs? Yes, but whatever.
Gemini is already great for wikis and anything whose organization is more rhizomatic than arborescent.
These can include:
Through the last especially, one could add interactive elements, leading to the possibility of porting features from interactive fiction.
Although the main purpose of such IF-like features would likely be to reduce the back-and-forth, these could also allow lurkers to explore alongside at the same time.
(There's also, I think, some features that could be ported from the emerging solo play scene to produce something quite new. That's a post for another day, however.)
Notifications and backlinks are a bit clunkier than existing HTTP platforms, though others with more tech skills than I may be able to solve these. The existing YYYY-MM-DD structure of gemlog notifications might be good for a central hub, however, to be maintained both by the GM and each player.
Gemini doesn't "naturally" want audio and video content to anywhere the same degree, but it can certainly work with them - in the case of music oftentimes better than most fora.
(Audio content? In my PBP? I think pairing location or scene pages with tracks from tabletopaudio and similar sources is relatively underexplored, and it's an easy way to build atmosphere.)
relax, stranger, and sit by the tavern
Actually I guess I've convinced myself these aren't really problems.
All online games struggle with burnout and ghosting. I don't have any immediate thoughts about how to address this.
Asynchronous games are also shit at any sort of quick back-and-forth - which especially makes WotC-style D&D itself, with its six-second combat rounds, a terrible choice for the medium (which doesn't mean that plenty of people aren't doing that.) Like other forms of PBP, PBG would benefit from quick combat systems (or lack of emphasis on combat), loose narrative division of labor beween GM and players, and (the major advantage *over* traditional media) the opportunity to linger on what goes on inside of characters' heads.
Maybe others are already doing this? Would love to hear about it, or even actually experiment with playing a game.
tomasino on making gemini easy