Play-by-Tweet RPGs

First, there was the traditional everyone-sits-around-the-table game. Those were fun and still are. This is probably still the most common way to play an RPG. However, not everyone is able to find a local gaming group to play with. Alternatives were devised and have been gradually improved upon, in terms of interactivity and "features" such as map posting and stuff.

Then there were play-by-mail games, where turns are taken every couple weeks and everything is handled through the postal service. These have largely fallen by the wayside, but there are a few still running.

Next came play-by-email games, where turns are taken every couple of days and everything is handled through an e-mail list. Still common, though it seems to have moved away from traditional e-mail groupings and more towards Yahoo! and Google groups based games.

Around the time AOL released their chat client, play-by-chat came into being. Live interaction, yay! But, all the other difficulties of e-mail still existed plus factor in differing time-zones and attendance issues.

Then there was play-by-post games, which are basically play-by-email games but hosted within a web-forum somewhere. As far as I'm aware, this is the single most popular way to handle remote RPG games.

Now, the new kid on the block is play-by-tweet. The game is hosted at Twitter. The 140 character limit per post is actually a good thing because it keeps people focused on the action, where it belongs. Hashtags can be used for a variety of stuff. Private messages between participants are exceeding easy. The problem? Same as e-mail: everyone has to subscribe to all other participants in order to get all the action. Everything is sort or scattered about and there's no hosting of files for maps, player handouts or character stats.

What's next? Answer: Google Wave. All the advantages of chat/irc/twitter without the downsides. Who will be first? :)

>break<

There are currently two play-by-tweet games I'm aware of: @0eRPG and @MasterDungeon, both using freely available retro-classic class-n-level fantasy games. Really. Tunnels and Trolls is much better suited to PbT, I think.

Maybe I'll start a game. More later, if I do.