John Lammers on EpicTable

BR: What are your favorite games?

JL: Okay, I’ve got to confess–I’ve been a D&D player for…I don’t know…over 25 years, I guess. I’ve played a bit of d20 Modern, Dragonstar, a bit of Middle Earth RPG, Paranoia, a little bit of Call of Cthulhu (not as much as I’d like). I say “confess” because I know you and others have parted ways with D&D, and frankly, you and others have opened my eyes to games like My Life with Master, Dogs in the Vineyard, Gothikus, etc. I can’t claim these as favorites, having 25+ years of D&D weighed against months of exposure to story games, but I have to say that I’m hooked. I had a blast playing My Life with Master and Gothikus, I’m reading Dogs in the Vineyard, and I’ve got Sorcerer and Spirit of the Century waiting in the queue. Ask me again in a couple years. J

BR: Give us the pitch on EpicTable.

JL: Okay, so your readers all know the standard VT pitch–play RPGs with your friends over the network, right? Like some others, it’s also useful at the physical tabletop, for mapping, for tracking spell effects, etc. EpicTable has some features that I believe are differentiators , such as my vision and illumination model that eliminates the need for manual fog-of-war, “active” character sheets, etc. But here’s the real value: the philosophy behind EpicTable is that doing lots and lots of little things right adds up to more value than the sum of those features. Every feature has to be usable by the VT novice, yet powerful enough to satisfy the expert. It’s not enough to have a feature–the feature has to be accessible to me, whether I’m new to EpicTable, use it once a month, once a week, or every day. That’s a tall order, and there’s no way you can tell whether I’m living up to that philosophy until you can check it out yourself. One of the reasons you can’t check it out yet is exactly that philosophy–a lot of the EpicTable features work, but until enough of them work, and do in a way that’s easy enough to use, I’m not unveiling it.

BR: Why did you decide to code a VT?

JL: Actually, it started as a rules automation program. It morphed into a VT when some friends and I tried to turn our face-to-face game into an internet game when we moved apart. We tried IM and some shared whiteboard stuff, but it was pretty cumbersome using general purpose tools for an RPG platform. So, I started in a new direction, just out of personal need. It wasn’t that long before I stumbled into VTs–I’m not even sure people were calling them that back then. I tried a handful, but nothing was really what I was looking for. Not that any of them were that bad–I just had this vision in my head and no one had built that. Convinced that some of my ideas would become clear differentiators, so I started work on my vision.

BR: Why are VTs important? How do they compare to face-to-face gaming?

JL: I think VTs are very important for the survival and growth of pen-and-paper and storytelling RPGs. Life changes often disrupt face-to-face games. People move, have kids; any number of things can break up a face-to-face game. VTs give that group a chance to survive in another venue. You can play online with a friend who’s moved. You can put the kids to bed and play on a VT, whereas you couldn’t put them to bed and run over to your buddy’s place.

Another big advantage of VTs is the availability of players. If you’re in a small town, and you want to play Dogs in the Vineyard, good luck finding players. With a VT, you’re not limited by your geography or the timeslot that you happen to have available. There are whole online communities where you can find someone to play the game you want to play.

I suspect that VTs are also important in pulling new people into RPGs. I’m guessing that some portion of the MMORPG crowd may not have had the opportunity to try pen-and-paper RPGs or may not be inclined to do so. VTs could provide a sort of a gateway into the pen-and-paper RPG world for people who might never try a face-to-face game. Some percentage of those folks will realize that pen-and-paper RPGs have something to offer that MMORPGs can’t. As a consequence, the hobby will gain players that the face-to-face format may not have attracted.

In terms of comparison to face-to-face gaming, I think there are two primary aspects of the VT experience that differ from face-to-face: automation and distance. Automation in the sense that some activities, such as mapping, tracking limited duration effects, etc., can be offloaded to the VT, freeing the GM up for more creative work. Distance, in this context, refers to the psychological distance between the players. That distance sometimes helps people shed their inhibitions and open up more. People who wouldn’t necessarily feel comfortable roleplaying or speaking in character face-to-face sometimes do so more readily when the interaction is mediated by a VT.

BR: Do you feel that Indie/Storygames are suited for VT play? If so, why?

JL: Absolutely. One reason is the distance I described earlier–players’ feeling more open to roleplay. If you use text chat, as opposed to voice chat, you get another advantage in that you remove some of the goofiness or suspension of disbelief difficulty present when the character and the player are very different. Face it, if you’re 6′4″ tall, 250 lbs, and you’re playing a female elf, you’re going to have to be pretty talented to pull that off in a face-to-face game. On a VT though, it’s easier for even the people to suspend disbelief. Another key element of story games is creating mood, and images are a great way to do that. In face-to-face games, I often print out images of monsters, images of places, people, etc. , in an effort to put the right picture in the players’ minds. It’s a lot less disruptive to present that image on a VT than to pass a picture around the table.

Finally, I was surprised at how immersive the VT storygame experience is. By being physically isolated from the other players, I found that I really sunk into the game. I think that in the presence of others, you can’t fully sink into your own head–there’s always a greater level of self-monitoring and environment monitoring that we do as humans. Perhaps we’re genetically programmed not to look stupid in front of others, or to watch out for someone clubbing us over the head or something, who knows? The isolation of the VT removes this need, allowing one to enter an almost meditative state, where we see the scene unfolding in front of us, and the voice or text chat and rest of the VT apparatus is fades into the background.

BR: What are the strengths/weaknesses of VTs?

JL: The strengths of VTs:

· maps that are quicker and easier to interact with than a wet-erase battlemat.

· ease of sharing images and other media

· automating some parts of the game: Even in a rules-light game like My Life with Master, there are plenty of conversations like, “okay, that’s fear + self-loathing…or was that weariness?” I promise you that with EpicTable you will be able to create a character sheet that will eliminate that question. I’ll show you how in an upcoming screencast on the EpicTable site.

· dramatically expands the number of potential players for a given game. This expansion in the number of potential players is accomplished both by opening the game up to online communities full of players, but also by doing away with the distance and timing issues introduced by life changes that break up face-to-face games.

JL: Weaknesses of VTs:

· There are social aspects of the face to face game that are lost. I was surprised at how much of the friendly banter and camaraderie finds its way into the VT environment. Still, I can’t help but think that some of the social aspect of RPGs is diminished when everyone is sitting across the net from everyone else.

· There are visual aspects to roleplaying that I think are lost with a VT. For instance, in my face-to-face game, there’s an NPC imp who has quite unexpectedly become a companion of the PCs. He’s not trusted, but he seldom does things that are overtly evil. He adopts a beleaguered, put-upon manner with the PCs, easily bored, easily offended, self-important, arrogant and manipulative. The players love him. I love playing him. Some of this is verbal, but an awful lot of it is conveyed via his mannerisms. I don’t know how I’d pull that off with a VT.

BR: How will EpicTable support the Indie/Storygames community in a way other VTs do not?

JL: Well, I’m not going to speak for the other VTs. They each have their strengths, and I have a lot of respect for the other VT developers. I can speak to what EpicTable will do, though, and where I’m coming from. As I’ve admitted before, I’m new to the Indie/Storygames community. However, my games have always revolved around story. I’ve always seen D&D as an exercise in collaborative storytelling–everyone at the table working to weave together the plotlines of all their characters and my story’s basic premise into an epic tale. I’ve run the same campaign with different groups and wound up with very different stories. So, for a d20 guy, I come into the Indie/Storygames community with a perspective that’s not so terribly different. That said, my recent introduction to the world of storygames has me more excited about RPGs than I’ve been in years. I’m really sold on the notion that the system really does matter. A year ago, I would have said that the game system didn’t matter, that it was the GM and the players that determined the kind of roleplaying (or lack thereof) that was being done. There’s certainly some truth to that, but my experience with My Life with Master, Gothikus, and others has convinced me that the system does matter. You can roleplay in any game system, but some encourage it or facilitate it or demand it more than others. By the same token, I really believe that the VT matters. Just as some game systems facilitate roleplaying more than others, some VTs will facilitate it more than others. Right now, my feeling is that facilitating roleplaying in a VT isn’t necessarily a huge technical hurdle–but it’s a creative one. It’s getting lots and lots of little things right. I think I’m on the right track with some of those things, but more importantly, I’m dedicated to remaining involved in the community, encouraging feedback, and channeling all that into EpicTable.

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