Ars Technica: Google Wave: we came, we saw, we played D&D

[VLSmooth]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009 ... yed-dd.ars

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.

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...