A Wave New World

Ok, I know, bad pun.

If you're like me, the first glimpse of Google Wave last May at their I/O conference must have been torture for you. Torture because we didn't just want it. We wanted it ASAP, preferably somewhere between "Now" and "Five seconds from Now". Well, thanks to some luck in getting into the open preview, I am now a Google Wave user. Before I go any further, let me make sure we're all on the same page with the lexicon involved here.

• Wave - An individual conversation in thread form. Also refers to the client itself. The difference should be clear by context (some users capitalize "wave" only when referring to the client).
  
• Blip - An individual reply in a thread. Blips can be edited by all participants in a Wave, regardless of who originated the blip.
  
• Robot - Automated Wave users. They can take scripted actions in editing waves (like replacing text emoticons with image-versions of them) or draw information from outside sources (like dropping a map into a Wave when it detects an address, or collecting the weather for an area). Still others allow you to interact with things beyond Wave (like Tweety the Twitbot, which allows a person to update their Twitter from Wave).
  
• Extensions, Gadgets - So far, most Extensions and Gadgets behave in a very Robotic manner in Google Wave. It is unclear if the distinction between Extensions, Gadgets, and Robots will become a bit more defined as time goes on, or if the terminology will evolve to represent these concepts more distinctly.

Got it? Good.

Wait, what am I doing?

Now let me level with you: I'm not an engineer. I'm not a web developer. I'm not even a corporate procedures specialist. I'm just an ordinary guy with few technical skills. All you web developers and such reading this that wonder why I would sponge up an invite when I bring nothing to the part, I can tell you only that I don't intend to waste the opportunity. In fact, that's part of why I'm blogging. You see, I play tabletop roleplaying games. Y'know, like Dungeons and Dragons. If your eyes are glazing over, this might not be a good blog for you to follow, since what I'll be exploring for the most part is the use of Google Wave as a virtual tabletop for games.

How will it work?

So far, Wave seems to be having some lag problems and the user base isn't all that large. Until these two problems clear up, the relevant paradigm here is "pseudo-real time" since Wave isn't quite as fast as a chat room and time zones can be an issue for people finding groups. By the time it reaches the general public, it's my understanding that Wave should be every bit as responsive as a chat client, so it should be possible to run a game in true real time. The playback feature allows players who signed on late to catch up on a session's progress easily (as well as to catch up on a scene that a character joins in progress and to catch players trying to cheat by editing the wave after the fact), and images can be dragged right into the wave to help describe scenes and characters. Still, the core client doesn't have everything. That's what developers are for.

ROBOT ROLL CALL!... and the odd gadget or two, I suppose.

RandomLeeTwenty by Chris Clouser (or Mock from RPG.net's forums as some might know him) is a dice rolling robot. It's a smart little bit of code capable of generating die rolls for a wide variety of games. Players for everything from Spirit of the Century to Reign to D&D will find that this robot has their needs filled. Personally, I think this thing is outstanding. However, in the interests of full disclosure I should point out that I got my Wave invite from RandomLee's creator. All I can say is try it out when you get on Wave. It's the best dice roller up so far.

Tuxaios by Nathaniel Fairfield is another dice rolling robot. It's not quite as sophisticated as RandomLeeTwenty, but it can handle just about anything RLT can except for Fudge dice. The difference here is primarily one of output. While RandomLee will do things like count up successes in dice pools and give you the height and width of rolls in One Roll Engine games like Reign or Wild Talents, Tuxaios leaves the dice counting to you.

Ribbit has a couple gadgets that could be worthwhile for gaming, though more as a proof-of-concept than actual use. Video and voice chatting over Wave means that players will be able to interact with other players in ways that they're already used to: by talking to them. This means that the wave itself would be edited less (making it easier to follow) and things like editing a battle map could be done by a player at the same time as they declare what they're doing. But what do I mean by "proof-of-concept"? Well, Ribbit is free for now but will soon become a paid-for service, and as far as I'm concerned that makes it useless. That said, it's only a matter of time until a truly free alternative pops up.

But what about battle maps?

Thus far, there is no battle map robot/gadget/extension, but it's only a matter of time. Wave is still young, and this is exactly the sort of thing that I understand is fairly simple to implement. A hacked version of the Group Sudoku gadget already available could even do the trick in the short term, and if RandomLeeTwenty and Tuxaios are any indication there are definitely some smart people working on making Wavletop gaming more than doable.

So what can you expect of me in the future?

I'm going to try to review APIs that can help with gaming over Wave as I become aware of them. Perhaps more compelling though, I'm going to try to get a game over Wave going as soon as possible, and I'll be posting play reports for that game here. Naturally, I'll be focusing on the role Wave plays in making the game happen more than reviewing the game itself. Also, when access to Wave becomes a bit more common I'll be switching from a traditional blog format to a wave-embedded blog. Also, 1,000+ wordcount posts are hopefully going to be an anomaly!

Until next time, happy gaming!

-BowlerHatMan

Note: it has been brought to my attention (thank you, Mock!) that there is a clear difference between Robots and Gadgets as explained by Google. For a better explanation, click here.