"Welcome to the Remote Gaming Board!" Topic

50 members voted to support this board – so let's see all of you post something soon!

What is remote gaming? Does it have something to do with playing with drones?

Playing againt people over the web?

So I suppose Vassal counts? Even if it is mostly (bu not only) board games?

Remote playing for our purposes is playing a miniatures wargame when not face-to-face. Could be play-by-mail (PBM), play-by-email (PBEM), using the web (including Vassal) , etc.

I'd like to attempt PBEM. What systems do any of you recomend?

How do you show off the paint job?

I've done remote viewing…

Yeah SMC. But you had to pay big bucks by the minute for THAT type of remote viewing.

Thanks,

John

How would you know whether you are playing against the finest from the Joint Services Command and Staff College, Oxfordshire, UK, although your opponent claims to be Mary from Lukeville, Arizona? And you keep getting beaten.

It happened to me, twice.

Not even remotely interested.

Interested enough to post here though…

The Rattrap games work well for PBeM. At least 2 players and an umpire are needed. The umpire sets up and photographs the initial situation. Players then give orders to the umpire who changes the board to reflect the new status. He then posts a photo of the new situation. Rather like a do-it-yourself AAR.

I once played a PBEM game but it fizzled out mid-way. Left me wary of getting into them again. I know they can work but but don't want to do that again. It was a shame too as I was having a blast.

How often do these things tend to finish for people?

My colleague, Chris Ferree, and I have beeen playing games of "Funny Little Wars" in 54mm via Skype for several years now.

We developed the protocols, and the system continues to evolve. The rules will appear as a chapter in Padre Paul Wright's lates book for 54mm games, "Little Campaigns."

Chris has recently painted the figures and assembled the Armies In Plastic Northwest Frontier "Fort Kandahar" set in order for us to try a game of TSATF.

Players each receive a video camera view of the battlefield from the point where their own CO figure stands each turn, and based on their observations, they send orders by runner to the various units. With a detailed and "non-flat" terrain that can be over 20' long and 12' wide, seen from ground level, it becomes imperative to use scouts to recon the field.

Because all combat effects on the enemy tend to be invisible--as they are themselves--it can be impossible really to know what's happening on "the other side of the hill."

I've lost one game by conceding defeat and ordering a general withdrawal only to discover via a post-game "fly over" by the camera that my opponent had been hammered nearly flat and just "one more heave" would have toppled him.

An altogether "new" gaming experience that can be played not only from coast-to-coast but, with some scheduling efforts in place, from the US to the UK, as we have already done a couple of times.

Very glad indeed to see this new Remote Gaming Board as we are satisfied this will be a standard arm of the hobby as the technology continues to advance.

TVAG

"Remote," as in my chances of winning a game?

I live in the Northern Territory; that makes me remote…..

For once, I think this is a welcome addition to TMP. My opponent travels a lot but usually has access to email. It occurred to us once to try a PBEM game but I didn't know where to start, so I shall be watching this board with interest.

We broadcast miniature games ALL the time. information at looking at imagineimage dot org

Do you have to have a wire less mouse and keyboard with the monitor in another room?

A decade ago I participated in one of the best games I've ever participated in. It was umpired and run by James Machin of Michigan using his home-grown Valor and Discipline rules and 15mm figures. (We called it his "DIS" game).

It was a Napoleonic battle involving 10-14 players who lived on three continents. It lasted years in real time as the personal lives of the umpire and some players often intervened.. James set up the Terrain Board in his basement (and as the battle progressed, new sections were added at one end while the other end slowly disappeared, if I remember right.

Few of the players knew who else was playing, and none knew which side other players were on or what their command positions were. I was a French Division commander in the battle.

James placed a tiny camera above the head of a player's command figure, snapped a picture, then emailed that photo with a sitrep for that moment to a player showing what he could "see" from that height with terrain and smoke obscuring line-of-sight. All orders were sent and received via the umpire.

I flew to Michigan from California some time after the game ended and the field with figures was still set up in his basement showing how the battle had ended. I could see that my own little world in the game was only about a third or a fourth of the field.
I had called off one last counterattack thinking (from my POV) that I would be outnumbered and defeated and chose to retire to cover the army's retreat instead. Afterward in the AAR and viewing the entire field, I learned I should not have done that… the enemy was actually ripe for the taking.

Some players, like me, were heavily involved during the entire game. Some had very little to do. The limited first-person viewpoint leads to a much different game experience and psychology for players than a traditional tabletop game does.

kyotebluer than blue,

Yes it certainly was fun for me. As I have posted somewhere else on TMP, back in the late '60s early '70s, I used to play a WWII skirmish game designed by Michael Korns called SUTC. He was the umpire at a sand table with the figures who would bring in players one at a time to see the table which only had figures he could see from his position. The umpire would update the player, the player would give the umpire orders and then leave. In a sense, this was like a WWII skirmish D&D RPG before there were D&D type RPG games.

I and others played that game a lot on our own, and the paranoia that sets in with such hidden movement is a real game-changer. Once a player played against no opponent and still lost !

Playing this email game with James as umpire with only a line-of-sight point of view created that same effect in this large miniatures Napoleonic game. I believe there are other TMP members who may have participated in this game, (but they might be on the Napoleonic Boards rather than here) who could give you their opinions, too. Certainly this game was an intensive labor of love for the umpire, who had a lot to cope with.

Since I began relatively early in my formative wargaming years on with the "SUTC" mentality, I have always enjoyed games like this, but I don't know if others would necessarily feel the same way about using miniatures remotely. (when I was in junior high school and high school I modified and umpired an Avalon Hill "Waterloo" board game to be played with two identical boards but having a screen between them; the umpire would only place visible enemy unit counters on each player's board).

kyotebluer than blue,

I later wrote a "battle report" for that game in the form of a multi chapter "memoir" written years later by the ADC to the character I played in the game. (That way, the memoir could comment on what happened while portraying what my character could see at the time). The memoir contains the photos and messages and updates sent to me by the umpire, as well as the orders I issued at the time as the game progressed.

If you would like a PDF copy to help you get a feel for the game, email me at nedz AT mind spring DOT com.

I might add that unknown to the players this was a disguised scenario, The umpire took a real battle/campaign situation and had us play it out in a different part of Spain with some different though similar forces.

– Ned Zuparko