TK (via a wave) pointed me to this slashdot story on using Google Wave to play Dungeons and Dragons.
The commenters point out, rightly, that the same thing could happen with a combination of IRC and wiki, and that there are already "play by post" systems where people do this - basically a message board with built in character sheets and dice rollers.
Let's get this out there: Most (all?) things you can do with wave, one could right a web app to do the same thing. Here is why if I was to write a play by post style role playing system, I would use wave instead of implementing it on the web:
1) User management, authentication, authorization. My web-based system would require I implement user registration, and that all users register (create an account) with my system. Wave is a federated protocol. All existing wave users could easily be joined to a game. It doesn't matter if they are eduwave users or googlewave users, and eduwave users can interact freely with googlewave users.
2) Real Time interactions. Yes, a web app can handle realtime interactions (google's wave client is even implemented as a web app), but as a web developer I would have to design and implement a system for real-time interactions. Wave gives me a platform that handles this. I don't have to implement it over again. As a developer, I get it all for free.
3) Deploying the app. I do not even need to deploy any kind of persistent storage (in other words, a db). The wave server handles storing this data for me. The code all runs within the wave (it is a javascript). I just need a place to store the gadget (a static file). If I was doing something like having a robot listen to the wave and automatically decrement a user's hit points as they get attacked in combat, then I would need to deploy that somewhere.
I am happy to even further alienate all non-geeks by not only talking more about wave protocol, but also by using DnD as an example case.
Leave a comment