Last night at 7:00pm CDT I attempted the first running of TwitteRPG. It was a success but not in the way I expected. Let me back up just a bit, Wednesday evening, Viri from the Bard of Valiant was on Twitter venting her frustrations at WoW. Somebody suggested playing a tabletop RPG. Viri replied that there was nobody to play with.
Inspiration struck, Viri was online with quite a few friends and we were communicating in real time. This was 90% of what we needed for an RPG game. Without preamble, I typed ‘You are in a damp passageway. Traveling on you come to an intersection. What do you do?”
Viri replied that she listens with a better than average notice skill. I typed back “To the left you hear the muted sounds of laughter. To the right you hear a deep throaty voice call ‘Come here little adventurer.’ Viri replied “I go left.”
By this point, I was getting other comments on my little attempt to cheer up my friend (and later discovered folks commenting on the Twitter feed on my Facebook profile). Right then both Viri and I were called away from our respective keyboards. When I returned I had quite a few “What happens next?” Tweet replies.
So yesterday on the spur of a moment I decided to try to run an RPG game with a little more planning. I announced in the early afternoon that I would be running TwitteRPG later in the evening. When I got home from work I had quite a few “Would love to play but can’t tonight replies”. I also had quite a few request for the rules.
The end result? there is interest in running an RPG over Twitter. However, folks would like more advance notice. Folks would also like the rules. So towards that end I will write up the basic rules this weekend. We will also schedule the next game rather than it be a spur of the moment. In short, the experiment was a success if only for the fact that it showed a definite interest in the game.
Vulcan Stev's Database 
Suggestions for rules: FUDGE + Amber. Everyone gets a few points to buy up skills / abilities in a freeform way using FUDGE ranks. Resolve actions with highest rank wins. Players should work the narrative to play to their strengths or emphasize their foe’s weaknesses.
This is making it very tempting to sign up for Twitter.
@mthomas – I’m thinking even simpler than that. Looking at Risus to be perfectly honest.
@Ruminator – Please do, we’re gonna be fighting Oprahoids.
You know what I think of Risus…
Sounds like a neat use of Twitter. I’ve done this with IM chat clients and forums, but since Twitter combines both it’s a really neat idea.
I’m def interested but be careful how many you get involved or things are going to be crazy lol
@Hank – Yes I do. Seeing how well TEEoRCoX is going over at the cafe is what’s making me think that Risus will work for TwitteRPG.
@The Stray – Welcome, yeah I’m psyched. I really think this could work.
@Viri – Welcome to the comments. Yeah too many players can make it unweildly. I’ll be trying to keep a balance between too many and not enough.