This post is a bit rough, it's more about some ideas that are floating around in my head than anything else. After almost four years at it, I spend a lot of time in Second Life. I have friends there from all over the world -- geeks, gamers and in-between. There is a lot of gaming that goes on in Second Life, not a lot of it is what those of us who play and design table top RPGs might recognize (some might not even accept it as being what we do), but for me it is the same thing. Some use Second Life as a virtual table top, while others use Second Life for a more immersive, narrative style of play that is more about consensual choices than hard and fast rules.
As a game designer, it's the former that has more bearing on me than the later. One thing that I've thought about for a while is a way to sell to these people, people who are looking for in world tools to enhance their virtual table top. Setting up an in world store with scripted items that could handle things like dice rolling, and similar game tasks like that, is easy enough. My question has always been: How do we get them the rules? And in what format? Second Life doesn't support, unfortunately, epublishing formats that are used by game publishers. That means you end up with a split of in world for the gaming, out of world for the rules. At that point you might as well just use any of the virtual table top tools that are out there. I don't know. I think this is something that can be done. I think this is a market that can be reached, with people who are already involved with role-playing in some format or another but who haven't made that leap to table top gaming.
One of the other hurdles to overcome, would be the accessibility of rule sets. In a table top group it isn't unusual for one or two of the people to be the only ones possessing copies of the rules, while the rest of the group shares. That is a long stand and accepted practice for gaming groups. You can't really do that in the virtual world without promoting piracy, or using quick starts. Neither of which are really useful to game publishers. I know that Troll Lord Games released their StarSIEGE game with a set of core rules, and also a handful of player's books that could be used at the table. This is the sort of thing that would be needed for virtual table tops as well: a virtual boxed set that allows the GM to purchase the rules and then has a sub-license (perhaps) that allows the GM to share copies of player's guides with the people in his virtual gaming group. I imagine this would work something like a site license for software does.
Obviously, this is a high trust option for publishers. There's really nothing that would keep GMs from giving out the player's guides to anyone that they wanted, since PDF technology doesn't really allow for a "cap" on the number of copies you can make of something. It also wouldn't stop players from passing along their PDFs either.
These player's guides wouldn't be complete games. They would be minimal, at best, explaining the basics of how the games mechanics works and allowing the options for character creation. Of course, that is a lot of an RPG. It would be up to the publisher to include as much extra value into these "virtual boxed sets" as possible: rich, well-developed worlds, lots of advice and help for GMs in running virtual games, and etc. It would take some doing, but I can see this as something that has the potential to fly. It has a lot of potential risks too, obviously.
Something to thing about today.
