Google Wave is going to be a great tool.
It will be a slight learning curve, but I think that people will like it. A simple example for you. During the game, this encounter shows up in the wave.
You are in a 10x10 stone room. There is an orc in the room guarding a delicious pie. The orc takes up a defensive position. You will have to kill the orc to take this pie.
Korgoth:
Flandag:
Snake-Face:
ORC: Defends the Pie.
Pretty basic setup. There is the situation and the characters are arranged in initiative order. The orc has shit for initiative, so I've already told you what it is doing. Snake-Face declares next, then Flandag and then Korgoth. This lets the quicker characters have the chance to intercept other characters if they need to.
Snake-Face wants to know what kind of pie it is, so his player makes a Private Reply. This is what he sees.
You are in a 10x10 stone room. There is an orc in the room guarding a delicious pie. The orc takes up a defensive position. You will have to kill the orc to take this pie.
Korgoth:
Flandag:
Snake-Face:
ORC: Defends the Pie.
Me: Hey, Guerin? I sniff the air to see what kind of pie it is. Free action right? ( 1d20 )
Nobody else can see the string starting with "Me:". A nifty part is this. There is a silent partner in this wave, a dice roller. So that ( 1d20 ) there magically becomes ( 1d20=14 ). I tell Snake-Face that yes, you can tell that it is a delicious minced meat pie with elf bread crust. Snake-Face decides that this IS worth killing an orc for and edits the wave.
Korgoth:
Flandag: Casts Explosive Fireball centered on the orc.
Snake-Face: Sticks a shiv in the orc. ( 1d20 1d8+4 )
ORC: Defends the Pie.
Flandag is a bit of a firebug though, so he knows exactly what he is going to do. He jumps right in and edits the wave directly. Everybody sees this.
You are in a 10x10 stone room. There is an orc in the room guarding a delicious pie. The orc takes up a defensive position. You will have to kill the orc to take this pie.
Korgoth:
Flandag: Casts Explosive Fireball centered on the orc.
Snake-Face:
ORC: Defends the Pie.
Korgoth is a barbarian and all, but he has had enough wizards in his life and has bought Spellcraft as a skill. He sends a private reply with a request for a Spellcraft roll to see just what the hell Flandag is doing. He makes it and I tell him. Then he edits the wave a like so.
You are in a 10x10 stone room. There is an orc in the room guarding a delicious pie. The orc takes up a defensive position. You will have to kill the orc to take this pie.
Korgoth:Grabs Flandag's wrist to stop him from casting and says "Stop it you fool, you'll kill us all!
Flandag: Casts Explosive Fireball centered on the orc.
Snake-Face: Sticks a shiv in the orc. ( 1d20 1d8+4 )
ORC: Defends the Pie.
Then, everybody has had their say and the die roller does its thing for a natural twenty and an 8 for damage. So I step in and do the GM edit.
You are in a 10x10 stone room. There is an orc in the room guarding a delicious pie. The orc takes up a defensive position. You will have to kill the orc to take this pie. Flandag begins to make the arcane gestures for a spell, but Korgoth grips his wrist and barks a command "Stop it you fool, you'll kill us all!" Meanwhile, Snake-Face slips to confront the orc and easily shoves a blade into the orc's black heart. The orc dies and there is enough pie for everybody.
Snake-Face's player feels smug about the result and edits the end of the paragraph to say "Snake-Face turns and grins his almost toothless grin to the other two and blithely remarks 'Green wizard, don't shoot the food.'"
Out of Character chatter is kept in its own reply thread, which is where people post their appreciation for the Gauntlet joke.
If everybody is at their compies during all this, the editing goes along in real time while people paint figs or eat figs or whatever between edits. If somebody is absent, then the action just pauses until they come back and people can make edits when their time permits.
It really does seem to be a tool with a lot of geekery potential.
The only downside right now is that it seems to be a system hog for a while. We'll see where that goes, though.
You are in a 10x10 stone room. There is an orc in the room guarding a delicious pie. The orc takes up a defensive position. You will have to kill the orc to take this pie.
Korgoth:
Flandag:
Snake-Face:
ORC: Defends the Pie.
Pretty basic setup. There is the situation and the characters are arranged in initiative order. The orc has shit for initiative, so I've already told you what it is doing. Snake-Face declares next, then Flandag and then Korgoth. This lets the quicker characters have the chance to intercept other characters if they need to.
Snake-Face wants to know what kind of pie it is, so his player makes a Private Reply. This is what he sees.
You are in a 10x10 stone room. There is an orc in the room guarding a delicious pie. The orc takes up a defensive position. You will have to kill the orc to take this pie.
Korgoth:
Flandag:
Snake-Face:
ORC: Defends the Pie.
Me: Hey, Guerin? I sniff the air to see what kind of pie it is. Free action right? ( 1d20 )
Nobody else can see the string starting with "Me:". A nifty part is this. There is a silent partner in this wave, a dice roller. So that ( 1d20 ) there magically becomes ( 1d20=14 ). I tell Snake-Face that yes, you can tell that it is a delicious minced meat pie with elf bread crust. Snake-Face decides that this IS worth killing an orc for and edits the wave.
Korgoth:
Flandag: Casts Explosive Fireball centered on the orc.
Snake-Face: Sticks a shiv in the orc. ( 1d20 1d8+4 )
ORC: Defends the Pie.
Flandag is a bit of a firebug though, so he knows exactly what he is going to do. He jumps right in and edits the wave directly. Everybody sees this.
You are in a 10x10 stone room. There is an orc in the room guarding a delicious pie. The orc takes up a defensive position. You will have to kill the orc to take this pie.
Korgoth:
Flandag: Casts Explosive Fireball centered on the orc.
Snake-Face:
ORC: Defends the Pie.
Korgoth is a barbarian and all, but he has had enough wizards in his life and has bought Spellcraft as a skill. He sends a private reply with a request for a Spellcraft roll to see just what the hell Flandag is doing. He makes it and I tell him. Then he edits the wave a like so.
You are in a 10x10 stone room. There is an orc in the room guarding a delicious pie. The orc takes up a defensive position. You will have to kill the orc to take this pie.
Korgoth:Grabs Flandag's wrist to stop him from casting and says "Stop it you fool, you'll kill us all!
Flandag: Casts Explosive Fireball centered on the orc.
Snake-Face: Sticks a shiv in the orc. ( 1d20 1d8+4 )
ORC: Defends the Pie.
Then, everybody has had their say and the die roller does its thing for a natural twenty and an 8 for damage. So I step in and do the GM edit.
You are in a 10x10 stone room. There is an orc in the room guarding a delicious pie. The orc takes up a defensive position. You will have to kill the orc to take this pie. Flandag begins to make the arcane gestures for a spell, but Korgoth grips his wrist and barks a command "Stop it you fool, you'll kill us all!" Meanwhile, Snake-Face slips to confront the orc and easily shoves a blade into the orc's black heart. The orc dies and there is enough pie for everybody.
Snake-Face's player feels smug about the result and edits the end of the paragraph to say "Snake-Face turns and grins his almost toothless grin to the other two and blithely remarks 'Green wizard, don't shoot the food.'"
Out of Character chatter is kept in its own reply thread, which is where people post their appreciation for the Gauntlet joke.
If everybody is at their compies during all this, the editing goes along in real time while people paint figs or eat figs or whatever between edits. If somebody is absent, then the action just pauses until they come back and people can make edits when their time permits.
It really does seem to be a tool with a lot of geekery potential.
The only downside right now is that it seems to be a system hog for a while. We'll see where that goes, though.