Google+ and the Roleplay Community

[Rob Lang]

[Onix]

I've heard that a lot of people are using it to play games but it falls short for trying to organize a conversation. I'm not using it yet myself so I can't speak first hand.

[Groffa]

It's pretty big in the (O)D&D community, although I haven't had a chance to play myself. There's a blog called where you can find info about upcoming games (or post the ones you'll run yourself).

[vulpinoid]

I'm actually quite impressed with how well the roleplaying community has taken to Google+. I'm meeting regulars from many subcultures within the RPG crowds...storygamers, free RPGers, RPGnetters, OSR devotees, indiegamers, Pathfinders, miniatures gamers, LARPers...a huge variety of folks who are linking together in ways that they haven't seemed to do so for years (at least as far as I've seen).

I haven't actually played a game on it yet, but it seems to be developing a great interactive community. I'll still be hanging out on individual forums like this one, because I love what's happening here, but I think Google+ has some great potential to be explored.

I'll post more when I have useful feedback from the Vulpinoid Studios page that I've developed.

[koipond]

I'm still torn on Google+, not because I don't think that it's an interesting piece of software, but that Google is implementing a ridiculous and oppressive "Real Name" rule.

Of course this means that if you have a name they don't recognize, then it's clearly not a real one.

[Rob Lang]

The real name rule is less important now because companies can set up 'Pages'.

[koipond]

Well, that's if you're a company.

If you're a person who has a name that they don't recognize, even because it might be in a language they don't know, then they will cut off your entire google account. All of it. Gmail, docs, you name it.

Couple of good articles on it,
and . There's that was get people to recognize that a "real name" policy affects a wide swath of people. It's there from the link on wired about Google's in regards to real names and how they police it.

[Rob Lang]

Interesting stuff, Jon. I didn't realise that identity online had so many problems!

Google+ is getting noisier but the amount of good clean RPG stuff is still low. I think forums/twitter/blogs remain the core communication medium for roleplaying games.

[koipond]

I think the thing that's really going for Goolge+ is the whole hangout feature. That's what, from my limited anecdotal experience, is getting game people excited.