I posted a nice big summary of all of the online playing tools over at http://dndorks.com/   It explains the different tools I've added recently, a bit on their current state of functionality, as well as some info on how people can help post bugs and such.

I also created a new area of the forum so that people who have some spare time and want to play online.  Have Dice Need Game  

Not everyone understands what the point of online play by post play, and quite a few people come into the game looking for a direct correlation with tabletop roleplaying.  These people are often disappointed and if they don't stick around long enough to see what a pbp game "is", they might never see the pros and cons of such a gamestyle.

Pros of PBP roleplaying

• Opportunity for extensive roleplaying.  Posts can be long and as descriptive as you want.
• Time to think.  Everyone can, if they choose, spend a good amount of time coming up with exactly the right dialogue tat fits "your" character.  No need to feel rushed when you can spend minutes or hours thinking of your responses.
• Recorded play.  In most cases pbp games are up virtually forever online, and with archive.org, they're pretty much permanently there. You can explore your old games as much as you want, relive the memories of your character.

Cons of PBP roleplaying

• Slow.  PBP games tend to be slow, you post, the GM might post 12 hours later, a combat round can take 1 or 2 days or even a week. 
• Anonymous internet means players drop out frequently.  You're waiting for the cleric to heal you, but he never does.  The guy never comes online...ever again. Why? I don't know, it just happens.

I have some solutions if you're running a game and want to keep your game moving.

If a user takes a long time to reply, and you have another 2-5 players waiting, post the next obvious action for that user.  Maybe that user lost internet access for a month or had an emergency, you'll lose the rest of your players while you wait for that user, which means when the user shows back up your game will be dead.  So give your other players respect by keeping the game moving. 

If a user vanishes without a word for a week, have that character conveniently leave for a while (with the option to come back) then a week later post that you're looking for a player to replace that user.  This way your group is constantly full and you also get new blood into the game.  With the history of the thread new users can often catch up right away.

Some GMs don't like the idea of posting for their player, but honestly, at tabletop if someone has to leave for a few hours, we don't cancel the game for the afternoon, we just play for that player. Its the same thing here.

New Dndorks Comic - Battle!

http://dndorks.com/comics/3_30_2009.aspx

In this comic they finally start facing the dragon, though it seems they aren't doing too well, so at the end, Albert tries to justify that he "could" indeed show up just at the right now.

Dragons in 4e rock.   I like reactions like the ability to use their tail to knock someone back if the heroes try to flank, the breath weapon as a response to their first time being bloodied, etc.  Solo fights in 4e rock in general, they're really a lot more fun in 4e just because the heroes have to always wonder "is this the attack thats going to trigger something really nasty for my character?", it creates that tension that I think is vital for a good game.

On a different note, over the weekend I watched the Fringe from start to finish again, its so awesome. ^_^

So I posted up on dndorks.com, but for those who see my blog posts but not my rants on dndorks.com, I figured i'd post it here too. 

As posted earlier, I'm running a 4e game on the forums over at dndorks.com, I've built a number of tools for this purpose, dice rollers, character sheet tracker including the ability to import a lot of data from the DDI 4e character generator, and even a map tracking tool in silverlight.  

The game is running well.  I typically post once or twice a day, and we've been getting through a round of combat every 1-2 days, which for those of you familiar with playing D&D over forums is pretty speedy. 

The group's closest thing to a healer is the paladin, and I'm sure the group would appreciate someone in the leader role.  I highly recommend a bard, though any leader class is good.  But 4e bards rock. :)   Oddly enough, half elven 4e bards really rock in 4e. Weird eh compared to how much half elves and how much bards sucked?

Anyways, if you want to join in the fun and help the group survive at the same time, the forum post is over here for signing up:
http://forums.dndorks.com/forums/3/808081/ShowThread.aspx

UPDATE!  I've gotten 2 people wanting to join, which is enough for my current game.  If you want to "run" a 4e game on dndorks, and would like some help doing the graphics, organzing things, for a limited time I'm willing to support a few games, that means programming custom tools as needed, helping you promote your game to get the players you need, etc, basically you'll be helping me to design tools that will help people to play 4e D&D online in a play by post format.  Thanks!

I started a twitter account: http://twitter.com/topwebcomics  I like it, mostly Jason and I are tracking each other, which helps keep us on task I think.   Also people on topwebcomics.com or dndorks.com will be able to see when I do updates that I don't end up posting on the main pages about.

A new comic is up!
Don't mess with Mike when a hoard is on the line!
http://dndorks.com/comics/3_23_2009.aspx

Ethan has been getting a free pass lately, constantly winning his rolls, well Mike's had enough in this latest comic. 

This comic was a collaboration between Jason and I. I put 75% of the comic together using Jason's old art and drawing in alterations as needed, then Jason just polished it up and reinked some of the lines to polish it up.  He was done in less than 30 minutes, which I think I can get him to do on a regular basis.  It was very cool and I think I'm going to be able to get more comics done this way.  I'm also polishing up my drawing skills in general, which I'm enjoying a lot.

So as I continue to prep for the PBF I'm running of Scales of War, I have been frequently thinking of the various things I personally find frustrating about PBFs.

In a PBF, the GM posts whats happening, then a player responds to whats happening, then the GM replies, then the next player responds, then the GM replies, all the way around the circle.  Now if everyone checks in the morning, then that means by the 2nd or 3rd player's response the GM or the 3rd, 4th, and 5th player won't see whats going on until the next day. 
1 round of combat should not take a minimum of 2-3 days.  Now a lot of people think no big deal, everyone can just check throughout the day and the GM can just respond throughout the day so it all happens in 1 day.

Unfortunately I don't think thats very reasonable, but I'm not sure how to help it...yet.  But given that it can take 2-3 days to do 1 round, and that combat or heavy dialogue can take 7-10 rounds, that means it can take 2-3 weeks to do 1 combat!  By then, no one knows why they were fighting in the first place, where they are, or sometimes, why they are playing at all!

A big part of that is information.  But who wants to keep retyping the purpose of the game, where the players are at, etc etc all the time?  What I"m working on right now is the ability to store text and recall text via small bits of forum code.  Want a full nicely colored table for listing what players are there, what their status is, what NPCs are there, "where" they are, and even a link to a map (if any)?  Using simple forum code that can be built organically over several weeks, something as simple as [pbf id="scalesofwar" mode="display"] will generate all of the info, in some or all posts, as needed!  My code is nearly done, and I think will really help.
Similarly, want an avatar of your character? [characterinfo id="52" mode="displayavatar" ] will display the image for your uploaded avatar.

Dndorks.com forum users will, I hope, as I keep working on this, have a custom interactive application in their forums giving them all the tools they need for immersive roleplaying, whether its 4th edition D&D or a story-based RPG, the tools will be there to enable everyone to easily have nicely formatted game posts and help keep the game going.

I almost forgot that I intended to start posting here whenever I put up a new comic on dndorks.  I've had the flu all week so been a bit out of it.

Dragon Interrupted Here

I'm pretty proud of my shading on this comic. It took me a bit longer than my last, about 3 and a half hours, but part of that was me being sick, and part of that is that I'm coloring more off the cuff, just using the brush tool and shading wherever I think needs to be shaded.  
Comparing the new style to the old style I think the dragon would have been flat and boring before, but came out pretty decent with the shading.

I'm not saying I'm an expert at shading or anything, just that I"m getting better, and that the comic looks better for it.  It was a bit intimidating to start shading because once I started doing it, I knew I wouldn't be able to just be "lazy" and not do it in the future, it won't look right.

So hopefully enjoy. :)

Its a new Monday, and thus a new Dndorks comic is up!

In the last "instory" comic, Ethan discovered he could loot the treasure while scouting then claim to the rest of the group that there was only monsters up ahead.  Its presumed that Ethan and the DM are passing notes back and forth, which would make the other players suspicious, but what can they do?  

Well in todays comic we see what Melissa can do anyways, as she has Lia use the animal messenger spell to interrupt Ethan while hes robbing a dragon of its hoard!   Amazing sneak checks eh?

http://dndorks.com/comics/3_2_2009.aspx

So Jason and I have been talking about selling Dndorks products for a long time.  We even tried cafe press a long time ago, but the stuff wasn't necessarily that great of quality.

In the years since then though, they've improved themselves, upgraded the products, and can do some nifty stuff in general.  With all of that in mind, we're going to try promoting our products through cafe press, http://www.cafepress.com/DnDorks_com  

Its just beginning, but I think it is decent for what it is, and luckily Jason does everything in high resolution now so I had a lot of images to work with.  I'm going to try to add a few products each work, they're more work than I thought they'd be, hopefully we can get some people buying and showing off the products.  Our traffic on dndorks.com has begun to rise and in the past we've spread out our efforts so nothing really gets much momentum, this time I've been pushing and pushing and pushing, so hopefully we can get some real traction.

On a related note, I decided to start shading every comic I color.  The most recent comic is an example: http://dndorks.com/comics/default.aspx  I've received some compliments on it, and as I've improved my coloring abilities, I feel I can shade it each time without costing too much time.   I think the comic in general has improved in 2009, so hopefully Jason and I can keep it going!

We did a tribute comic for left 4 dead today, I thought it was pretty nifty.
http://dndorks.com/comics/11_24_2008.aspx
And a thumbnail here

Check it out!

On a more personal note.  I'm moving tomorrow!  Yay.  2 car garage, 3 bedroom apartment, very nice patio.  Its not any of the houses I used to have, but for me and my gf I think its going to suit us nicely.  Its also 8 minutes from work, which despite 2.09 gas prices, still matters to me.

Jason and I (Jason is the artist for dndorks) wrote a review of the Adventurer's Vault (4e book) together. http://dndorks.com/article/88/Page1.aspx

It came together pretty decently, so if you could, check it out.  Also, I'm adding digg everywhere on the site, so if you could digg the article, I'd appreciate it. 

I'm working on more articles, hopefully some pretty good ones, but this review was in the works so I pushed it ahead of my as of yet, undone ones.

I greatly enhanced the speed of the site, I added web compression to the dynamically generated pages, then did some heavy optimization on the sql server to help compensate for the extra CPU utilization caused by the web compression.  I also set IIS to encourage caching, so overall I think the site is much snappier . 

I have personal life news, but I'll post it later in a separate post.

Thanks everyone!