Google & Campaign Communication
2009 April 14
Our current gaming group has been meeting about every other week. Â To maintain communication with our group members, we’re using a handful of Google products.
Scheduling with a Google Calendar –Â We have a calendar for our group on which we mark the next scheduled session. Â It’s working fairly well for us.
Email Communication with a Google Group –Â We created a Google Group and included everyone’s email, so with one quick address, everyone is included in the email communications.
Campaign Notes with a Google Site — Thanks to a post from a fellow blogger a few months back, I discovered how easy and how useful Google Sites can be when keeping track of campaign information.  We have a page with the group calendar, as well as a page set up with a list of PCs and NPCs (perfect for keeping track of that one guy whose name you can’t remember).  One of the best features of our site is our Files & Journals page, where we keep in-character journals (many are linked Google Docs), our session notes file that everyone can update, and a party fund file where we keep track of the loot we’ve accumulated.
With a smallish group (five of us total), it isn’t usually too hard to keep everyone informed, but these tools have certainly made it easy.
I’ve used the Google Calendar in the past for group scheduling and I fully recommend it.
I like the idea of using a Google Group, but most of my players are not into using a mailing list.
If you don’t run your own webserver or have a hosting provider, Google Sites is an excellent tool. Hell, I use a private one as tool to help be run my Blog. For a GM a private one could be a good universal place to keep information. So, I’m agree it’s a great tool.
Some people are afraid of putting information on Google’s servers. Since I don’t put anything I would consider IP, I don’t consider that a constraint.
I also use google calendar, now if I could only get all my players to remember to check it (and I even have it emailing a reminder 2 days before every game lol).
I also use a mailing list to get information to them. I have a php forum setup on my own website, but nobody reads the bloody thing, so is getting discouraging to keep posting things there.
I just signed up for Obsidian Portal yesterday, am hoping to use the wiki aspects to help organize information, maybe I can interest my players in actually reading that lol
I’ve been using Google Groups for two campaigns; one of which is played by using the discussion message part and it works well.
Also been using Google Doc’s more and more; very easy to use.
I have no doubt that Google will one day rule the world.
Excellent post. Question, does anyone use a laptop or pc during the sessions and if so, in what aspect?