Using Google+ Circles for Play by Post Style Game

There have been a lot of people talking about using Google+ functions as a means to run a roleplaying game.  Up until now, the most popular method, that I have heard of, has to be using the hangout ability to run a video-chat style game.  This kind of works like running Skype video chat, but with Google+.  I haven't had a chance to use the hangout ability of Google+ yet, but I hope to try it out soon.

However, I have started up a game of L5R with a few people from Twitter and a few from Google+.  We are experimenting with a game using the Circle functionality to try and run a pure PbP style game.  We'll see how it works out, but right now, here is basically how we are working it, and also what we are hoping to see with Google+ in the future that would make it work perfectly.

Each of the players in the group has set up an L5R Campaign Group Circle.  When I want a post to go out that is only relevant to the people in that game, I post it to that circle.  People who aren't playing in the game don't see these game related posts.  Easy enough.  Right?

Also, with the Google+ alert function, I can see when players have responded to a game post very easily.  If I'm on Gmail or using my reader, then things are very simple to just slide up to the G+ toolbar and respond to game posts quickly and easily.

The problem with this style of game using G+ right now is that when I want to browse my L5R Campaign Circle posts, then unfortunately, I also have to browse through all the non-game related posts by the members of the game (unless those other players are not sharing anything with me that is not game related).  The Circle function does not yet have a tag function, which would allow me to only view posts in that circle which are relevant to our game.

What we basically want is a way to tag all of our posts with #L5R; then, we want the ability, when we make our Circle, to only view posts from X people who make posts tagged with #L5R.  This essentially works like a reverse sharing function.  If that were installed, this PbP would be sooooooooo easy and very, very awesome.  As it stands right now, I still like it a lot.

Categories: Advice , Campaign , L5R , Random Thoughts