What this page is all about.
This page can be used for joining in on the game I run in the World of Verden. The central panel can be set up as a chat area for playing the game on IRC. You can opt for this or using your own IRC software such as mIRC. (perhaps I'll include a link to download such software?) The surrounding panes can have character images and perhaps a few other things in them. One pane is reserved for an image of your own character.

This page is intended to be customized for playing the game by selecting images of the character you are playing and others whom you are interacting with. Why? Because I think it adds to the feel of the game to have a portrait of the character in front of you.

The top central pane is intended for your own player character image. Until I have better I am using some images from the AD&D 2nd Edition Core Rules CD. Obviously they are probably not how you envision your character, but I tried to select the image based on what I have seen of your character.

The other small panels can be used for either you compatriots or the NPC's as available. In future there may be other options including maps and images of locales. What do you think of that?

Sorry, but I'm still not web savvy enough to have the page remember your settings from session to session or anything like that... yet.

I think you'll find advantages to using IRC. For instance I am able to include a chat window so you do not require additional software. Since it runs as a Java Applets it should run on most people's system. Also, you can directly access the IRC with your own IRC software that you are comfortable.

IRC has been around, as far as I know, from the very beginning of the internet and is very stable. There are programs for accessing IRC for both IBM platforms and Mac ones as well as others.

The Chat window on the page might not work as smoothly as the IRC software if you have a slower machine so there might be pauses while you are typing where the computer is not quite keeping up with you, but it is still listening to you.

Also, you will probably end up exiting the disconnecting from the chat if you choose another page for the central pane such as the Welcome page. If you want to switch around it might be good to open another window in your browser if you want to view other pages.

You can also float the Chat window by clicking on the appropriate button in the chat area. This might be useful if you want a larger area to work with or go to another page.

Please have patience as this is all new to me.

For those who are using their own IRC software you want to connect to the IRC server, icqnet.icq.com, port 6667.

I will be running the game on a channel named #Verden and will be known as "Verden_GM".

That brings me to another advantage of IRC. You can select your own nickname when you use the channel. Of course if you chose something common it will likely already be used by someone on the ICQ IRC. However I think we can work things out especially since the character names are pretty unique. Could be a problem with Grendal though and John might have to use Grendal_John or Grendal88.

We'll work out the bugs I think and add useful or fun features.

Darrell