Huh? Google makes a battle board for Role Playing Games?  Well, not really—not specifically for that very purpose, no.  However, that is the beauty of some of the web apps that Google has made—they can be adapted to other uses beyond their intended purpose.

If you have not tried Google Docs I strongly suggest you give it a try.  Think about having access to word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation documents from any computer, anywhere, that has access to the internet.  Add on top of that the ability for multiple users to edit the documents at the same time in a collaborative effort.  And finally add in the ability share these documents as webpages or in webpages with the whole world.  That is Google Docs!  It very amazing what you can do.  Which leads us to the Google Battle Board.

For a few years now we have engaged in a Dungeons and Dragons game with a friend who lives approximately "1,725 miles – about 1 day 1 hour" away, according to Google Maps.  This has necessitated the use of a Camera & Skype for viewing and hearing our friend.  We have also used CBLite for rolling dice across long distances.  It has worked out very well I think, and has allowed our friend to participate in our monthly gaming session even after he had to move away for school related obligations.  Despite that, we have had one source of frustration while playing D&D over such long distances. That is: when we have conducted battles.  In the past we have zoomed the camera in on the battle grid so that he can see what is going on.  This doesn't work too well because of the low angle the camera has to the board and the poor lighting conditions.  He also has to say. "Move my guy up next to that big black and green thing."  Invariably we have to say something like, "No you can't move there because of that wall." "What wall?" "The wall thats next to that guy." "Well then just move me so that I can see him..."

• You can place pictures on the presentation.

• You can change the z-order (or what is in front of what) on document.

• Multiple people can be editing the document at the same time and everyone will see update of edits shortly after they are made. (The document also auto saves so you dont have to worry about losing changes when someone's computer crashes.)

• You don't have to worry about who is going to be "the server" and what's that IP address again.  Everything is hosted by Google and easily accessible by Firefox (or your favorite browser).

• You can resize objects easily and constrain their proportions by holding down the shift key. (A must for OCD graphic designers)

So what does this mean?  With a little preparation of gaming tiles and character tokens you can easily recreate a tactical battle using google presentations.  You might ask, "What happens when you run out of room on the page?"  Well the interesting thing is Google Presentation documents don't seem to mind if you place pictures off the page area.  So your dungeon grid can be as large or small as you want it to be.  There are some drawbacks to using a Presentation document as your battle board:

• When an image or shape is first placed on the presentation it always appears on the page area.  That means if your dungeon is large you will need to scroll to the page area and move the tiles/tokens to the area where you needed it.  (What could you expect though, we are using this document for purposed it was not intended to be used for.)

• You also can't rotate any objects in the document so you need to be prepared with tiles and tokens that are pre-rotated for whatever dungeon or battle scene you are trying to build.

I have created a couple of sample tiles and tokens and placed them on a Google Presentation document.  If you wish to play around with this document please send me an email and I will add you as a collaborator.  The Tiles and tokens are also available below for you to download and play around with.

 Link to example presentation: http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=dg46n3kg_123hms45jfp

 Tiles and Tokens: Click here to download a zip file. (4.1 MB)