What is GRiP?

By Hunter Gordon

So you've heard about this thing called "grip", but have no clue what it is or what it could possibly have to do with gaming, right? It's a pretty weird name, I agree, but it's an acronym for Gaming Resource for Internet Players, or GRiP for short. Why the little 'i' in GRiP? Honestly, I couldn't tell you. We like it. And it make things more 'trademarkable' that way.

As the name implies, GRiP is a resource that allows you to play games over the Internet with your friends and family. By games, we mean the traditional types of games such as board games, card games, miniatures, role-playing games and the like. The kind of games you would normally play with your friends and family while gathered around the kitchen table for a night of fun. The problem we always found was that there wasn't always someone or enough someones conveniently around when the mood strikes you to play a game. The Internet helped a lot with that problem, but one of the other problems we kept running into was that you always had to download and install a different program to play each individual game, and that was only if you could actually find an online multiplayer version of the games you wanted to play.

The GRiP Gaming System is our attempt at fixing these problems by offering a complete suite of tools that not only allows you to play just about any type of traditional game over the Internet with up to 7 of your friends or family, it also provides you the tools to design and build your own games. GRiP supports custom gameboards and maps, tokens and pawns, cards and decks, tables, and charts, character sheets, automatic turn-timing, as well as tons of other features to customize and organize your game and game play. An easy to use, drag and drop interface will have you designing game components and incorporating them into your own games in no time flat.

GRiP comes with a custom designed, personal client and server system for hosting your own games. No longer are you at the mercy of a central server to access your games, and because the GRiP Game Server is available to any player you can always make sure that the player with the best hardware and bandwidth acts as the server for improved performance. The client/server interface allows the designated "gamemaster" (usually the person hosting the game but this does not have to be the case) to easily send files to other players and control the flow of the game and game turns. It also includes a full private messaging system allowing players to communicate privately between one another without cluttering the main game chat flow.

For those who are budding game designers and would just prefer to play the games, the GRiP Game Library here at the RPGRealms will play host to an ever growing selection of original, licensed, and free games that you can select from. Games will be available for rental on a day to day basis or available for purchase allowing unlimited use of the game.

So what are you waiting for? The software's free, so get a GRiP on Gaming today!