Frustrations with 3E

[greyorm]

Note that you will not find much "story-update" in this post, since the situations I am going to discuss transcend any particular set of events or decisions. Mainly this is about a few situations I have been wrestling with over the last few months (years?), and how one has finally been put to rest while the others are on-going, and how those continue to affect my game and gaming.

For those of you not familiar with my game's history, you should check the following links. The basic run-down is thus: I'm running Narrativist 3E game, possibly vanilla, and I've recently discarded the XP system in favor of one more like TROS' Spiritual Attributes; we play on-line via mIRC chat for a couple hours once a week.

Previous threads in this series can be found here, in descending order (newest first): http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=12027">Thank God for NPCs: More Frickin' 3E, http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=10824">Pseudo-TROS SA's in D&D, http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=10717">Braving the Wrath of Dav, http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=7167">Narrative 3E: Real Time & Effects on Play, http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6218">"No Myth" with D&D, http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5000">More Player-Driven 3E, http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=4003">Raven's 3E Game, and http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=3544">Non-silly D&D.

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First, a victory! I've overcome the "I want players to describe their actions" frustration I've had. My glorious ideal to have everyone take charge of their results isn't going to work with my current group. I'll do it when I do it, and they'll do it when they do it. This will likely mean that I will be providing the majority of the narration for the results, with the players providing the majority of the foundational decisions and actions that produce those results. I've decided I can be OK and just damn fine dandy with that.

If anyone speaks up about wanting more narrative power, or "my guy wouldn't have done that" when I describe a result, I'll deal with it then. Likely that will be to say, "Ok, rescind what I said. Never happened. What DOES your guy do?" and just get on with play because, hey, it's just typical player-player negotiation regarding the SIS and I've no vested interest in controlling outcomes.

(Don't get confused! I'm not talking about "My Guy" syndrome above. There is no dysfunctional utilization of the "my guy would've" or similar statements occurring in my games.)

So, that's over with and I think I'm a much happier GM for coming to terms with this aspect of my group's play style.

However, two problems remain: "spotlight time" and "action-per-session."

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The group's characters tend to be split apart into two groups. Given the nature of the IRC medium and text-based play, giving each character(s) enough spotlight time to present an interesting break point to move to another character(s) often means spending around forty-five minutes to an hour of play for each character(s), while the others simply sit and watch.

Recently, I suggested that each character(s) be given 15 minutes at a time before switching to prevent problems that might arise with uneven or delayed spotlight time. The players indicated they did not mind the wait, so we did not implement the 15-minute rule.

However, events at the game last night highlighted the real need for such a system. Play started off late and then ran very slowly at first because of issues here at home while I was trying to run the game; as well, all three characters were seperated from one another, and thus each took up an hour per scene and the last player waited two hours for her turn. Obviously, since we usually have between an hour-and-a-half to two hours to play, this means that play ran quite late, which is not a good thing for our work-the-next-morning, baby-rearing group.

So, though I am nervous about my player's reaction to my implementation of such a rule, since they had indicated no desire to do so before, I will be using the 15 minute rule -- possibly tweaking the amount of time to no more than 20 minutes depending on how play proceedes in regards to the level of choppiness resulting -- in order to make sure everyone recieves equal time during a given night and take the weight of, "Damnit, I didn't give them much time yet they sat here all night," off my aching shoulders.

My main worry is that it will break up play too much. Second to this is that the players will not wish to utilize this ruling. In either case, it leaves me with the problem, and no actual solution to it that I can see other than this one.

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The second and larger problem, of which the above is also a symptom, is a problem of style, mainly highlighted by the amount of action each session sees. There are simply not enough Bang moments occurring during a night's session. Usually this amount works out to one Bang per character per night, and has occasionally been less than this.

I contrast this and the current state of affairs and "feel" of the game with one particular run of sessions last year. These sessions were more active and "interesting" on a per-session basis than are the current episodes of play, and most notably they occurred while I was utilizing a purchased adventure module as the basis and extent of the adventure.

Store-bought adventure modules are constrained to specific locations and nearly if not always clear-cut regarding their beginning, middles, and end. I would generally dislike such elements in play -- arguably pre-scripted due to the specificity of a module's setting and location components without being actually pre-scripted, and designed with clear lead-up, mid-course and goal events in mind -- as they would seem to interfere with the goal of open-ended, player-driven play.

Yet given our group's time constraints and the nature of our play medium, the best sort of game for our group is exemplified by the bounded scenarios found in store-bought adventures, and the play that arose from the use of such.

I don't mind these sorts of things, as long as they're fun (and they were), they just seem to run counter to everything I have been trying to move the game away from for the last few years. I'm seriously beginning to wonder if chat-based play is simply not going to work for the vision of play I have (or at least not with this particular group, or any relatively traditionally-molded tabletop gaming group).

My second observation in this respect is that perhaps 3E is simply the wrong game to be using for play when the obstacles are both the format-of-play and the desired style of play, even tweaked and Drifted as it is. Does the fix entail finding a better game for the format, regardless of its style-support, or one that supports the desired style, allowing the format to take care of itself? Or is the only optimal solution finding one that does both (a beast I honestly doubt even exists)?

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How about those TROS-style XP Awards?
I promised an update, and thus here we are: honestly, they aren't being used as well as they could be. This is also a casualty of our play style. Things move so slowly that folks get in, perhaps, one chance a night to invoke a single Award, and as a result, with no repeated use reinforcing their existance, they tend to be forgotten about and used to less effect than they could and should be.

My reaction to this: the only fix I can see is something that is so central to the character sheet and to play itself that nothing can be done in a game without it being referenced or utilized. This entails a move even further from D&D than we currently are, and I am uncertain as to the comfort of my players with such a move for the reason that other games were offered as the game engine before play began, and the resounding consensus was to stick to the existing engine of play: D&D.

As you can see, we have a wide variety of extreme choices to navigate among the above problems.

[DannyK]

Forgive me if this is a stupid question, I don't know 3E at all, but does the tempo of the game seem too slow *when you're playing*?  If so, which parts seem to move too slowly?  Is it the classic case that everything grinds to a halt when there's combat, or something else?  

I'm still trying to figure out this issue of pacing in IRC gaming myself.  
I've only played on IRC twice, the two Dogs games this month, and I was surprised at how slow it felt.  Paradoxically, the forum games I play feel much faster moving, maybe because five minutes of movement once a day, every day, feels faster than two hours of slow-but-steady play.

[Bankuei]

Hi Raven,

With the TROS style rewards, I've had a good and excellent time with those in my drift of 3E.  I simply called them Ties and award 100 xp anytime someone does something for or against a given tie.  Getting new Ties costs 100 xp off the bat, but quickly pays itself back.  

I make sure the awards happen on the spot, because players quickly look at their sheet and realize they packed up 1000 xp over the course of a few scenes, and then they really get into it.   For a slower paced xp progression, you could reduce the awards to 50 or 25 xp each time instead, although I think too low of an award will get players to ignor it.

As far as IRC time based issues, maybe you should look at a couple of transcripts and see what's eating up the majority of your time with any given scene.  Is it handling time, decision making time on the part of the players, or anything else?  It also does well to remember it takes about 3 to 5 times as long to communicate on IRC than face to face.

Chris

[greyorm]

Forgive me if this is a stupid question, I don't know 3E at all, but does the tempo of the game seem too slow *when you're playing*?  If so, which parts seem to move too slowly?  Is it the classic case that everything grinds to a halt when there's combat, or something else?

Not a stupid question at all, Danny, so don't apologize. Actually, a very good one. My answer is that it generally feels slow when we're playing (as well as afterwards).

I suspect that if it only felt slow in retrospect, I'd simply have to suck it up and stop being a whiny ass, because in that case the "problem" would be solely one of attitude on my part -- as I would peg such a reaction as spawned by something like, "Gee, we didn't get where I wanted to get to tonight..." which is something totally not up to me as a GM in player-centered gaming.

Regarding combat: yes, things run more slowly when combat arises, but not notably so in terms of action. If anything, combat often occurs as a welcome reprieve and increases the amount of action during a given game -- as though everyone has been holding their breath, waiting to fight, and now...HOO BOY! They can let loose (hrm...because the system is clear about "what happens/what you do in a fight"? Because more die-rolling happens? Some combination thereof?)

Unfortunately, combat is not really a "solution" in this regard (ie: kick up the number of fights = more action): one of the recent posts about my game discusses the ridiculously lengthy combat the group had against a single foe. This combat spanned three-to-four sessions of play, too little happened each session, and it ended up being far too much time spent on the situation.

What seems to move slowest...well, one of my players reads the Forge (at least that I'm aware of) and she sent me an e-mail regarding a chunk of the above that (I felt) nailed the time issue really well. It dealt with the role-playing scenes, the question/answer, PC --> NPC (or NPObject) interplay. I'll paraphrase her thoughts, since I haven't asked her permission to quote the e-mail:

She mentioned that lengthy "interrogation" scenes, where all the current details of the situation are eked out, have become more common because of the gravity of each character's actions, particularly of late. "Big decisions = lots of investment."

For example, when the party leader was interviewing a man she found in the dungeons, someone who looked like and claimed to be the Emperor, she took a good chunk of time to question him.

This is not an instance of a player trying to wheedle information out of me as a stingy, tight-fingered GM playing his NPCs' hands close to the bone. I am playing things out in the open, as beehoves solid Narrativist play; that is, rather than the traditional "scraps of important information must be pried painfully out of NPCs or over time during each session" I'm trying to present the interesting material (the good stuff, the motive force, the drama/bang-inducing keys) right up front -- or at least I believe I am.

So, in the above example case, there's a little bit of mystery to the whole thing still, but it was made obvious who the individual pretending to be the Emperor is, if the look-alike in the dungeon is actually the real thing. The players don't know for certain, but what probably is going on, along with when the switch occurred, and so forth, was all up front -- handed to the player to digest and react to, and to decide their course of action upon.

Now, my player went on to say that these "lengthy" interrogations occur because the player literally needs to know the important details when making a decision that could seriously impact the future of play, what they are saying as a player, and what they get to say through their character's actions. So the player works at the situation until satisfied that they have all the info needed to make a relevant decision (or until they can't work at it any longer and the decision stands up and screams "NOW!").

Now, tacked on to the end of this explanation was "so she makes decisions in line with her character." But I don't believe that's part of it. In looking at it, I don't believe it has anything to do with "knowing enough to act in character" -- it was really totally about the stuff above: the impact of the decision on a purely game-related or player-emotional level. That is, what it really seems to boil down to, from my outside perspective, was the question: "Do I have enough information that I can kill the son-of-a-bitch I want to kill and feel good about it? Am I going to get what I WANT?"

Which, in that light, makes the lengthy interrogations more...bearable, I suppose. Perhaps, I now ponder, the reason I react so negatively to drawn out character-speaking/talking/non-physical interacting of any kind is because of years of putting up with "the Soap Opera."

That is, the endless, meandering, completely and utterly unimportant characterization and posturing that happened between the real, actual, meaningful scenes in every game. The "This is my chance to have my character be herself and then we can get on with the GM's plot" moments that dominated play -- usually filled with ego presentation and personality (often clashing between characters, ostensibly -- though it was more obviously between the players, with characters providing "not-me!" stand-ins for social jockeying).

But moreso, it was aggravating because the Soap Opera was nothing more than standing around and waiting for something to happen while trying to pretend something really was happening, it was the filler between the actual Points of play (search reference: "Get to the Point"); it was all "role-playing" that could have been stripped from every session of play and never made a difference in what happened, or what was done, or what was desired, either at the moment or in hindsight. It was ultimately all play that might as well never have happened.

It may be that I fear even the echoes of this horrid seeming-cousin of "small-talk" and thus react negatively when something even "looks like" it...I'm gun-shy.

So, yes, thanks for bringing up the question, Danny! I hope all that answered your questions satisfactorily. Please feel free to chime in again if it didn't, or you have more to add.

PS -- Chris, I have some specific questions I wanted to ask of you regarding your game, but I want to see where the above goes first; but I do want to thank you for your input as well!

[Valamir]

Some mechanical thoughts / question on the interrogations.

You indicate that you're not intentionally withholding information, so I presume that there were additional details the player wanted to know that you hadn't anticipated and provided up front.  You then did the 20 questions thing to provide her with the details she wanted.

Assuming you've already made it known that you aren't withholding information and the players don't need to use sneaky investigative tactics to get you to reveal something you hadn't intended to reveal...could the mechanics of the interrogation be sped up simply by her making 1 post summarizing in general bullet points all of the items she's looking for answers to?  You could then make a standard d20 roll against a pertinant skill to determine how successful the character is.  And then just respond with a paragraph summarizing the answers she gets with more or less detail/accuracy based on the roll.

[greyorm]

I presume that there were additional details the player wanted to know that you hadn't anticipated and provided up front.  You then did the 20 questions thing to provide her with the details she wanted.

Bad presumption, actually. The characters engage in character acting in order to learn the information from any particular source, so it isn't a case of the player outright stating, "I want to know..." as it is having their character state, "I want to know..." and the NPC responding.

So, when I say it was provided "up front" I don't mean that I abstract everything out and say, "This is what you learn." I mean that when they question someone, he spills all the relevant and necessary beans in character (ie: "it's plot exposition, it has to go somewhere").

Yes, there are certain points where I particularly decide, "Nope, no one needs to hear about that yet" and so the NPCs involved simply do not know the answer or information; the players do not beat their heads against the wall attempting to gain such "withheld" information, or stand like deer caught in the headlights, either, so neither are problems.

Anyways, in such cases, the few mysteries left are the mysteries central to the process of play and highlight the decisions being made, allowing them to take the limelight as the focus upon which later decisions may hinge. In fact, they generally provide the players the choice of acting now, in whatever manner they choose, with what they know; or hunting down the additional information before reacting -- which is also a decision, because it usually entails leaving something hanging dangerously loose.

My goal is to make it so that decisions are facillitated by information, not crippled or stunted by its lack. I'm attempting to avoid completely the "What's going on here? I'm afraid to move. Must...be...careful!" or "Must...find...next...clue!" refrain coming from so many of the games I have seen and/or participated in in the past.

Assuming you've already made it known that you aren't withholding information and the players don't need to use sneaky investigative tactics to get you to reveal something you hadn't intended to reveal...

My players (to my knowledge) do not read the Forge boards (with the one exception). I have mentioned the site to them, and that I disucuss our game here, but to my knowledge, they have not read it or discussed it with me. As well, our group tends not to discuss the game or my techniques as GM overmuch, except when I bring something up and someone wants to discuss it.

Given both of these, I do not know if they are aware of it. I also do not recall if I have ever mentioned the particulars of information revealment to them, or if I have, if they even recall those particulars.

Actually, I presume I have not, as I do not know how I would go about bringing it up in a way that would highlight how it is different from traditional play without an extensive conversation about the problems inherent in traditional-style gaming.

could the mechanics of the interrogation be sped up simply by her making 1 post summarizing in general bullet points all of the items she's looking for answers to?

We play on IRC, not PBEM (I really can't stand PBEM games), so there are no "posts." But I do understand what you mean: she could simply say, "I want my character to try and find out X, Y, and Z."

I believe that I know my players well enough to know that they would be utterly dissatisfied with my simply dropping information bloc-style, mainly because they have expressed such sentiments before: any reduction in character acting to goal-statements and mechanical rolls is not what they want out of play. They want character acting involved in any process.

So, certainly what you've said would be a workable solution to the time problem (if not my preferred solution!), but it has also been discussed and thoroughly rejected as an option in our particular play. As I mention above, there is too much seperation from the character in such a solution for it to work for my players.

From my observations, and their direct statements, they vastly prefer Actor stance, and very much dislike Pawn stance; whereas I am all in favor of a great deal more Pawn stance, which in addition to speeding up play, I feel it might help them feel comfortable with Director and Author stances, as those also require a seperation from "being in-character". However, that's not my call, they enjoy what they enjoy, and that's what I have to work with as the willing GM for the group.

[Callan S.]

In relation to the interrogations: How do you want to handle it? For example, recently I pitched a very low key problematic situation to a player so he could address the premise (A guy with information was running away, but the PC would have to shove through a market place of people to get to him. Does he want to batter and bruise all these people, when the guy might not even know anything?)

He tackled it by describing how he would try and get around people and if needed, pick them up with his ultra strength and set them asside.

It was actually a very reasonable tactical responce. And I said that as I told him that basically this is a 'test of character', where its not about negotiating it but showing something about your character. If he wanted to negotiate it with tactics, we could do it that way but we'd never learn anything about his character.

He nailed it with his next post...he couldn't do it (and gave some background reasons as to why). Very nice.

You might need to describe exactly how to handle it if you want nar: Don't try and work out the correct answer with 20 questions...just make a choice. The correct answer isn't important...finding out your PC's choice and why they made it, is what is important.


Also, on the player waiting for their turn, why don't you pitch them problems every so often and say "Figure out how you'll handle it and I'll get back to you in five or ten to find out". You can keep hand balling them problems to work with every so often until it's their turn.

[greyorm]

Callan,

It is Nar already, it's just very heavily focused Actor-stance Nar. Neither the character nor the player wants to simply rush into something headlong with limited understanding -- they (correctly) want enough information to make a meaningful choice about the situation.

It is definitely not a "paralyzed by indecision" problem -- which I'm thinking folks may be marking it as. No, that's a common problem in traditional gaming, and having experienced it before I can say that this is different. Nor, as I mention above, is it a "must find correct solution and beat the GM" situation.

This is really more, as I noted above and have had more time to think about and agree with since, a problem with my own style of play clashing with the group. I prefer more grainy resolution: I like using Pawn-stance and blatant System to complete goals, and not "bogging results down" in acting as much.

This is me: "I want to know if anyone saw who killed him. I rolled a 17 for my Gather Information check. Does anyone tell me anything useful?" "Yes, here's what you're told." Goal --> Result.

But this is definitely not my players. They prefer moving through the crowd and asking questions as would their characters, even if I jump right to the guy who tells them the info and sort of gloss-over the rest with a, "No one seems to know anything, but there's a beggar sitting on the corner who might know something. They seem to see everything without being noticed themselves."

[Valamir]

Gotcha.  FWIW I totally prefer your more grainier version as well.  It allows one to wrap up a whole several hours of in-game time in a nice succinct summary paragraph exactly the same as a novelist would rather than going word for word through each.

For educational purposes, can you share what events have allowed you to peg your players as strongly actor stance?  Was there an open discussion along the lines of "the example scene in your above post where you asked them which way they'd prefer to handle it"?  Was it mostly you picking up on cues from them in play, and if so can you illuminate your train of thought in figuring that out?  Was there some friction in play that was smoothed over when you realized the friction was caused by Author vs. Actor conflict and if so what gave it away?

That sort of analysis would be quite interesting to document I think.

[greyorm]

For educational purposes, can you share what events have allowed you to peg your players as strongly actor stance?

Sure thing. What pegged it for me was a literal conversation about a suggested mechanic regarding use of the various social skills held by the characters.

I was bemoaning the fact that despite having chosen social skills such as Diplomacy, Intimidate, etc., the players were not using them at all, and instead relying solely on character-acting to achieve the desired effects. Given the nature of D&D, failing to utilize skills you have spent points on actually cripples your character, since you have lowered your overall effectiveness in situations where those currently useless points would have made a real difference and would have been used.

Basically, they might as well have put the points into other skills for all the use they were getting out of them (and not for lack of opportunity); instead, the social-oriented skills existed on the sheets but were utterly secondary to play, and were almost always forgotten by both players and myself (at least until afterwards, when I would think, "Crap! That would have been a good place for her to have used such-and-such skill!").

So, we discussed using the social skills as suggested above (Player states before undertaking social action: "This is what I want to happen/learn/achieve if I succeed at this roll."), and then inserting character acting (ie: role-playing) into it after the result was known. While they wanted to use the social skills to some effect, they made it known that they were nervous about using them, and especially about the above suggestion, because it "seemed to take the role-playing out of the game." This was the main concern, and voiced a couple of times.

However, we agreed to try it and the situation has improved slightly. Mainly, there is less forgetting to use the skills, though the above discussed tactic is not being utilized because of the dislike of being OOC. Even with that, I don't think we're connecting on how they "should" work as a group, we don't have a stable methodology or understanding regarding their implementation and use, which is still something of a frustration for me.

---Tangent Follows---

I can see two possible solutions for this:

Ditch the social skills entirely, just use player-skill/fiat-based resolution for social situations as we have been, and reallocate points among other skills (Spot, Hide, Search, etc). This bothers me severely, though. I don't like fiat-resolution -- I especially don't like fiat-resolution when I'm the one doing it.

-OR-

Players must roll a social skill before entering into any interaction with another individual in order to "set the tone" for the interaction. This would be used to determine the other individual's starting reaction to the character (Helpful, Friendly, Indifferent, Unfriendly, Hostile). Fiat-resolution occurs thereafter.

I could live better with the former one than the latter, though would have to come up with some rules to determine how base attitude is determined, however (perhaps based on the Charisma score). The rules for changing someone's attitude already exist in the DMG.

---End Tangent---

So, that conversation with the other players was the lynch-pin for me in understanding what they want. Obviously, years of playing together has also influenced that opinion, and knowing how they generally tend to play provides strong support of the analysis: I see and have seen more Actor-stance than anything else, and very little Pawn stance (and I generally see at least some discomfort with play when Pawn-stance comes into play).

Now, I can't say why they prefer it: if they really do want to play that way, or if it is habit from years of playing like that (backed by the ingrained traditional teaching that "you should play RPGs in-character, or it isn't right"). I'd say it is at least some of both, though, and definitely varies across players.

[Bankuei]

Hi Raven,

Third possible option for the social skills- transform them into a reward mechanic.  If the players aren't using them to roll, but instead roleplaying it through, perhaps you might want to turn it directly into an XP bonus based on their social skill rating.  "Ok, you've won the debate with the councilor, hmm, that was pretty good, get 10 times your social rank in XP!"  

So, folks who have high social skills are getting more points for roleplaying it through.  Players who like to talk through things, will put more points there, and get more points....

Just a thought.

Chris

[NN]

How do the players keep in character if there's a social situation that relies on character-only knowledge?

For example, say a player's wizard had suspicions that an NPC wizard wasnt the great mage he claimed...and so wanted to engage the wizard in technical small talk about spells, in the hope of catching them out.

[Vaxalon]

They make stuff up.

"Hey, Alsgordex, I was wondering, what are your thoughts on the Basking-Ulthemar paradox."

The fact that the "Basking-Ulthemar paradox" has never showed up before in the game, is of no importance.  It may show up in the future, if the improvisation requires it.

[Rob Carriere]

I was bemoaning the fact that despite having chosen social skills such as Diplomacy, Intimidate, etc., the players were not using them at all, and instead relying solely on character-acting to achieve the desired effects. [two solutions elided]

Greyorm,

I'd like to offer a third possibility, from actual play with a group that's at least in this respect similar to yours: Whenever play enters a situation where a social skill would be applicable, check what a take-10 would produce. No dice have been rolled, the character player has never had to step out of actor stance, but the skill has been in play.

Depending on your group's taste, this allows you to make significant adjustments without open rules contact. For example, one of the players in the group I mentioned likes to play characters who are diplomatic, verbally subtle, and full of intrigue. He himself couldn't do any of those to save his life. What this method allows us to do is translate his performance into his character's performance (OK, he's being unusually polite and indirect. What would happen if a character with +16 Diplomacy were to be unusully polite and indirect). This does, of course, require that all players know what's on everybody's character sheets.

Adjustments in the other direction can be handled by roleplay. In other words, if you are diplomatic but you play a character that isn't, you better not use your diplomatic savvy.

This way, the use of social skills will cost skill levels and players can play characters who are more socially skillfull than they themselves are, yet you do not need to interrupt the flow of play for mechanics. It does require the GM to be very much on the ball, but, at least in our SC, that's what the GM is supposed to be anyway.

Of course, none of this addresses your preference for abbreviating some scenes. For your collection of useless statistics, we would probably have abbreviated the example scene you gave about the way you suggested, simply because, judging from the description, it wouldn't have been interesting (to us).

SR
--

[Mike Holmes]

The group's characters tend to be split apart into two groups. Given the nature of the IRC medium and text-based play, giving each character(s) enough spotlight time to present an interesting break point to move to another character(s) often means spending around forty-five minutes to an hour of play for each character(s), while the others simply sit and watch.

I had, and still have to some extent, the same problem in my IRC Hero Quest game. Then somebody suggested something so simple to me, so obvious that I felt really dumb when I heard it, and put it into use immediatly.

When the PCs are in different scenes in IRC, simply open a new window. Play both at once. What happens is that while you wait for the response in window 1, you're typing furiously in window 2. Basically this cuts down on lag time significantly, and accomplishes even better the sort of "timeslicing" that you were considering implementing.

I hate when somebody has to show me how to use a technology properly. :-)

Mike