I recently started playing Universalis with my wife and son and I love the game.  I am thinking of playing using iChat on a Mac, but have a couple of questions:

1.  When playing Universalis online (irc, chat session, etc.), what method should be used to handle the secret bid that occurs before each scene? 
2.  Does anyone know of a site where I could  find other players or post requests for other players for online Universalis.  I've tried Googling it, but haven't had any luck.

Thanks,
Shane

I don't know about the first question, but if you do find somewhere to play online, please update us on this thread. Time permitting, I'm interested in giving it a go.

I've participated heavily in playing Uni online a few times.  Though not as much in chat as on a wiki (I think it's still in my sig.)

A place to look for other players might be to post to the indie-netgaming yahoo group and it's IRC channels which is sort of meant to be a clearinghouse for online play of indie-rpgs (IRC, PbP, PBEM, MUSH).  And I know Uni has been played there a few times.

The yahoo group is here http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/indie-netgaming

--Trevis

As for the particular problem in question... revealing simultaneously... we've done one of two things:
1) everybody writes in their bid, and then somebody reveals theirs with a "GO" and everybody sends. Last post to arrive cannot win. Or just honor system.
2) Everybody sends their bids to a third party privately. This worked well in #indierpgs, because there was always somebody hanging around to facilitate.

Mike

Forgot one more we once used. The player who framed the last scene bids first, and you go around once (BTW, turn order is determined by how the list of users appears). Works pretty well, actually.

Mike

Something else too, iChat uses either the AIM or Jabber networks.  Mostly AIM.  Are you wanting to use IChat for the video feature?  If you just want to play by chat you can use Adium, which connects to almost all chat services or if you want to play by IRC a good client for the mac is Colloquy.

Trevis

Thanks for the responses!

I'll look into all of your suggestions and post if I find more options.

Shane