I was just wondering how many of you folks here ever did pen-and-paper role-playing online, whether it be on a forum, through an instant messenger, or otherwise!

Using the internet as a way to play pen-and-paper games is, in my opinion, good if you're doing one-on-one role-playing. I haven't done it yet with a group of people, but I'd guess the more people there are, the messier it might get. I could be wrong, though...

How many of you do it?

Hi Marc,

Prolly a mod will say you need to give an actual play account and imply you aught to have known that was the case, when I can think of a few reasons you might not. So you might want to write a sentence or two on gaming you've done - pretty much anything satisfies the criteria - doens't have to be online.

Now, I've done some online stuff. I ran a semi short campaign that seemed to go okay but was mostly me presenting exploration situations over and over and sometimes the players would poke at them, sometimes one would go a curly way, but then they'd sort of stop and go with the flow/my flow of presenting more and more situations.

Another time I tried doing a more gamist thing, which in terms of structure was more like an old kings quest or space quest computer game (though I'm not a bitch about the parser!). Did not go well - players wanted to piddle about and 'be' (awesome - as if awesome is simply a designation rather than derived by verbage).

Really I'm not sure listening to how other people did it, helps. Gamers (people not new to RP) seem to enjoy nothing in particular, generally. They always seem to hang off exploring again and a-freaking-gain, rather than enjoying anything they happened to discovered.

Any particular reason(s) you want to know, or specific benefits or pitfalls you want to know about?

I played on-line with a few different groups for a good number of years, different game systems, different people, but mostly via chat-interfaces (also a few forum-based games, one or two e-mail games, never tried voicechat play).

I am part of two groups that play online using Skype. It's a lot of fun. One group is playing a campaign of Spirit of the Century (a bunch of AP reports here). My other group has played Mouse Guard, Dogs in the Vineyard, and a playtest of my game. I have audio recordings of the playtest sessions on my podcast Designer vs. Reality, with some text synopses on my blog.

Due to my geographical location, most of my gaming throughout the last three years was via Skype. That's something between 250-300 indie sessions total and 100+ board game sessions. I find Skype gaming extremely close to face to face, and with a good virtual tabletop the lack of actual face to face contact seems to be the only effective difference. Skype works well for a group of up to four, as having five or more people in the conference tends to obstruct communication.

The main problem is actually finding people interested in Skype gaming, due to both a relatively common bias and a relatively high ratio of weirdos in the internets, but maintaining a dedicated community sure helps in building a pool of solid players.

I also tried IRC gaming in the past, but it shifts the dynamics of play considerably and the slowness is a serious issue. Also, I don't quite remember a single IRC game that, rather than being discontinued, has actually reached any meaningful conclusion.

I've done it a few times before... My most memorable experience would have to be playing Vampire: The Requiem with my friend Charlie, who lives in Ohio. We played it on AIM and... It actually went quite well. We mixed narrative writing with dice rolls. We would write our actions, and in parentheses, we could include our dice rolls to explain.

I tried doing "kill puppies for satan" on a forum, but the people that I played with there didn't get the game. It ended up being more surreal in tone and just ended up being a big mess.

I'm playing 4E D&D on a rpg.net right now.
We're doing some kind of Castelvania inspired setting.
My man Conrad is a fighter with a handlebar moustache and a hook for a hand.

I maintain Foundry, a MUSH dedicated to online "tabletop" gaming. It's entirely text-based (no virtual tabletop graphic thingy) but it offers tools for dice and cards and so on.

You need to download a special client to play, but these are generally freeware, or you can use the basic Telnet program built into your operating system (not recommended). Instructions are on the web page.

The place is usually eerily quiet. You can use this for any kind of tabletop gaming you want, any time you want. If you want to descend upon it with ten friends for eight hours one Saturday, jump into a private room and talk or game, and then never return, I am fine with that.