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Any pluses? Minuses? Things to look out for? What systems do you feel work best for these outlets?

I have friends who I'd love to RP with but they totally aren't local. I'm thinking of resorting to playing via online means and wondered about other people's experiences.

Personally, I would recommend the good ole' IRC.

Easy to set up, no account registration hassle, lots of available servers to meet on (some even entirely dedicated to RPGs), and a plethora of tools like dicebots available for use.

Communities such as S-Run are basing their entire online P&P community around it, and I've spent about a decade doing the same. Never had any issues; it's my preferred "tool of the trade" for this kind of gaming.

Thank you! I'll look into it!

For the last 8-9 months, I've been running a fourth edition Dungeons and Dragons campaign entirely through Google Hangouts.
It's very easy to set up. You just need to make a circle that is your game and then start it, and away you go. I find it's best if everyone wears earphones, as the feedback can get a bit much otherwise. I also find that it's good if you as a GM have some signal or other that it's your turn to talk- players tend to talk over me a bit more than in a room situation. I'd resist the urge to do absolutely everything on spreadsheets and pdfs too- it seems to slow the game down when players are scrolling through pdfs and the like.

But on the whole it's very good when you get used to it. A little harder to run a large group- I'd suggest 4 as ideal for this kind of game, I'm running 5 and I feel that often 1 or 2 will disengage as it's quite hard to have more than one conversation going on. If your players are amenable, the chat window can be used for out of character chat.

The most annoying thing about Hangouts (and it's minor) is that it asks you if you're still there periodically and doesn't give you a lot of time to say "Yes!" before auto logging you off. It's a small issue but inconvenient if it happens at a dramatic moment.

I use Maptool for running my combats, and though it is a RAM-aholic, I strongly endorse it. It makes running the combats much smoother (cuts down on the need for descriptions and questions by a fair bit) and you can do funky stuff with it's fog of war feature quite easily. It is prep intensive, but I actually find I enjoy putting together the maps for it (YMMV). If you like, I can probably point you at a number of sources for information and explain the ropes and common pitfalls to you. It's open source, so it's free, the main thing is to make sure you have Java updated and your players and you all download the same version. It sometimes has issues with ports, which are easy enough to solve but can cause issue if you are changing location. Still that can be solved with Google hangout's screenshare utility.

I'm planning another game after I finish this campaign, so I guess that's the best endorsement I can give. It's an excellent way for me to keep in touch with my various emigrant friends.

Oh, yeah - of course IRC doesn't work with voice but text. This can be both an advantage as well as a disadvantage, so it depends very much on personal preferences!

We've found that text-based chat is better for immersion, in that people focus on their characters, the story, and what's happening within the game. On the other hand, you're largely missing out on the "table fun" between players - witty OOC comments, sharing a laugh, and so on. In the IRC, we still had an extra channel for out-of-character chatter, which was used for both clarifying stuff with the GM or other players as well as making the occasional joke. Of course it's still different from voice-based communication like Skype. Too much OOC can detract a game, however. Hitting the right balance can be difficult, and I feel neither option can truly replace an actual table game. Still, it's something to consider - perhaps ask your friends what everyone would prefer?

For maps, my group used Dabbleboard. It's not very fancy, but it was sufficient to visualize what was going on; how our surroundings were structured and where our position was relative to any enemies. And just like with IRC, nobody needs to register anything. Just create a new board and give your buddies the link.

Dabbleboard looks quite nice for doing a quick map- better than Maptool. Depending on the type of game, it might be much more suitable.

Edit: By better, I mean faster and easier. Maptool is a quite a nice bit of software.

Da Boss wrote:Edit: By better, I mean faster and easier. Maptool is a quite a nice bit of software.

I guess that's true. I wouldn't use Dabbleboard for stuff where I need an accurate map with squares or hex fields like I think they are required in D&D now. Whilst I guess it'd be possible to do that in dabbleboard, it would take way, waaaay too much time and still won't look as fancy.

What is fun with dabbleboard, however, is that you can insert images from your PC or even straight from the internets. After discovering this feature, the icons for our player characters were quickly replaced with something more detailed.

Although there have been times when we weren't really ... serious about it. At one point, somebody replaced my Dragon Age templar with this.
About ten minutes later, our party's leader was replaced with that "brilliant!" moustache-and-cigar meme guy, his Mabari dog became Snoopy, the mage became The Black Mage from FF1, our Chasind archer became the Pink Ranger, and the Avvar barbarian became a skimpy Red Sonja.

One of our guys was transferred to Nevada. When he came home for Christmas a few months ago, he loaned a laptop and a couple of webcams to the DM so he could play with us through Skype.
We've got one camera on a bookshelf in the corner of the room so he can watch the group for roleplaying and when we get into a fight, he switches over to a cam mounted on a pocket tripod sitting on the table. It works out fine, but it reminds me a lot of the virtual Sheldon in that episode of Big Bang Theory.

I met a couple of local guys online who want to play, but they refuse to play face to face, they only want to play through IRC.

wittzo wrote:
I met a couple of local guys online who want to play, but they refuse to play face to face, they only want to play through IRC.

I'm not surprised. Online games give you a wider range of scheduling time. Also some people are uncomfortable meeting strangers in public. I remember my first time meeting strangers for a game. They were all very strange and the DM was pretty creepy. Didn't ever go back there. Second group was a complete success and we gamed together for 2 years before they moved away.

The moral of the story is: Meeting complete strangers in real life can be scary, if you're going to do it make sure it's in a public place (I use a place called Game Matrix where I live) or have a few games online and maybe see about transferring to a face to face setting.

Any sites like S-Run that do DnD 3.5 ed?

try dndonline
it's a great site for dnd pbp.

I've played RPGs over skype's messaging for a few years now. (No mic or group interest to do it over voice chat.) and I feel it works out great. Combat can sometimes slow things down with clarification over distance and such but it's rarely a real issue.