Joshua Dyal said:
MUSHs are an option that I completely forgot about -- anyone have any insight into how that works?
I think I talked about this a little bit in my Dying World Story Hour (check the .sig), which was run on a MUSH.
MUSHes require you to have a server to run the program on. It's best to have someone familiar with administering one around, too - however, there are some places out there that will let you have a room or rooms to play in. I think there are open gaming rooms at Storyteller's Circle and OGR, but I don't have current addresses for either of those places.
MUSHes have a lot more variety in what you can do with them than IRC. You've got all the IRC communication functionality, plus you have the possibility of emits (which are not prefixed by your name). It really helps break up the monotony which you tend to get when sentences are always of the form 'X does this' or 'Y says "That."'. It's also a nice tool for DMs, who can switch between multiple characters or produce environmental effects without the distraction of their names always being present.
MUSHes can have room descriptions, so you can put in details about the environment and let players look at it as they wish. MUSHes also have the possibility of multiple rooms, so your PCs can actually move around in the environment - I'm not sure that any of the 'host a tabletop' MUSHes allow you to do that sort of building, though.
If you are willing to get into programming, there's even more you can do, but that might be excessive for an online tabletop game. (I did some quick code for simulating Sigil for the upcoming PS game, with a coded map and a different description for each Ward, but then again I did regular MUSHing for years.)
Anyway, my online group prefers MUSHes, but that's primarily because we're all used to them (it is, in fact, how we all met.)
J