Do you have a campaign message board?

[Shadowslayer]

Just started a new 3.5 campaign for some folks that live pretty far away. I figure we'll get together MAYBE once a month, and we'll do the rest via emails and or message board. So two questions:

!. I was wondering about running a message board for it. I've looked at a couple, but was wondering where the best free ones are.

I'm looking for one that's pretty much idiot-proof and doesn't delete old posts after a week. Adverts are OK but I want to stay away from popups and other intrusive sorts of ads.

2. Can anyone give me any other things to look for when running a campaign where the players are so far apart? Any experiences to share?

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!

 

[DragonLancer]

My group uses a yahoo egroup for posting messages, sessions and whatnot. It's not a message board per se, but its hand, convenian and free.

 

[Darklone]

Same here. A yahoogroup was always pretty nice for managing a group.

 

[Festivus]

I can't offer any advice for free message boards. I wanted a site that was advertisement free, so I run my own server on a hosted site and it runs me about $120 a year. The upside is that I also host my family photos there so it's pretty ueseful to me.

I run two campaigns over the internet currently, one in Neverwinter Nights and the other via Fantasy Grounds. We use the message boards between sessions for things like roleplaying, buying & selling, experience and loot tracking, rules questions, player journals and other stuff, leaving the online time to be mostly roleplay and combat encounters.

It's a great way to keep track of things, and informative to go back and reread what happened a few months ago. Playing online we tend to meet more regularly than my tabletop groups, which also has a forum on my message boards, but due to real life constraits meets much less regularly (someday that will be fixed).

Message boards to me are an essential tool for playing RPGs.

 

[diaglo]

several.

groups.yahoo.com
smartgroups.com
and msn

edit: and EZBoards aussi

 

[Nonlethal Force]

Ummm, maybe this seems too simple, but why not use the forum here at ENWorld? In the Playing the Game forum, it is set up to leave a permanent Online account for ... well ... playing a game. Granted, you can't make it so that only certain folks can see certain messages, but if you are going to be E-mailing anyway....

And they don't get deleted here. I've been running two games since last August. And if it weren't for the crash of '06 I'd have access to every post ever made.

If you want to snoop one of mine, go to the PtG forum and look for either one of my games. My name will appear under Title. For that matter, look at any game. Each DM does things in a slightly unique way.

 

[TheYeti1775]

I've used the Yahoo groups with a lot of success.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

You can get private forums here at a reasonable price. If you have a hosting account, you can set up PHPBB, which is what I have at my boards at www.crystalmarch.com. The downside is the cost (which is only around $75 for domain registration, hosting, etc.) and deleting all the spam registrations.

I've EZBoards in the past, and they're pretty good, too. Free with ads, or you can pay a little and get no ads.

We also use yahoogroups emails.

 

[XO]

Goo...Gle

We garble a gaggle of Google Docs...

Google offers shared documents which equates a readily implemented Wiki...

Of course, all must get a google mail account, but that is reaidly accomplished. Some only use this account for the game and maintain their parallel accounts, others not.

That's OUR way... and it really is helpful to the game.

 

[Gwaihir]

Ummm, maybe this seems too simple, but why not use the forum here at ENWorld? In the Playing the Game forum, it is set up to leave a permanent Online account for ... well ... playing a game. Granted, you can't make it so that only certain folks can see certain messages, but if you are going to be E-mailing anyway....

We use the ENWORLD Forums for OOC/between session/administrative stuff, and also have a Supplemental PBP game that kicks in for individual characters from time to time.

We also only get to play once per month, so this has worked out great.