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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imagicka" data-source="post: 3250949" data-attributes="member: 4621">Greetings...Running an online RPG.  Well, I've tried all sorts of things.  First of all, I don't know about using Skype or anything like that, because even though a much more can be conveyed in speech, such as the meaning of your intent through vocal inflection... I would personally would shy away of such things.With online roleplaying, through the use of text tends to get the players thinking a little more about their actions while they are typing it out, and lets them be a little more verbose in their actions, and truly attempt to paint a picture with words.  Which I find to be a little more emersive. So, if you can find a gaming environment with text.  That I think would be ideal.As for dice rolling.  I found that a lot more roleplaying was being done by the players, and not a lot of dice rolling and combat situations.  Combat tends to take a long long time, especially if your doing it Play-by-Post.  There are websites that have dice-rolling features.  Things that will roll the dice virtually and send an automatic email to the DM with the result.  But I usually roll the dice for my players.  That way they can concentrate more on the game, and less on the numbers.  As for these third-party software programmes to run an RPG.  I had a look at OpenRPG, and I wasn't very impressed with it.  It didn't have enough bells and whistles for me.  But then, I haven't had a chance to really put it through it's paces.  But then, I really haven't gotten to do it with any other programme either.  There is a website called <a href="http://www.thetangledweb.net/home/" target="_blank">The Tangled Web</a>  Which is dedicated to online virtual tabletop games, and use OpenRPG and something else called <a href="http://rptools.net/doku.php?id=maptool:intro" target="_blank">MapTools</a> which looks to be a little too bare-bones for me.  There is another programme that I was interested in, <a href="http://www.fantasygrounds.com" target="_blank">Fantasy Grounds</a>.  All the tabletop goodness, with all the organization of a computer.  Again, I haven't put it through it's paces, but this is definately one programme I'd like to try out. There are some other programmes out there... Let's see, there is also <a href="http://www.battlegroundsgames.com/index.html" target="_blank">Battlegrounds - BRPG</a>, looks interesting.  But ideally, what I would like to see is something that does the virtual table-top mapping, character sheets, as well as all the GM to maintain combat.  Right now, the best programme I've seen for maintaining combat with a programme has been a programme called <a href="http://www.dmgenie.com" target="_blank">DM Genie</a>.I've tried running a game through other games that allowed for such things.  Such as running a game through Neverwinter Nights, or Vampire the Redemption.  I've also been involved in Muds and Mushes, and even free-form roleplaying done on everything from chatrooms, MMoRPGs and over chatters like ICQ.  Probably the best environment for running a game online are the low-tech ones.  If you have a live audience...and you can run something with everyone... Great... Chatter programmes are probably your best bet.  Where I can send all the players files of maps (or direct them to a website where I keep all the images/maps/files for the players while I'm running the game).  There are a lot of people who also run their RPGs online over IRC.  I guess that having a barebones approachIf you don't have a live audience.  Well, playing by post is your best bet there.  You can do PbP (play by post), (also sometimes known as PbEM (play by email)), on forum websites.  Enworld has a forum for that.  But there are also sites dedicated for it.  I'm currently trying to get a game going on the site: <a href="http://rpol.net" target="_blank">RPoL.net</a>.Now if your going to go the live route, and prepare beforehand the adventure, ready to cut-and-paste the scenes to your players.  Well, might I suggest a programme?  Personally, I love the programme, and it's a clipboard extender.  So, anything you cut you can see it, edit it... and do other things to it... before you paste it.  The programme is called <a href="http://www.clipmate.com" target="_blank">Clipmate</a>.  I use it to organize and collect almost everything that I do.  The bulk of the things I work with are URLs, but I can imagine the usefulness of the programme to pre-write all the texts you want to paste to your players.  Selecting what you need at the time, and posting it.  Clipmate has a lot of useful features.  Such as allowing you to merge various 'clips' together.  Or breaking them apart (based on a delimiter).  Or you can set it up to paste item after item (called power pasting).</blockquote>

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