TRD said:
I am particularly interested in peoples' experiences with playing in IRC, MSN etc or even programs like Fantasy Battlegrounds and OpenRPG.
So far all of my 2 years of playing experience has been in IRC, and I find it to be a *lot* of fun. Some various notes and caveats off the top of my head:
Advantages:
* Being able to keep logs is *insanely* useful. Nobody needs to take notes, you can easily remember and incorporate stuff into recent sessions that happened several sessions ago, you can easily catch up new players just by giving them the logs to read, you can quote all those really cool RP moments and lucky dice rolls verbatim (like the quotes in my sig, heh), etc.
* Channels and PMs are also very useful for keeping IC and OOC stuff separate, passing notes, handling times when the group splits up, etc. No more having to pass bits of paper where everyone can see you're passing notes, one player having to sit out because his PC got split off from the group and you don't have time to deal with him yet, griping about OOC comments mucking up the IC stuff, etc.
* Three words: Logged dice macros.
* Having to "wear" your character's name and make use of the /me command helps with people staying in character, I find. Having all text also lends itself nicely to encouraging more descriptive RPing. Finally, it's a lot easier to have the confidence to do all those crazy things in character when you don't have people actually looking at you and you don't have to say what you're doing out loud. (Bonus points: Not having to worry about how to pronounce words like "Drow".)
* It's a lot easier to find players. Your available time slots tend to be more open since people don't have to find a place to meet, drive there, get babysitters for the kids, worry about weather, etc. You're also not limited to just local players. My group currently has people from the Northeast, Midwest, West Coast, and the Southeast (of the US), and in the past we've had people from Canada, Portugal, the UK, and Finland.
Disadvantages:
* IRC is best suited to social and skill-heavy campaigns. Combat/dungeon crawling is doable, but even with a good battlemat program it's slower and more awkward than it would be in an offline game. We tend to only have 3-4 battles per 30+ session campaigns in my group. (Though the ones we do have are usually "epic".)
* It's impossible to pass around books (legally, *cough*), so your available choices tend to be limited to the SRD and whatever books *everybody* owns. (Admittedly, whether or not this is an advantage or a disadvantage depends on your preference in regards to supplements.)
* You'll have to use and e-mail around electronic character sheets, or use one of the websites where you can store your sheets online. (I'm lucky in that I have my own personal webspace where I can install/upload stuff easily.)
* There are times when you'll miss the cues provided by voices and body language. On the bright side, this tends to improve one's writing skills (mine have certainly gotten better).
* Everyone needs to be able to type fairly quickly (30+ WPM) *without* resorting to Netspeak, or it'll be rather slow and/or awkward. However, the speed of anyone who types slowly will probably improve after a fashion. (I started out at about 35WPM two years ago, and now I can do 55+ WPM.)
If you do decide to try RPing in IRC, I recommend finding a network like
Darkmyst that caters to roleplayers.
Peace & Luv, Liz
