Saagael
First Post
Interesting. I find that combat runs a bit faster in my online games because the math is pre-programmed. You click a die and get the attack roll and damage roll with all of the math included. However, I think the difference I'm seeing is that you appear to be just using text chat in MapTool; I use Skype for audio. I've also been lucky in that I haven't seen a lot of technical difficulties or lag (although my wife did accidentally turn off the circuit breaker to the modem during our last session, causing a reboot)
This is a specific group issue I'm guessing. We have Ventrillo to use, but no one but me uses it to talk, for whatever reasons. I try to get them to use it, but they don't. So usually they'll type something into chat, and I'll reply via Vent. Of course before my microphone stopped working...
Then there's the issue with me going pretty quickly, rolling dice, describing what the enemies do, and the moving on. In that short time, the players have lost track of what attacked them, whether it hit, and how much damage it did. So I consistently go back, explain what happened, tell them how much damage they took, and then move on. Though this doesn't work when the half the group is sitting on reddit or 4chan or facebook or some other site and not paying attention to the game at all, and don't see my text.
So yeah, it's slower for me than face to face games, but that's likely because my group uses the chat box for asking questions and talking, rather than Vent.
(Didn't mean to rant, but this really frustrates me after 22 levels of play. My next campaign I'm going to be much more strict about VOIP chatting)