outrider

This is a continuation of my impressions about online chat from the July 14 blog. Now that I have some additional experience doing a chat game I have taken some additional steps to try to improve and speed up the experience. I decided to use maps and posted them to the group site and had everybody reference them for combat. This is working out ok. I have the maps gridded so the players can at least have a common reference. There are a couple of drawbacks one is , the players have far more information than they should about the layout of the place and two, I have to create a second map for secret passages and other secret places.
The second thing that I have done is to use the cut and paste function to use for room descriptions. I have the descriptions already written out for a room and just paste them. I also do the same for any of the npcs more favorite sayings. I have a priest of Tyche in one game. Part of his morning ritual is to roll two dice and pray to his deity. I just cut and paste it. I find this speeds up some parts of the game.
The toughest thing is still the time for rolling in combat. I tend to have lots of little guys attacking putting pressure on the players. It means lots of time spent rolling the dice roller. I am thinking of asking the group to allow me to roll real dice and apply the damage as needed. I think that will speed up some of the combat.
Still the other thing that slows down the game is waiting for the players to do their part. I never know if they are multi-tasking or just gone to get food or bathroom break or something. I would suggest that they informed us and gave some general instructions about what to do while they are gone.
I still prefer face to face but I can see the draw of the chat game for many players. I’m now going to experiment with Play by post.