I'm going to be GM for an upcoming campaign, but several of my players are going to be long distance. They could commute, but that would be a hassle.

So, has anybody tried to run a campaign online? If so, how did it go, and what programs did you use to make it run smoothly?

I've used FantasyGrounds (II) and such... and these are fine when you can't get a tabletop group together... it just requires a lot of work beforehand on the GM's part to get the rules working, maps loaded, etc beforehand.

These days I have a group of people who play at my house and 1 guy who plays remotely. The remote player and I use Skype for video teleconferencing and I point my camera at the battle map (and zoom in where needed when necessary.) This works out pretty well for all players involved. Would be even better if he was the groups hacker imo. (or rigger)

A chat program like IRC coupled with a script for dice rolling works well for an online campaign, though the game is often slow - not just because of the typing, but also because it's so easy for the players to be distracted while waiting on the next line.

A play by post campaign on the pother hand is even slower, and hard to sustain in my experience - I saw far too many games end quickly, sometimes even before they started.

There's an official Dumpshock IRC channel (irc.dumpshock.com port 7500). It just got up and running recently, but I know there's a couple of games going on already, and there used to be a few regular games on the onld IRC channel a few years ago.

I know a couple of people are working on getting Dicebots up and running, beyond that I'm not sure. The server's run by Jackal (Though he's been MIA a lot lately thanks to work). If you're guys don't mind some old school chat style gaming, it's not a bad way to go. Possibly supplement it with Ventrillo or Skype for voice chat and some quicker/easier roleplaying, using IRC for combat stuff and dice rolling.

Bull

The group I play on uses Skype and MapTools.

I have had poor luck with play by post and IM. I've had much better luck with OpenRPG, unless I close the window that is running the server.

Ditto - Maptools is everything you need for a play-by-chat session. It's got an IRC window, a MS-Paint style map window, options to make Tokens (icons of PCs, NPCs and Monsters to track their location, stats, and health) and a Shadowrun4 dice roller built in. It's open-source, and free never hurts.

It also has a pretty flexible macro language, and you can spend a long time setting up complex stat tracking and dice rolling buttons. I just finished a macro that will let an NPC test against invisible infiltrating PCs in about three seconds, and last week's project was a button to let my drones roll using the right set of stats based on which control mode they're in. The RPTools forums have a few Shadowrun toolkits already, or if you'd like to try out the one my team is working on just PM me.

Good luck!

My group is totally online.

We have one person in Seattle, one in Pasadena, on in Washington DC and I'm in Richmond.

We use Skype. We don't use any maptools at all. I just do a good job of giving everyone the combat play-by-play so that we're not worrying about where every character measured by the square foot.

It works pretty well, we haven't had any trouble.

D&D was the game we played for awhile that was bad. You just HAVE to have a map for everything because of spell area effects, attacks of opportunity, etc.

For two years, one of my players has been tele-gaming. We bought a decent Skype-compatible USB speakerphone and a camera. I set up a spare monitor at the gaming table. He sees us and he appears, Max Headroom-like, on the monitor. Sometimes I forget he's not actually in the room.

We've had some dropped calls with skype, but it works well overall.

We run D&D face to face without maps, just descriptions.

They're both fun playstyles with the right group.

YOu lost a little with 3.X not having the maps, because combat involved more stretagy and knowing where everyone was. Doable, but there was a minor tactical element you either had to fudge or disregard sometimes.

With 4e, it's a lot harder to do because the game assumes you're using miniatures and bases the combat around them. Still doable, IMO, but the players and GM would have to willing to fudge things a lot more, and you lose a lot more.

I personally like gaming with MIniatures, as I like the tactical aspect of it. I've been using maps and miniatures for as long as I can remember. And I've written (or helped write) 2 different sets of mini's rules for Shaodwrun over the years that I've submitted (One to FASA back in 98 or 99, and one last year to CGL).

I don't like that tactical aspect. Ruins immersion for me when Roleplay starts to become chess.

"My Queen thinks deeply over the injustice of her less-critical role on the battlefield as she obliterates the opposing Knight."

~J

A lot of people already know this... but figured I would state the obvious anyways.

D&D originally was a miniature game they changed so that each person controlled a single model. Things evolved from there and have always gone in cycles.

Heck, if I remember right there was a "combat and tactics" black book in 2nd edition that was nothing more than very in-depth miniature rules for AD&D.

Each group of course will have their own playstyle and use their own house and optional rules... for D&D we've been using battle maps since 1st edition...

Less important was the "chess aspect" and more important was the impartial effect it added to traps and spell effects. Your character "is where you are." so when someone sets off a trap or a fireball explodes it is very clear as to who is affected and who is not.