Is anyone using IRC for discussion/ gaming for shadowrun anymore?

I frequent #s-run on undernet now and then. I have no clue about other IRC servers, though.

Never been a big fan. I tried #s-run at undernet too. No biggie.

I was going to run a game on IRC, but my friends are all delinquent, so I'm writing the runs as a story instead. It's much less stressful than GMing - players don't get bored with charactors before I'm done with them, no missing players, I could get used to this.

what's IRC?

Internet Relay Chat, a distributed-ish application-layer chat protocol. Unlike something like AOL/Yahoo/MSN Instant Messenger, IRC is designed primarily for a chatroom-style discussion. A more detailed explanation.

In my opinion the entire thing is a kludge, and I try to avoid using it. That isn't particularly difficult.

~J

I dunno, I'll always have a soft-spot for IRC. i met my wife there. Aside from that, there is usually too much drama induced by the IRC peeps though for a good game.

dont forget : irc.dumpshock.com.

#bulldrek, and #shadowrun.

Yeah, I'm the urban myth given flesh.
She's attractive, sane (at least enough for my tastes), and we've been married happily for 2 years now, knew each other for 4 years prior off and on with IRC and other chat tools.
No, I would really not recommend it for meeting the woman of your dreams, but I wouldn't say to close it off completely either.

Are you sure she isn't a sixty-year-old man?

~J

I am a web-priest for the catholics, so if you want to get e-married to a chatroom person I can make it official.

LOL Kagetenshi.

Supercilious, so, when they chose the new e-Pope, was the chat log changed to white text?

Precisely why they don't allow it.

you mean i've been had? sheesh, this new third shift job is taking more outa me than i thought... i suppose you're gonna tell me that that strange man in a black trenchcoat that gave me a lolly wasn't legit either huh?

We have games on IRC sometimes. I'd prefer to always use it, but some of my players don't have a program for it, so we tend towards AIM. During school, however, IRC becomes a bigger part of our games, since the college network tends to disagree with AIM.

Our channel is in my sig if anyone's interested. Never knew DS had IRC...

There's a good list of clients here.

IRC is a mixed-bag for most. It's either something you play with every so often, or it's something that sucks you in completely.

I can safely say that mIRC (Win32) is a good choice for beginners and experts alike (though it lacks a lot of nice options, you can usually script them in yourself or find a script to do it for you).

If you're looking for something more advanced, X-Chat is shareware (there's a free version out there: SilverEx) and uses PERL instead of its own language for scripting purposes. (mIRC uses some bastardization of C++, Java and Basic. Very easy to learn, but utterly useless outside of mIRC.)

IRC is, IMO, the best way to do any multi-user chatting. Anybody can get an IRC client, and if you get the two I listed (as most people here are, I assume, on Windows) there aren't any threats of spyware/adware/malware. Also, unlike other chat programs, the people in control of the chat have the ability to remove users at will.

I myself don't use it as much, but I have SilverEx installed for if I do happen to need it for one reason or another.

You could also try OpenRPG, if you want to game online. It's advantages are an in-built die program, a map that can be set to squares, hexes, at any size, dashes or lines, invisi-grid, or no grid altogether. The map can accept any .jpg or .gif image as it's background, though you need a host (I reccomend www.photobucket.com ,) and it has a nodes system that's based on XML and easy to make nodes for.

The disadvantages are that, while having an amazing abstraction capability that makes it useful for everything, it's hard to code for. It's written in Python, and it is Open-Source, however.

Sorry to dredge up an old topic...