Hmm … I’d put myself in an offshoot I’d guess. I do freeform roleplay chat in an IM window, such as Yahoo!, either based on Batman, Wonder Woman or Marvel Comics characters. The people I rp with are either from online rpgs from message boards that I belong to, OR are fanfiction writers who do it for fun and/or to get ideas gelling for their fic writing. To each his/her own, I guess. A few I rp with seem to enjoy it and are addicted to it. Aside from benefitting their fic, it’s a great stress-relief.
I like the idea of the MUDs better than the freeform chat rooms but I don’t have much experience with either. I remember lurking in a Pern chat room while a litter of dragons were hatching and bonding to their riders. People were clearly getting into it but I couldn’t get immersed in the fantasy. I guess I need more rules besides “consensus,” otherwise all the good color dragons go to the popular people!
I used to play Dungeons and Dragons years ago. Many of my old group are still gaming and now they’ve got kids that are starting to join the campaigns. Real life human children, not character kids.
I don’t have the time to play many games now, especially online ones, but I do like to read about them. This has been a fun thread for catching up on what’s out there for games, almost as much fun as the one last week describing favorite in game moments.
Well, Blind Guardian representing blkdragon - one place I would definitely mention if I hadn’t been under the impression I shouldn’t advertise channels.
I used to play there quite a bit, but haven’t been there in months. I’ve seen Stygian in the channel, as I recall.
The thing about blkdragon*inn that I must cuation folks about is that I have noticed that the players can be a little cliquish. It may take time to “break in”, so to speak.
I don’t think I’ve been in there more than in passing, since the move to Sorcery.Net, though. May have changed.
I hope that I haven’t violated any board rules by mentioning my stomping grounds by name. When I wrote my initial post, I was trying to be careful not to sound as if I was trying to advertise it, which wasn’t my intent in posting. I’m just thrilled that somebody started a thread about one of my favorite online pastimes, and I’ve been able to contribute. If you don’t mind the curiosity, CandidGamera, who were some of your characters? I’m going to be floored if you’re somebody I know.
Yeah, I won’t deny that’s true. I think that it’s a function of the size of the channel. For one things, it can be hard to be noticed in all of the activity at the channel’s peak hours. And for another, in smaller channels, people tend to be all one united community. In a channel BDI’s size, people tend to gravitate toward others with similar RP styles. That’s why I suggested that Little Wing should join the OOC channel. New players have an easier time getting into the flow of things when people get to know them OOC.
And Foible, there are times when I wish we had a little more structure to cut down on people being lame. Some channels have attempted to introduce an experience system that’s based on the time spent RPing in the channel and participation in quests, but I don’t play in those channels and have no idea how well they work. Some of them are getting so stat-heavy that they’re almost semi-MUDs. The system works best when you’re playing with people you know, and all parties involved are willing to give and take.
I think perhaps I was being overly cautious. I often am. After all, Lynn has graced us with a mention of her stomping grounds, so I don’t think it’s verboten.
Let me think… my characters tended not to hang around too awfully long - I’d always have some new idea to exploit. I most certainly ran Victor (foppish swordsman) for a while there, and I believe I used my wizard Azrael (popular name on IRC, so he may have had a ` added) as a pseudo-tarot-reading fortuneteller. I distinctly remember, for at least a few weeks, running a character… Rand, maybe?.. who was to be one of the Amberite royals, popping by for a visit.
It’s hard to remember which characters I played there, and which I played elsewhere…
I popped on the other night to check things out and didn’t have much trouble getting involved.
Of course it was really late at night.
And I stayed up half the night playing.
It’s like crack I tell you! I escape then I find a new place and get sucked back in!
Actually I ran into a couple of people from my old stomping grounds, I didn’t rp with them much there but it was a nifty coincidence. 
I just realized that my wording wasn’t terribly clear there. Preview is my friend.
I meant that Free-Form RP works best when you’re playing with people you know. Stat-based systems are an attempt to level the playing field and prevent people from playing GodPCs.
And I’ve seen people that can play uber-PCs without stepping on toes, too.
I enjoy playing the occasional powerful guy. Back in the days I used to engage in freeform over on Diablo’s Battle.Net, I assayed the role of The Old Mage himself, Elminster. Everybody I got feedback from always said they loved the way I played the sarcastic old curmudgeon.
Wow, I’m so glad to hear there are still freeform RPGs going on. They were my introduction to roleplaying, back when I first got online. AOL used to have a chatroom titled “Red Dragon Inn,” and I not only ran my first characters there, but also met people involved in creating roleplaying games (some folks from White Wolf used to play there when they were developing their first games).
It was outstanding fun, but it made the transition to tabletop games very difficult since, while I could get past the involvement of dice and numbers, no one I knew could roleplay as well as the folks online.
Also, FWIW, the RDI sounds as chaotic as #BlkDragon*Inn–swordfighters and space cowboys, vampires and gypsies, elementals and elves, all playing side by side. Though, in my experience, people met each other through the game; it wasn’t friends coming online and plotting out their characters together.
I don’t think in all my years of roleplaying since that I’ve come to love any of my characters as much as I loved my RDI characters.
So have I. That’s one of the nice things about FFRP’s essentially unlimited possibilities.
Unfortunately, not everyone has the good sense to play those sorts of characters well. 
The problem is not with powerful characters in and of themselves; the issue is with players who are playing to win, so to speak, and make all of their characters exremely powerful so they can ‘beat’ other people. Style and attitude are everything in FFRP, and the way you play your characters is far, far more important than a list of powers or a verbose entry description. Some people seem to miss that point entirely.
Stygian is probably the most powerful character I’ve ever played because he was originally intended to be a villain. He is a lich, whereas the majority of my other characters are ordinary humans or mortal wizards. At the time I began playing him, there were already several villains running around, so I decided to lay low for a while. As the new kid on the block, I didn’t want to step on the toes of the established villains who were already running their own storylines. As things turned out, he became embroiled in a feud with a demoness named Oiachi, and that put him on the same side as the heroes by default. I don’t think I’ve ever had a character develop into something so dramatically different from what I’d originally intended, but he’s a lot of fun to play because he’s grown into a pleasantly quirky character. I’ve been afraid to go overboard playing him, so he’s evolved into the sort of wizard who dislikes using his magic openly or often.
When you enter it gives you a link to a website. It’s medieval based so no guns, space cowboys or sharks with frikken laser beams on their heads (I went there first thing heh, I like to know I’m not stepping on toes). I somewhat prefer the medieval myself, mainly because where I used to play we’d have people sit outside and sniper people inside the tavern and half the people would just ignore it to snuggle up to their snookie wookums and all but copulate on the table as they are riddled full of bullets…
I’m just ducking in to say I played on Islandia, back in the day. I was never as bad as Maverick in having conversations with someone somewhere else, though.
TinyTim’s still running, last I checked.
TooMUSH… a dozen dozen others, now lost to history and the net.
Cool! I’m glad to hear that you didn’t have any trouble getting involved and had fun playing. It’s too bad that I wasn’t there. I’m usually on in the evenings until around midnight/1 am eastern.
Does that make me a crack dealer? I could say I felt bad about that, but in this case, I’d be lying. 
The channel can never have too many good players.