InsaneJournal

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materialise (materialise) wrote in rp_tutorials,
@ 2013-07-13 23:30:00

IM question
Hey everyone. I'm starting a game with a friend but neither of us has been active in games for years (the same applies to our friends) so I decided to turn to this comm, in hopes that someone may be able to answer.

In the games we used to be, scenes were usually written on AIM and then posted to the main community. I don't think anyone uses AIM anymore so... what should we use? We'd like something that allows IMs but also group chats. I've suggested Skype because I have an account and most people I know do too, but my friend doesn't have one so we don't know if it's something most people will have.

I know that we can always have in-thread scenes but I don't really like that format so I'd like to avoid it if possible. Thanks.

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materialise
2013-07-14 12:17 am UTC (link)

The game isn't on IJ, and I think most of our prospective players aren't dedicated RPers as well - they're people who used to be in the old installment of the game, along with people who are interested in this weirdly-specific subject. So something that most, non-RPer people would use would be ideal.

How does Google Docs work for real-time scenes? Is it easy to write things in turns in the space of, say, an hour or two, or is it more like using e-mails or threads? Does it display people's real names (privacy is a concern for some users)? Does Gchat allow group convos?

Sorry if this a lot of questions, haha. Thank you!

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droa
2013-07-14 12:27 am UTC (link)

No worries. IJ is a fairly recent RP acquisition for me, so I totally get the non-IJ perspectives. If your crew is as odds and ends as you describe, I'm sure they'd all be pragmatic and savvy enough to determine their own best methods.

That said, gdocs work great for real-time writing -- it is super convenient for quick logs or quick writers, if you want to bang something out in the aforementioned hour or two. I am not the biggest fan of them, personally, but almost every RPer I currently know would yank out their own eyeteeth before they lost gdoc access. It's basically a Word document which you can either make public or semi-public (share the link with select parties), and from thereon in all writing is real-time. While you're writing, whomever you're logging with could conceivably go back and fix typos at the same time.

I find it difficult to compare to e-mail or threads, as it is uniquely part of this newer generation of cloud-based services. The names which get displayed in a gdoc are whatever you have attached to your e-mail account, so I suppose you could either tweak how your name displays on e-mail, or just use an RP-only address. Group convos are also doable -- a nice perk is that if you use an actual gmail account, chats get auto-logged to your e-mail account, should you want to later reference them -- and gchat is perhaps a bit more stripped-down than all the features you have in Skype chats.

I hope that info is helpful, and please don't hesitate to throw any other questions out there.

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