When you play online (Roll20, Skype, whatever), do you use text

Text is good because it gets shy people into RP, voice is good because holy fuck text is slow.

>>44258670
Voice. Text is has too big of a risk of overlap and resolution of multiple things at once is annoying. Plus the tendency for text RPers to go big into flavor text slows things down, since there's no feedback while they're typing. In voice, the feedback of silence or noise is notable and people (at least those with a sense of self-awareness) know when to wrap shit up.

>>44258716
Any idea how to get people to move over to spoken games? GMing for a group of friends over roll20, first time GM, and I hate how disconnected people get on a text game.

>>44258858
Bring it up to all of them and say you feel it'd make things more productive/more connective/etc. There's really no way of forcing it unless you want to risk losing players.

I use Maptool for maps and visuals, and then I use Google Hangouts for audio/video chatting.

Maptools is great, if a bit clunky at times. It boasts itself as the "Millenium Falcon of RPG Software", which i think means that its really great and has tons of useful features and customization, but its a big piece of unweildy junk if you don't know what your doing.

I've found Maptool has let me bring a whole new element to my games: detailed visual maps. Granted, I have an art degree and like to make images, so that helps. But I make not only dungeon maps, but fast sketches of citys, continents, profiles of buildings, whatever is needed. Having tokens placed on city/continent maps helps the players follow along with whats happening.

>>44259036
>maptool
Thing fights you every step of the way.
>Hangouts
Did they fix the dismal voice quality yet?

>>44258670
Am I the only one that uses both? All of the players are on voice and we use text for in character dialogue. All of our in character dialogue is archived, you can go back and look up who said what and when (which is pretty damn useful if you need to remember the name of a certain town, npc, or just the proper wording on something) but we don't have to worry about using text for something like... coming up with battle plans, which are meta as fuck anyway.

>>44258670
I prefer text. It gives people time to think out what they want to say, and is easier on people who are new to roleplay or are otherwise discouraged.

It's also pretty much the only option for ERP games. Way better to just let everyone ignore whatever people might actually look or sound like.

I have had really fun games both text and voice, both have their perks, although I prefer text (which is why the text list is longer)

What I like about text:
More immersive, I really don't care or need to know what you look or sound like in real life, when I read your posts it is much more like the character in question is saying them.
Your responses is not immediate. Being able to take 10 seconds before starting on your response is super helpful in getting into character and providing details, other mediums there is a much larger pressure to respond immediately, silence is awkward, ESPECIALLY if you are voice only, but even in-person and over video chat.
Related, I found that there tends to be a much lesser problem with the loudest/fastest talker dominating the group. Sometimes a fast typist will still feel the need to respond to EVERYTHING, but with that above non-immediate response thing, it is easier for the GM to wait for everyone to get their say in.
LOGS, you CAN record a voice session, but it requires additional work for most software, and I am more likely to read a text file than listen to a few hour audio file, not to mention text is far more searchable for when you want to know about what happened at a specific point.

What I like about voice is
Faster, ESPECIALLY for OOC stuff. The slower IC rate doesn't bother me, but how long OOC shit can take does
Being able to tell when people are not paying attention, people don't pay attention in both BUT in voice it is much EASIER to TELL when someone is doing it and call them out on it.

Mixed: Text sessions tend to go longer (and accomplish about the same amount of things, because it is slower), if you like your games taking all day, this is great. If you are busy, this can be awful.

I've never had a Voice OOC+Text IC game actually work out as such and not have had the lazier people just play a voice game while the rest of us are trying to actually RP, but that could be bad luck/shit players on my part.]

100% text always
no voice
no video

>>44258670
Voice, anyone who demands text is a massive autistic pile of shit

Text. Anyone who demands voice is a 100% autistic piece of shit

Body language over video conference. Anyone who demands voice or text is 100% autistic piece of shit.

We communicate exclusively over charades and a series of grunts and hoots much like morse code. Anything else is 100% autism.

>>44258670
This entirely depends entirely on the type of game. I've had some very fast text games, because everyone played whenever they had a chance to post, and the GM would just check it three or 4 times a day. It also made it easier to get into the RP part of it.

>>44263490
I've had text groups which literally type faster than I can talk as well. Text is not necessarily slower than voice...

>>44258670
>When you play online (Roll20, Skype, whatever), do you use text or voice?
Voice, usually.
>>44258858
Openly address it.
>>44259620
Good summary, ya. Text also cuts down on some people's obsessive need to quip incessantly like it's some second-rate Saturday sitcom from the 80s.