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Casidhe
2015-01-20, 01:50 PM
Hi! I'm new to this forum and to D&D, although I've played a few homebrew games as well as some LRP (and a lot of MtG, although that's not too relevant). Myself and a few friends are interested in getting into D&D (or maybe Pathfinder or something similar), and we're all in GMT, but fairly spread out so that we can't play together physically. Fancy programs like Roll20 haven't really worked out too well, and ideally we'd be playing over skype (text or video, depending on how stuff works out). Any advice on how to organise such a game, and which system would be best?

Yora
2015-01-20, 03:20 PM
There are many games that can be played without keeping track of the exact positioning of the characters and enemies. These are very well suited to playing voice only over internet.
I also recommend playing one that does not have a lot of dice rolling.

When it comes to making up adventures for the campaign, I would recommend going with things that involve a lot of talking and investigating and not a lot of fighting.
When the PCs go into dungeons and the like, there are two options: One would be to keep them very simple with not a lot of choices where the PCs could go, or simply skip looking for a specific room by saying "it takes you a few minutes, but you find the room in which the prisoner is kept".
An alternative would be to draw a few simple floorplans with numbers on each room and upload them online somewhere. A simple tumblr account or something like that would be enough. Then when the players reach the house or cave, you post the link to that image file in the skype window. I believe it probably has a small text-chat somewhere just for such a purpose. I know teamspeak does.

The first game system I would recommend would be Fate. Either Fate Core or Fate Accelerated. Both are free downloads. It works quite different than games like D&D, which may be a bit confusing on first look, but once you read through the rules, it's actually quite easy.
In case that everything fails, there is always RISUS, a strong contender for the most simple RPG there is. Also compeltely free.
If you want it a bit more complex and direct than Fate, I think Barbarians of Lemuria and Dragon Age RPG are both games that should work quite well, both having no rules for positioning at all.