Online D&D Hosting Sites?

[Angel Bob]

Several months ago, I pulled together four of my friends and myself to give them a chance to play D&D. We've met about a half dozen times since then and enjoyed what we're doing, but we've hit trouble when trying to schedule meetings. Two of the group's schedules are almost diametrically opposed, one is busy with a multitude of commitments, and two of us have to contend with really heavy coursework. The result of this is that we don't meet nearly as often as we'd like to, and the campaign can go several weeks between meetings.

Because of that, one member of the group suggested we play online, and the rest agreed. Now, my four friends are new to D&D, so they have no knowledge of any online D&D websites, and since I've always played in person, I don't, either. So I've come to the Playground to consult those with more experience in these sorts of things.

Essentially, which sites have you found to be the best for hosting D&D campaigns? I would also request that you recommend free sites specifically, since none of us want to spend any more money on this than we really need to.

(We play 4E, though we have more of a focus on the narrative than the RAW mechanics, if that makes any difference.)

[Squark]

Several months ago, I pulled together four of my friends and myself to give them a chance to play D&D. We've met about a half dozen times since then and enjoyed what we're doing, but we've hit trouble when trying to schedule meetings. Two of the group's schedules are almost diametrically opposed, one is busy with a multitude of commitments, and two of us have to contend with really heavy coursework. The result of this is that we don't meet nearly as often as we'd like to, and the campaign can go several weeks between meetings.

Because of that, one member of the group suggested we play online, and the rest agreed. Now, my four friends are new to D&D, so they have no knowledge of any online D&D websites, and since I've always played in person, I don't, either. So I've come to the Playground to consult those with more experience in these sorts of things.

Essentially, which sites have you found to be the best for hosting D&D campaigns? I would also request that you recommend free sites specifically, since none of us want to spend any more money on this than we really need to.

(We play 4E, though we have more of a focus on the narrative than the RAW mechanics, if that makes any difference.)

Sites I'm familliar with;

This one! There's a thriving play by post community here. Rolling dice is fully supported (i.e. [roll]1d20+8[/roll], although it only works in the dedicated play-by-post forums), but mapping and character sheets need to be done off site.

Myth-weavers is a dedicated PbP site with a number of features designed specifically for running games. The Character sheets tool is used by a lot of people who don't use the rest of the site, too.

Roll20 is free, albiet ad-funded. It incorporates a skype-like function and has more tabletop functions. My experience with it is limited (I've only been in one Roll20 campaign, and it's still getting all the characters finished).

Skype and chat clients can have rolling systems incorporated, although I don't know much about this, as I can't even remember what the program was that was used for the one IM-based game I played in briefly.

[Raine_Sage]

I've hosted a 4e campaign on roll20 and I had a great experience. My only complaint was that their in house video/chat system is incredibly laggy if you don't have the best internet connection. The good news is that it's completely optional and you can turn it off. Our group elected to use a group skype call instead which ran much smoother.

roll20 supports a bunch of different tabletop grids, or gridless if you prefer, provides free digital tokens, maps, and mapmaking tools. You can also upload your own pictures and tokens to a virtual library if you're artistically inclined. Basically it's great and you should give it a shot.

[Anxe]

Since you're looking for something more like PbP I'd suggest these forums or Mythweavers over Roll20. Roll20 is nice, but it's meant to be used for online meetups which seem like they won't work with your group's schedule. If you decide to use Roll20 I'd suggest using it through Google Hangouts as their video/chat service is much better tha Roll20's. The setup for that is literally only one button, so its not that hard to make the switch from one to the other.

[Zavoniki]

Depending on how technical your group is http://www.rptools.net/?page=maptool is really good. Its a very powerful tool that lets you do a lot to automate the game and do things on the battle map. However you do need to set all that up and just getting everyone into the same game can be somewhat of a challenge(You'll need to get everyone on the same LAN network through something like Hamachi or Evolve, OR investigate port forwarding). It is free which is a plus.

If your doing 4th edition it comes with a large library of pre-automated 4e monsters in one of the standard token libraries that comes with the program.