<snip John's ideas>
While John's ideas certainly look like they could work, they are reliant on (some, not necessarily all) players being available at the same time. Which basically means that although my character and John's live in the same stead, they can never meet, because we can't make IRC at the same time.
Hero Wars seems ideally suited to a pure e-mail game. The problem with those is that you can only guarantee maybe a turn a day, which in D&D or similar means one fight takes three months to resolve. In HW you have the simple contest. Use that A LOT, and everything is resolved really quickly. Tactics in fights (or whatever) become a case of going for augments, either through skill, magic, followers, or tactical considerations (higher ground, cover, whatever).
This lets matters become much more of a roleplaying matter. Its a bit more stylised - people would type up messages of the kind 'this is everything I'm going to try to say in this conversation' and the actual conversation gets reverse-engineered from those. If all the players are willing to be creative, and the GM is willing to allow them to create minor details (given he can over-rule in extreme cases) it should work quite well.
If nothing else, it allows people on five continents to roleplay together, even though none of them are awake at the same time.
Cheers,
Graham
-- Graham Robinson The Stableyard - Internet Solutions gjr_at_... http://www.thestableyard.net
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