The 20-minute poses were not an exaggeration, technically, but they were not TYPICAL. Very few players were quite that bad on a regular basis. In any case, for handling things like combat, I often wished that at the very least, I could persuade the players to ditch the overly long dramatic poses and just boil it down to "do this, do that" so we could keep the pace snappy. In tabletop face-to-face games, that's pretty much the OPPOSITE of what a typical GM would want, as he'd want to encourage players to be poetic and descriptive about their actions (and perhaps award them with creativity bonuses or Bennies depending upon the system), but nobody would tolerate it if that player's turn came up and he spent several minutes thoughtfully contemplating what he was going to say, or scratching things down on paper, repeatedly erasing and rewriting or wadding up the paper and tossing it over a shoulder before FINALLY we got to hear what was happening.
But that seems to be the pressure for the online games: Polish each and every exchange, like it's part of a shared novel-writing experience, except there are no take-backs, no edits once you hit ENTER. I could put up with it when Sinai was really hopping, my brain was firing on all cylinders, and I could be juggling multiple Holodecks, so if one player was taking his time, that was fine, because I could probably throw something into the next Holodeck over. (Although that's hardly fair: I would be constantly engaged, but it meant that necessarily the players would end up waiting on ME.)
I find it fascinating that you managed to use Google Docs for RP purposes. That seems like a very outside-the-box sort of approach. :)
And as for conference-call style gaming: No, I don't want to say that I LIKE it, either. I suspect that Digital_Rampage has lined up TOO MANY players for the conference call aspect to work well. I'm going to have to rein in my usual impulses, and try not to scramble for too much "spotlight," so as not to be needlessly disruptive, adding to the noise.
My preference is still for face-to-face and tabletop. In a perfect world? Eh, we'd have teleporter gates and could visit each other effortlessly. :) (Okay, so I can already imagine how that might NOT be a perfect world, depending upon who has access to such technology, but ... meh.) But my hope is that it can make the online experience (which is the only way I have to play with people who can't make it to my house for gaming) LESS BAD.
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But that seems to be the pressure for the online games: Polish each and every exchange, like it's part of a shared novel-writing experience, except there are no take-backs, no edits once you hit ENTER. I could put up with it when Sinai was really hopping, my brain was firing on all cylinders, and I could be juggling multiple Holodecks, so if one player was taking his time, that was fine, because I could probably throw something into the next Holodeck over. (Although that's hardly fair: I would be constantly engaged, but it meant that necessarily the players would end up waiting on ME.)
I find it fascinating that you managed to use Google Docs for RP purposes. That seems like a very outside-the-box sort of approach. :)
And as for conference-call style gaming: No, I don't want to say that I LIKE it, either. I suspect that Digital_Rampage has lined up TOO MANY players for the conference call aspect to work well. I'm going to have to rein in my usual impulses, and try not to scramble for too much "spotlight," so as not to be needlessly disruptive, adding to the noise.
My preference is still for face-to-face and tabletop. In a perfect world? Eh, we'd have teleporter gates and could visit each other effortlessly. :) (Okay, so I can already imagine how that might NOT be a perfect world, depending upon who has access to such technology, but ... meh.) But my hope is that it can make the online experience (which is the only way I have to play with people who can't make it to my house for gaming) LESS BAD.