I haven't heard from anyone here about this, El Quia - not so far anyway.
I got involved in a game which is being played on Usenet:
rec.games.roleplay.gaijin
There're several games running, in different rooms, like SLA industries, AD&D (not sure which edition), White Wolf games, Warhammer, Call of Cthulu, Mechwarrior, etc...
It's
really slow gameplay.
You're supposed to check in every day at the same time. I'm in one of the English games and it's played on the weekends and on Tues, Wed & Thurs from 6-10pm.
From the 3 weeks I've been playing it, 2 times people haven't shown up and it's meant that they get left behind or the GM uses their character if they've made a storyline that needs them.
eg, we needed to break into a vault, to steal some industrial secret computer-tech, but the person who was going to blow it open didn't show.
I tried to use an amplifier to boost the sonic powers my character has - vibrate the metal door so much so that it'd become more liquid and then just "swim" through it.
Because it worked when I was removing poison tipped bullets from someone without surgery and for sneaking into a bank's safe.
I got my hand stuck in the vault door, as I'm not powerful enough to sustain the effort needed, and someone had to cut me out with a blowtorch.
Now I have a penalty for using two firearms at once or anything that needs high dexterity, because my left hand doesn't move properly - it's 50% metal now. But the side of it is like a razor, so I have like a big knife for a hand! Not all bad.
That whole situation, from getting to the vault to (finally) blowing a hole in so we could get in, took 2 weeks of playing for 4 hours a week...
I don't think it's the best method, but it's better than any of the others I've been trying - chatboxes just end up with the game descending into chaos.
Its an invitational group, but anyone can read it.
To stop everyone from talking at once its run by a few people who take the role of GM.
It is basically a moderated discussion group, which means that your posts must be approved by the newsgroup's owners and managers.
This way, even if you submitted 10 turns, they wouldn't be posted until it was your turn (or you interjected or were needed or something). It kind of takes it back down to the level of "play by post" that was popular about 15-20 years ago, just as the internet was starting to become known about by other people who weren't computer geeks with 3.25bit modems.
The rules are that you can send more than one post, but only one gets posted and that's the latest one you sent. It's best to wait until it's your turn, though, as you could miss out on something or try to do or say something that isn't relevant to the new situation.
They do use dice in it, very rarely, if there's a conflict that can't be sorted out by role-playing - they try to avoid using dice because of the obvious problems with it, as we've been discussing.
It's rolled by the GM using a virtual die programme and they make any adjustments, based on your character sheet.
The character sheet is a text document form that you fill in - the GM then puts the info into a PDF and you have a link to it that you put up on your profile page.
If you have access to an NNTP server or another way of using Usenet, then it's worth having a look at the alt.games or rec.games bits for roleplaying.
Careful though - *.roleplay instead of *.games.roleplay/RPG isn't role-playing games!
It's fantasy sexual roleplay!
I don't know if you can access the forums through googlegroups. I know that you can't get the binaries like
http://binaries.nl and that site is only a directory listing for usenet...
Even though people are using torrents now, instead of Usenet and binaries like they used to - my home ISP blocks me from viewing them.
So I just use IP spoofing software (hideIPNG - it makes it so much easier than doing it manually. Instantaneous. It also makes sending anonymous emails easier too. You can even send emails that genuinely look like they're from another address - without having to use CMD and muck around with telnet and MX stuff. You have to really know the difference in order to spot it. Very good software.) and a german NNTP that costs £6 a year.
I'll find a group that has a game about to start - it'll probably be at the weekend, as they seem to usually start and end on saturdays or sundays - and PM or post the details so that you can have a look and see what you think, too.
It's the best system that I've found so far, but I don't know how it would translate to being used here...