About —Our Chat Game

We are a small group of people who play Dungeons and Dragons online in a chat room. Our chat room, #dungeon, is a channel on IRC. Most of us use mIRC to connect. There are several networks that can connect to #dungeon—personally I use stormcenter.dwarfstar.net.

We usually play on Saturdays between 8 pm and 2 am Eastern Time. On rare occasions we may play a bonus session on a Sunday evening or during the week if enough of us can agree on a time. And, we do sometimes miss a Saturday when the real world intrudes and not enough players show up.

Playing DnD in a chat room is easy. Players just type their speech and actions. Part of a game might look like this:

DM> There is the remains of a wagon there and of course the remains of the undead.

* Keltria says "Let's get away from this smell."

* Keltria starts moving away from the area.

* Seril holds his nose and searches the wagon for anything of value

DM> The trail continues on from the clearing and is hidden by a bend in the road

Keltria> Killian puts the stupid mace away and gets out his favorite greataxe.

* Seril picks up some things from the wagon and grabs the undead leader's sword before rejoining the party.

Keltria> Killian stays alert, still wondering what was causing the ground to shake earlier.

Keltria> "Anything useful in the wagon Seril?"

Seril> "I found a few small things and this sword appears to be magical. We can split it up after we get away from here..."

DM> The bushes along the back of the clearing begin to rustle again

Keltria> "Yeah, good thinking.... erp!"

Keltria> Killian moves up between Keltria and the rustling bushes

DM> The tip of a muzzle emerge from the bushes and sniff the air.

Keltria> Killian watches the muzzle carefully to see what it belongs to.... (does it look insect-like?)

Keltria> We stand very still and quiet-like while wondering what's in the bushes.

DM> The muzzle looks like a mix between a lizard's shape and an insect's chitnous plating

DM> The rest of the creature emerges from the bushes it is about the size of a large cat or a small dog with no forearms, the resemblance between a lizard and an insect are definate

DM> spot check

* Keltria looks to see if there's evidence of more of the creatures

Keltria> d20+19

* Ewok rolls the dice for Keltria (d20+19) and rolled 36.

DM> No more of the creatures have appeared

Conventions that we use while playing online

Type about your character in the third person.

She did this. He did that. [Not, I did this and that.]

Type /me in front of your character's actions. IRC automatically replaces the /me with your character's name.

/me sneaks past the guard to the window becomes *KelLiras sneaks past the guard to the window.

Put what your character says in “quotes.”

“I'm going to sneak past the guard to the window. Katsu, you distract him!”

Comments made out of character (OOC) should be put in parenthesis ( ).

(brb, pizza arrived!)

Generally, everyone pretty much types their actions without clear turns (but with suitable pauses for the DM to respond). That changes during combat. For combat, we roll initiative and only send our actions to the room when the DM tells us it's our turn.

DM > Ok, the order will be Corbin, Katsu, Goblin#1, KelLiras, Goblin #2, Sigil.

DM > Corbin--go

*Corbin slashes at Goblin#1 with his sword.

Corbin rolls d20+5 for 15.

DM > Hit!

Corbin rolls 1d8+2 for 4.

DM > The goblin howls as blood spurts from the wounds, but it doesn't fall.

DM > Katsu--your turn

*Katsu wiggles his fingers and fiery missles strike Goblin #2.

To perform a secretive action, like whisper to another character or do something only the DM knows about, use Query. We call this PMing for Private Messaging.

In mIRC, in the player list, highlight the name of the person you want to PM, right-click, and select Query. A separate message window will open. Type your message and hit the [Enter] key. The message will be sent only to the person you selected.

We usually have a dice roller in the room. Its name is Ewok. To roll dice, type xdy+z where x=the number of dice to roll (you may omit this if you're rolling 1 die), y=the die size (d6=6-sided die, d20=20-sided die) and z=any modifiers.

• If you've got a +7 modifier for your Hide skill check, type d20+7 to roll a Hide check. *Ewok rolls d20+7 for 17.
• If you're using a greatsword and have a +5 strength modifier, type 2d6+5 for the damage. *Ewok rolls 2d6+5 for 12.
• 4d6 will roll a d6 4 times and add the results. *Ewok rolls 4d6 for 13.
• 4 d6 (note the space between the 4 and the d6) will roll a d6 4 times and display each d6 result. *Ewok rolls 4 d6 for 2 4 1 5.

If you have other questions not answered on our web site, feel free to come visit us on Saturdayss or post a question on Our Bulletin Board.