Tabletop Gaming Over the 'Net?

kebes asks: "I'm the GM for a group that has been gaming together for about 12 years. We're starting to move away from each other, and want to switch to playing our tabletop RPG online. So far, we've been using a combination of TeamSpeak and IRC. It works, but is not ideal. What protocol/chat service and applications would make for a great online gaming solution? The voice and text chat abilities are crucial, but having a collaborative white-board would greatly help. Ideally, the solution would be integrated (one app), allow logging of the session, run on multiple platforms (Mac OS X, Linux, Windows), work with web-cams, and permit file-transfers. What service or app (or combination thereof) would work best for our needs? Anyone else have stories of success or failure?"

Not exactly what you had in mind, but

[Ohreally_factor]

Have you ever checked out Giant in the Playground [giantitp.com]? They actually play by post in the forums over there. Besides which, the comic Order of the Stick [giantitp.com] is the funniest RPG comic I've ever read. It actually makes me want to get back into gaming and learn these newfangled 3.0 rules.

Fantasy Grounds

[mainframemouse]

I've been looking for this kind of software for a couple of years now. OpenRPG is as user frindly as open source software was 10 years ago. I'd given up until I stunmbled upon Fantasy Grounds [fantasygrounds.com]. It is almost every thing I've been looking for. I've paid up and converting it now so I can run SLA industries. This along with Teamspeak and MorphVOX [screamingbee.com] I'm looking forward to running some great games.

Have you tried monkeys?

[chshrkt]

Seriously, I have been looking at ScreenMonkey [screenmonkeyplanet.com] which is a server program that the GM runs, and then the players connect via a webclient. They have two different web interfaces, an "Advenced" mode for IE6 and Firefox, and a "Generic" which will work on almost any browser, including my Treo650.
Pretty brilliant in my eyes.

Download the free ScreenMonkey Lite [nbos.com], with the encounter map on the same page.
The interface for the Lite version has chat, dice rolling, and is bascally recreating having a big tabletop map with minitures.