Original Intent (Score 1)

I think that the discussion has drifted form the original intent of the posting. If I'm reading the original posting right, the intent of this person is to keep in touch with his old friends in a live, flesh and blood manner while RPGing with them. The key here would be to recreate the whole, "your buddies sitting at the table and chit chatting while playing" feeling. To include those things like tone inflection in voice and goofy dances of victory and the such while not being in the same room. The IRC concepts don't seem to me to fit what this person's intent is. The key is personal interactions at a level that is not available (identically, nut substitutionally) in classic text or possibly even voice only methods as compared to being in the same room. After creating that basic atmosphere, then add on top of it things like dice rolling or map sharing that work well in the environment. I think that throughout the postings so far, all of these elements have been hit, but not necessarily in a manner that is a monolithic fully functional solution. Aspects discussed could be combined in a mostly workable pattern, but not readily deployable, or maybe so, but that's for discussion spawned from this to decide. Another issue is, as has been hit upon in previous posts, what's the bandwidth? That's the key to deciding the proper method. If there are a lot of people on, (Insert favorite deity here) forbid, dial-up, IRC may be the only viable choice... And so on for different bandwidth. I also get the impression that a setup supported by Microsoft OSes is a plus, but I think the solutions so far are compatible with this. Anyways, I'm just trying to steer a discussion over to what I believe was the original intent of the post, but feel free to disagree or not steer that way.