This past Monday, some friends and I got together and played d20 Future… Over the online!
It was amazing. We used Skype to talk to each other (though, we are looking for a better solution — Skype only allows five connections at once). This let us communicate at a decent speed, unlike chatting over IRC or some such.
We used Gametable, a neat little utility that shares a game board among all players. You can draw on it, move icons around its surface, and chat. Being able to move tokens and draw gave a nice simulation of a game board, and the chat box was a great place to keep out of game comments and such. When someone isn’t currently involved in the game, there is a tendency to make wise-cracks. The chatbox provided a nice non-disruptive way to do so. You can even make your own icons for your character and it pushes the icon to the other players so they can see it too. I really do recommend this program.
The combination of voice chat and a shared drawing space really made it feel like everyone was there. There were even advantages to real-life play in that private conversations were a lot easier.
It wasn’t perfect. I felt like the lack of directional voice really made it hard to parse when two people were speaking at the same time, also the lack of the visual cue of their mouths moving. Plus the sound quality itself wasn’t perfect, there were times when someone would get cut off.
But if that were solved, I think this would be the ultimate form of gaming. There really are a lot of advantages to this system, like you mentioned.
That sounds cool.