RPG Soapbox

So, not necessarily something that calls for much discussion (aside from possibly "Who else has tried this? How has it worked for you?") but...

Something we started doing with Heroes of Creation a couple months back; all of the STs got skype (other programs would almost certainly work), and we started up a big group chat on there as a way to open up discussion among the ST team. Since then... well, it has its peaks and lulls, and the noise-to-signal ratio gets horrendous at times, but with the near-constant discourse (advantage of going this route, the conversation can keep going even when you log out, and you get the back-log when you return - whether you want to read back through it or ask for a summary) we're managing to hash things out much quicker (serious points of discussion still get kicked over to the forums to make sure everyone gets a chance to read and contribute, but the smaller back-and-forth portions that frequently go into such things can be handled via IM over a few minutes rather than hours or days), and the regular chatter has, I think, helped really bring the team together, at least relative to where we would be otherwise.

I've seen it used in games for various things... pack chats.. cabals... coteries.. circles (yeah I mostly play WoD). It works really well other then the one case I know of where an ST tried to demand logs being handed over because they suspected a group of plotting against them ooc, even though this chat had ruled IM clients were not considered IC and could not be used for IC.

An ST demanding to get logs from an IM discussion is beyond stupid... Since yeah, they can't count as IC or be official (though I did hear about a case of an ST running scenes over IMs, probably because of the chat having logs).