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Playing D&D in a chat-based environment requires a few tricks.

The DM puts descriptive text in bold:

• Darth Krzysztof > Your footsteps echo throughout the Mortuary’s entrance hall, and its pervasive cold makes you shiver.

If there’s a big brick of text, along with a map or illustration, I’ll try to just e-mail it to you during the game.

Anything your character attempts gets an * asterisk on either side:

• Jennifer > * Sheen braces her longspear and waits for a charge. *
  
• mpw > * Talan searches for secret doors. *
  
  

Any dialog goes in “quotes.” If it isn’t obvious who’s speaking, or to whom, use the character name. You can also add physical business:

• Darth Krzysztof > Joris: “Do you know where we are? DO YOU?!”
  
• Jennifer > Sheen whispers to Talan: “Can we trust him?”
  
• mpw > * Grimacing, Talan draws his blades. * “To the death, then.”
  
  

Please put out-of-character conversation in (parentheses).

• Darth Krzysztof > * The lemure swings its blobby “arms” at Sheen! *
  
• Darth Krzysztof > (does 12 hit?)
  
• Jennifer > (no, AC 17)
  
• Darth Krzysztof > * But she easily dodges the blow *
  
  

• Darth Krzysztof > Toranna: “That’s all I know.”
  
• mpw > (is she lying?)
  
• Darth Krzysztof > (roll Sense Motive)
  
• mpw > (3)
  
• Darth Krzysztof > (if she is, you can’t tell)
  
• mpw > (damn) Talan: “I thank you for your time.”
  

Since we’re not using a battle grid, I don’t want to get hung up on movement-based attacks of opportunity, unless it’s flagrantly obvious that one is called for.

Finally, I trust you to roll your own dice, but if you’d rather “make your rolls in the open,” typing this script in an AIM chat window will generate random numbers:
//roll-dice#-sides#

So, if you need to roll 1d20, type //roll-dice1-sides20. Please note that this won’t work in an IM window, or in Yahoo! Messsenger, just an AIM chat window.