Not all web tools are created equal. Some — such as LiveJournal, WordPress or ToodleDo caught me from the moment I signed up for the service. Others are used haltingly, at least at first, and slowly worm their way into regular use.

Twitter falls into the latter category.

When we first joined Twitter, we barely used it. It was not until we found Tweetie for iPhone and the Tweetdeck desktop client that we became heavy Twitter users. It seems that it was not the service that was the problem, so much as the interface.

Eventually, Twitter purchased Tweetie, and it became Twitter for iPhone.

At first we shrugged – why care?

Then we applauded. Good on Twitter to recognize their user-interface weakness and go out and acquire a company that designed a pretty good one.

Then we shrieked in horror, as the whole thing backfired. Rather than the Tweetie expertise in creating a good user experience for the tweeters out there leading to an improvement to the Twitter interface on other platforms, Twitter instead decided to redesign Tweetie into something I no longer wanted to use.

Today, I use Tweetdeck everywhere — on my phone, on my computer. I rarely remember my dreams, but I’m probably using it there, too.

And now Twitter looks poised to purchase Tweetdeck. To this we say to Twitter: keep your hands off my stuff!

Seriously, Twitter people. You have a great service, but are terrible at designing interfaces for that service. If you do buy Tweetdeck, we will not wait to see what you do with it, but begin searching immediately for a replacement — your interface issues are now part and parcel of what it means to be Twitter. Things would be better if you would accept that and play to your strengths.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the Internet, Facebook is rumored to be looking at the purchase of Skype.

If there ever were two services that we use reluctantly, they would be Facebook and Skype.

Facebook is the network that nobody seemingly uses willingly — we all interact on Facebook not because we love it, but because everybody else is there. Every few months, the people at Facebook make design changes that annoy its users. And at least twice a year, they introduce a change which undermines the privacy of their users.

Skype is another service that people use because it is there. Much as Facebook is the default social network, Skype is the default choice for VoIP. Which means that if you want to video-chat with your mother over the Internet, there are no other choices. Call quality is surprisingly (but consistently) poor.

Lately, Skype has been experiencing security issues, with their Mac and Android versions putting users at risk.

At least if Facebook took over, we could be reasonably certain that the leaking of confidential user data to third parties was intentional.

(Of course, after writing this, it is revealed that Microsoft has bought Skype. So we can presumably expect Skype to become yet another quality Microsoft product, free of bugs and never-ending security updates.)

Perhaps we are entering an age of electronic consolidation — the point in an industry where firms merge in order to leverage their talents across every aspect of the industry.

In which case — with the biggest players all having significant flaws — we may all be doomed.

This year’s — and last’s, come to think of it — personal roleplaying renaissance has been interesting. All my players were new to gaming back at the beginning of last year, when we began. And while my new group is quite a bit of fun, I still hold some nostalgia for those who I played with previously. We were all close friends, and we had all been playing roleplaying games since we were children.

Here in London, I have the choice of close friends who are new to roleplaying or experienced strangers. And my mind turns to ways in which a remote game would be possible, and this dichotomy might be resolved.

Play by mail

The first solution that comes to mind is one that has been tried, tested, and repeatedly failed by my group: play by e-mail. This was first tested when my old roleplaying group graduated from University, and again when we became more geographically diverse.

Each and every one of these play-by-email games floundered.

On the surface, this should not have happened. All of us spend “too much” time online, are avid writers, readers and roleplayers. We made an assumption that changing the game into a written story format would work well for us, but it failed all three times it was attempted, no matter who was running it.

It turns out that e-mail games have a few detrimental things that need to be worked out logistically in order to function.

First, there is the problem of writing styles. Each player would write their character’s actions and scenes at a different place, find different places to stop for the GM’s input — or that of another PC — and when not in the same place, with different pacing. This means some players fall behind, others move ahead. Different playing styles become more pronounced, and the tools for dealing with them are not the same as they are around a table — not that I can give much advice on these tools, as I have not had much success in running these games.

Second, there is the problem of encounters. Long drawn out conversations can take tens, or even hundreds, of e-mails. Combat is drawn out as players describe their actions, the GM describes the resolution of those actions … and that’s two e-mails for one round with one character. You could not play a 4E D&D game with its long fights over e-mail.

Finally, there is the problem of volume. When playing, I found these campaigns to be easy. But as a GM, they became logistical nightmares. The e-mails could not just be fired off (usually), but often had to be thought out, written carefully, and sent. And the more players you had, the more e-mails were required. In the end, if you have a normal-sized group for tabletop play, it can become too much.

Video conferencing

But that was then, this is now, and we would like to explore further options that might now be available.

Conference calls and speaker phones have been with us with some time. But as anybody who has been in a business meeting or two knows, it is easy to forget to participate or crowd people out who are on the other end of the phone, and those running the meetings need to take care to remember who is on the other end of the line and not saying anything. And while roleplaying by conference call sounds possible, it is hard to believe that it would be fun.

But what of video conferencing?

With the near universality of VOIP (such as Skype), this is certainly a possibility, but one that I have not tried. Gnome Stew — and its commenters — offer up some Skype advice which sounds useful, and gets me thinking about attempting a Skype-based game at some point.

The Chatroom

Chatrooms seem to be a thing of the past. In the early days of the Internet, they were all the rage — go online, go to a chatroom, and find some strangers (or friends!) to chat with. Eventually they got overrun with bots, and this blogger no longer has any idea whether or not they still exist.

Still, they strike me as an ideal interactive tool for remote roleplaying.

If the chatrooms are private — accessible only to those playing — you can have a main chatroom: The Game Table. If the party splits up, you can divvy them into two chatrooms, monitor who is in each (the GM should be the only one in both) and play the two groups near-simultaneously. One-on-one conversations can occur through private messaging.

Encounters can happen in real-time, in a way that e-mail does not allow. Radio silence which is often required in conference calls (making the event less friendly and fun) does not need to be maintained, as people can talk on the side all they want — even have an extra room for it, players can have multiple windows open at once.

The Web Destination

Building on the idea of a chatroom as the ideal remote gaming platform, what about a full website for your game? There is no shortage of open source software out there, nor of cheap — or even free — hosting solutions.

Require a log in. Have chatrooms present for the gaming sessions. A message board/discussion forum for between games. Character sheets, character illustrations, player/character blogs. An online dice-roller.

All of which sounds like a lot of work. But who said running a game was easy?

Never forget the drawbacks

A piece of advice for those who intend to attempt a long-distance game: never forget the drawbacks.

While we outlined the problems with running games via e-mail above, our other methods cause difficulty as well. Video conferencing requires good lighting and background noise be kept to a minimum — that includes music, chit-chat, young children and your significant other watching TV.

Chat rooms suffer from the opposite effect. Distractions can be invisible, and with a lack of face-to-face interaction, keeping sufficient discipline around the “table” to have the game moving will likely be difficult. Make sure that your players are going to be sufficiently dedicated to the game before you begin.

And the website? That’s a lot of work if you are not sure that the chatroom method is going to work for your group.

Finally, whatever you do, do not forget about time zones. Any sufficiently diverse group of players, geographically-speaking, will be spread across multiple time zones. Real-time games need everybody to be awake and free to play simultaneously. The more time zones that are involved, the more difficult this becomes.

(Top image is the original artwork for the Dungeons and Dragons game. Bottom image is from Pen and Paper Portal)

The Huffington Post has a Wellness section. Here’s why you should never take the advice found within.

eBay’s license to use the technology used in their Skype service has expired, and soon Skype may close its doors as a result.

Finally, Friday is a great day to share news about productivity at work. The world of science today tells us that playing games at work has a positive correlation with the ability to multitask.