Individual battle via an email based game

[Grinster]

I've been trying to see if this subject has been covered in any prior threads but I've had little luck so far...so please forgive me if this has been hashed out somewhere before.

I run a Birthright game via an electronic forum based on the excellent rules created by this group (3.5). One story in my game, which has taken almost a year and half of real time to complete, now has a powerful PC cleric battling a leader of a well known church. This particular PC loves epic story lines and I’ve done my very best to make this plot work to a point of final conflict.

And now for the question…for those of you who have experience in running PBEM games, what do you believe is the most enjoyable and also most efficient method to complete individual combat when the game occurs via email (or by an electronic forum)? Most of the game to this point (two years of actual game time) has been very high level actions, which have been relatively easy to complete through rules for character, court, or domain actions.

I’m having a hard time imagining how performing all the nuances of individual combat could be completed via email in an efficient manner (in other words it would take forever and bore everyone to death).

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Mirviriam]

If you can setup a time for them to meet in same channel with you...use irc or aol since aol chat is easy & has the built in random number generator for combat.

You can do chunks of it or all at once - way better than turn by turn on forum...imagion it like a duel, where you state the time & place :)

[Grinster]

Thanks for the suggestion. I had thought of using some sort of voice-over-protocol software and fortunately, I already use Ventrilo while participating in various online games.

You pretty much summed up what I had previously thought about the difficulty of performing any kind of combat turns through an electronic forum and ways of making the encounter much more user friendly.