is playing by istant messanging chat (like whatsapp or telegram) a thing?

[Myth27]

I know about play by post on forums and I know about playing with voice chat on roll20, but i was wondering has anyone here tried to play by using the chat on their phones? I've never seen anyone referencing this type of play.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I know about play by post on forums and I know about playing with voice chat on roll20, but i was wondering has anyone here tried to play by using the chat on their phones? I've never seen anyone referencing this type of play.

I mean, it's doable. If you've got everyone there, communicating in real time anyway, and a lot of messaging apps have voice features, unless someone in the group has some real difficulty speaking then there's just no good reason not to just use voice chat.

[Composer99]

Maybe I'm getting old, but when you write "telegram", I'm definitely not thinking of an app you get on your phones.

Apropos of your actual question, I'm not aware of using phones for that purpose. Although I'm fortunate enough to be able to play face-to-face.

[Grod_The_Giant]

It's certainly doable in theory. In practice, I'd worry about players checking out when they're not actively doing their thing. Texting is just enough slower than talking to make it tempting to check Facebook while someone else talks, but still fast enough that doing so would be disruptive.

[Morty]

I've played via text chat on a computer. That's how I've been playing for years, really, for lack of other opportunities. It's definitely doable, if slower than voice chat or face-to-face play.

[Lemmy]

I've never done it on the phone, but I did have players play via text on Discord / Roll20 because they were unable or unwilling to use voice chat.

[prabe]

One of the gaming groups I'm in has been meeting Sunday afternoons via IM for ... just about twenty years ago. Started in IRC, migrated to Yahoo Messenger, now via Trillian. I joined sometime around 2005. Most of the group played when they were in grad school together, and I joined later (after being invited by two of the players). It works pretty well, and it keeps a group of people who were (and are) close friends from falling out of touch. While one of the participants ... occasionally loses his arguments with technology, it works pretty well. From time to time, some of us get together to play board games on Skype, but for the most part we haven't yet migrated to voice or video for RPGs (probably because of the one player with tech issues, and because there's probably more multitasking that goes on when gaming via IM than would otherwise).

[EccentricCircle]

It's doable, but not ideal. I ran a game over MSN messenger for a little over a year circa 2006-2007. We'd just dispersed to different unis, and wanted to keep the group together. However not everyone had webcams, or the bandwidth to allow for voice and video.
It worked, but honestly, in this day and age... There are so many good voice and video options, virtual tabletops etc, that it's never been easier to do online games. I really wouldn't recommend using text unless there is a really good reason to not use voice at this point.

As a sidenote, in the days before virtual tabletops, i used to email out word docs containing the battlemap. Then we'd spend half the time saying "orc one moves fro. E5 to C6..." Etc, and hoping that everyone updated their local copy of the document .

[LordCdrMilitant]

Maybe I'm getting old, but when you write "telegram", I'm definitely not thinking of an app you get on your phones.

Apropos of your actual question, I'm not aware of using phones for that purpose. Although I'm fortunate enough to be able to play face-to-face.

That's okay, I wasn't thinking of phone apps either.

I imagine it would be difficult to play D&D via telegram, unless you were role-playing as turn-of-the-century individuals far away from each other.

[King of Nowhere]

My group tried to play via skype when someone was ill. Didn't work. Can't hear well over voice chat. Especially because my table has a lot of people talking together.
Perhaps with better hardware, or with a quieter group

[Kelb_Panthera]

My group plays over roll20 for the virtual tabletop and discord for voice. Kinda have to when the Atlantic sits between 2 of us and the rest. The input lag for a transatlantic connection can sometimes cause a bit of confusion in discussions but it's pretty minor.

[legomaster00156]

I've never done it on the phone, but I did have players play via text on Discord / Roll20 because they were unable or unwilling to use voice chat.

I do this. It works pretty well.

[comicshorse]

We played a game over Skype for many years. It worked fine if everybody was on Skype playing with only one player on Skype (via laptop) didn't work as he get getting drowned out

[1of3]

We used Twitter accounts once, but only in a supportive way, as in: That is what the characters would twitter. Actually play was voice chat.