What makes a good online DM?

[Merc]

If you're looking specifically towards online DMs, then the most important thing, I think is: Is the DM using the online medium to the best of their capability to grab hold the attention of his players and keep it in the game? Online DMing is both easier and harder than its oral counterpart. If you were playing at a table, you have tools such as the tone of your voice to set the mood, gestures you make with your hands, etc. You engage your players the very moment you begin to speak. With the typed medium, such as forum posts or IRC real-time play, you lack all these tools. Your players are left waiting, and their attentions can and will wander. They can't do anything while you type, they do not see what you type as you type it. At best, they can tell that you are, in fact, typing -something- (either they let you know, or some programs show if someone is typing), but as to what this is, they have zero clue. So you have to type. What you do with the time you're typing, then, is what shows the quality of that online DM. If you take too long typing or making a post, players will lose interest. With a forum game, they'll check more infrequently, with a real-time game, they'll start alt-tabbing, and that breaks the pacing and mood.

I don't think you can eliminate attention splits with online gaming. You can try, but the internet is a fundamentally multitasking media. Any player probably has a browser window or two open, some extra chat windows, a music player going, and maybe some other stuff. That kettle of fish is already spilled all over the steps of online gaming. It's a lot easier to eliminate these in RL gaming(And more critical, but that's an aside), and almost impossible to do and enforce with online gaming. Even if you ask your players to stay focused, you can't stop them if they get bored. New entertainment's a mouseclick away!  I feel an online DM is always competing for PCs attention. What do you think?

Oh, agreed. An online DM definitely is competing for the PCs attention. That's why I think a sign of a good online DM is how well they can keep their players focused, or at least alt-tabbing back repeatedly. Hence, good descriptions that can jog a player's imagination is a must. There's only so much a player can think of with a flat background, but if you add those chandelier's to swing with, tables to flip over, stairs to slide down to, walls to jump off of, music to sway to, well, you're giving the player more tools to play with, thus more tools to keep him entertained.

There's times that a player simply doesn't get much action in-game. Keeping them active through ooc chatter helps keeps them involved in the game, even when it doesn't particularly affect their characters. Of course, this isn't purely on the DM's neck, other players can and should participate as well, but it is another thing a good online DM can do. Speaking of this, obviously, I think it's important for an online DM to use their time well. Because people have to type, a game that's played in a typed medium will always take much much longer than one played orally. For the love of god, DON'T leave players hanging for hours with nothing to do. Just...don't. There's only so much ooc chatter can do to keep a player from feeling forgotten.

I'm of two minds of this. While I agree leaving people hanging is exactly what you should be avoiding due to easy attention drift online, sometimes it's inevitable despite your best efforts. Hell, sometimes the group does it to themselves by having one PC go ahead or do something by themselves. I always struggle to handle these situations well, even if just comes down to being entertaining in the OOC room.

Oh, definitely there's going to be some times when a player just won't be around. But if he comes to a session, and you make him wait 4-5 hours to do something, well that kinda sucks. Remember those two games I often mention where Drac and I had to wait that long to get introduced into the scene? Besides the obvious boredom in waiting, even with some participation in OOC chatter, once you do show up in the scene, you may often feel like a third wheel, and others players may subconsciously treat them as such as well, seeing them as a disruption to the pace they've set going with the DM. A good DM will be able to adjust for this, and ease the new player in, but...I've generally noticed, if a DM ends up waiting that long to introduce the character, by that point it's more like 'FINE ALREADY, QUIT BITCHING, HERE YOU GO, INTRO! What? Things are moving too fast for you now? Oh for crying out loud!' from those DMs.

Query: Why are people afraid of being redundant? Is there something inherently bad about posting much of the same thought a little after someone else does it?

Well, for me, I don't mind -occassional- redundancy. The thing is, if you have an image of a character, and that isn't a part of it, besides the whole 'feel a little stupid' mentality, it can be a little jarring to your own internal pacing because you don't feel your character is acting like he should, so you start feeling a little awkward. I suppose that's why I'm comfortable with quiet or jokey characters. It's not quite as jarring if I choose to be silent or similarly to go ahead and type the redundant double post.

[Dracos]

If you're looking specifically towards online DMs, then the most important thing, I think is: Is the DM using the online medium to the best of their capability to grab hold the attention of his players and keep it in the game? Online DMing is both easier and harder than its oral counterpart. If you were playing at a table, you have tools such as the tone of your voice to set the mood, gestures you make with your hands, etc. You engage your players the very moment you begin to speak. With the typed medium, such as forum posts or IRC real-time play, you lack all these tools. Your players are left waiting, and their attentions can and will wander. They can't do anything while you type, they do not see what you type as you type it. At best, they can tell that you are, in fact, typing -something- (either they let you know, or some programs show if someone is typing), but as to what this is, they have zero clue. So you have to type. What you do with the time you're typing, then, is what shows the quality of that online DM. If you take too long typing or making a post, players will lose interest. With a forum game, they'll check more infrequently, with a real-time game, they'll start alt-tabbing, and that breaks the pacing and mood.

I don't think you can eliminate attention splits with online gaming. You can try, but the internet is a fundamentally multitasking media. Any player probably has a browser window or two open, some extra chat windows, a music player going, and maybe some other stuff. That kettle of fish is already spilled all over the steps of online gaming. It's a lot easier to eliminate these in RL gaming(And more critical, but that's an aside), and almost impossible to do and enforce with online gaming. Even if you ask your players to stay focused, you can't stop them if they get bored. New entertainment's a mouseclick away!  I feel an online DM is always competing for PCs attention. What do you think?

Online DMs can also much more markedly separate the in-character from the out-of-character. Separate forum threads, or different channels, or just markers to show what's ooc and what's ic.

Yes. I'm of a firm opinion that a lively OOC channel is just as important for gaming as lively IC channel. That way you have two separate paths to getting and keeping the attention of your players, as well as letting the group keep each others attention.

There's times that a player simply doesn't get much action in-game. Keeping them active through ooc chatter helps keeps them involved in the game, even when it doesn't particularly affect their characters. Of course, this isn't purely on the DM's neck, other players can and should participate as well, but it is another thing a good online DM can do. Speaking of this, obviously, I think it's important for an online DM to use their time well. Because people have to type, a game that's played in a typed medium will always take much much longer than one played orally. For the love of god, DON'T leave players hanging for hours with nothing to do. Just...don't. There's only so much ooc chatter can do to keep a player from feeling forgotten.

I'm of two minds of this. While I agree leaving people hanging is exactly what you should be avoiding due to easy attention drift online, sometimes it's inevitable despite your best efforts. Hell, sometimes the group does it to themselves by having one PC go ahead or do something by themselves. I always struggle to handle these situations well, even if just comes down to being entertaining in the OOC room.

It's absolutely true that online games by default suffer from multitasking (especially from ADD folks that never stop *whistles*).  But there's a pro to this:  Players can multitask without it killing the game.  I've sat through games where people actively get up and wander around, grabbing food, going and playing a game, etc in face to face games.  1 person doing that positively can shatter the mood, whereas in online, someone can get up and go to the bathroom and nobody even knows it happened.  A person fiddling with their DS is a nightmare in face to face, while it's kind of irrelevant online.

A lively OOC channel is super important and part of this of course.   I've watched games descend into jokes that leave me going as its happening "man, I can feel 20-30 minutes passing that isn't being played.  This game won't happen again for 1-2 weeks.  This sucks'.  Because face to face only has 1 communication channel (aside from handing written notes), if one or more players is telling a joke (relevant or not to the game), it occupies that space.  Online, that can all be shunted into an OOC channel.  This helps with focus as even when folks are joking around, there's not necessarily even a break in the in character postings.  One doesn't overwhelm the other.  

Another classic scene is secret information.  In face-to-face, this is done with passed notes or worse, the DM and some part of the group leaving the table for 5-30 minutes as the rest of the party sort of goes 'uh'.  Avoiding the need for secret information/1 person events is pretty important face to face.

It's less important, especially for a fast typer, online.  Everyone can have many communication channels, private and otherwise.  It's very much a possible setup to have half the party in one scene and half the party in another in two rooms side by side, while privately letting the evil paladin know what his lord is doing and privately letting the good cleric know he picked up on some evil going on.  Try doing that in a face to face game.

[Merc]

I'd forgotten the benefit of secret information and the like. Yeah, that's definitely a plus with online games. Plus a lot of players may whisper you for clarification on something, preferring to keep it private for whatever reason, and they can do so online, not so in real life. People are most apt to get curious about passed notes, but wouldn't notice anything in an online game.

Plus, there's more potential for backstabbery because of the secrecy (although for whatever reason, I've never seen us actually use this in an online game, outside of Dune's secret missions in his avatar game).

[Dracos]

Dune uses it rarely.  I generally avoid it for that purpose.  Confusion or mismatched information is one thing, but gaming is a social medium generally populated by socially misfit folks.

Betrayal within party is just something that usually does not go very well with that.  Few players tend to roll with it well.  Huitzil for instance took it the furthest in any game here and not only did it partially contribute to the disintegration of his game, but also set Brian up to just be an outlier as the one playing the traitor.

It usually takes either a particularly mature RP group or a group where its well defined that betrayal is part of the narrative space to play it well.  In a standard 4 person dungeon crawl group, the tone is too light for it.