I'm probably just fantasizing for even HOPING for something like this, but Age of Anarchy's roleplaying community had a brilliant solution. Chatbots were 100% allowed in that game so long as ALL they did was relay text, so the leader of the largest RP organization set up a number of chatbots on free accounts whose sole purpose was to monitor their organization (linkshell/guild equivalent) channel and relay it to all the other affiliated RP orgs. Each org had their own chatbot and would preface what they relayed with an ID tag saying which org it came from, if not their own. Via specific prefaces, you could talk to only your own org, or to every org on the network. It was fantastic and worked great since each organization in our faction was, ICly, a different bureau or department of a megacorporation. There were also chatrooms that were independant of party status or zone. Anyone from anywhere could hop in if they knew the room's name, if it wasn't password protected. So, there was an open access roleplayer's comm channel that nearly always had someone at least lurking.
It's way too much to hope for and would be difficult to explain in a "low tech" fantasy setting, but man... I miss having such easy, wide-ranging access to RPers at my fingertips.
Oh, was I supposed to say something practical? I am so not internet savvy, but how about this: Some form of organization-specific IM chatroom / IRC channel / etc that persists out-of-game and is open access to anyone who is a member ICly. We could have the Rogue's Guild IRC channel, the Knight Protectors AIM chatroom, the Merchant Symposium Skype chat, the College of Magical Studies Ventrilo server, etcetera. I recognize this isn't universally practical as not all of us will have access to a PC while we're playing, but it is something to consider. In addition to that, we could always have an IC Organizations section of this forum, where each organization can maintain its own sub-forum in a nice, non-LS specific centralized locale.
It's way too much to hope for and would be difficult to explain in a "low tech" fantasy setting, but man... I miss having such easy, wide-ranging access to RPers at my fingertips.
Oh, was I supposed to say something practical? I am so not internet savvy, but how about this: Some form of organization-specific IM chatroom / IRC channel / etc that persists out-of-game and is open access to anyone who is a member ICly. We could have the Rogue's Guild IRC channel, the Knight Protectors AIM chatroom, the Merchant Symposium Skype chat, the College of Magical Studies Ventrilo server, etcetera. I recognize this isn't universally practical as not all of us will have access to a PC while we're playing, but it is something to consider. In addition to that, we could always have an IC Organizations section of this forum, where each organization can maintain its own sub-forum in a nice, non-LS specific centralized locale.
