admin side
The singlemost important rule of any forum is consistent moderation. Don't let someone get away with behavior X because they're your buddy.
It's also useful to identify the status of copyright on the board: do you as board owner assert text contributed is:
- copyright the poster
- copyright the board (which may not be legal in some places)
- all content must be under some open license (CC NC SA is pretty common)
- defaults to the board owner unless asserted otherwise
- joint board and poster (which is legal in more places than just the board alone, but still isn't legal in some places)
You need to have a required informed consent to the board rules as condition of use.
As for actually running a game, install a dice protocol on the board. It makes life just so much easier.
Giving the GM a separate subarea helps a lot, especially if they can move others posts around within that area.
Generally, it isn't useful to require specific read access permissions to a particular game, unless the subject matter is controversial (such as a moderns espionage game or a modern drug gangs theme), heavily religious themed, adult themed, or involves certain universes published by certain litigious companies (companies like Paramount and Games Workshop).
It's often of use to restrict posting to those who have requested, but it's not inherently a "best practice"
Game Side
Most online RPG's I've seen use either 1, 2 or 3 threads. The best models are the 2 thread and 3 thread models
Two Thread Models
For each chapter, usually:
- Game and Chat
- Thread one is both the narrative, the declared actions, and if included in the board, the dice rolls.
- thread two is the Out of Character chat, discussions about actions, and often, off topic table-chatter.
- Narrative and OOC
- The Narrative thread is only narrative descriptions of character actions, settings, and outcomes.
- the OOC thread is used for actions, and often also for chatter.
- Narrative and Actions
- The Narrative thread is only narrative descriptions of character actions, settings, and outcomes.
- the Actions thread is restricted to game mechanics discussions of actions
The third style is a bit constrained for many.
Three Thread Models
Again, for each chapter:
- Actions, Narrative, Chatter
- Actions is restricted to game mechanics.
- The Narrative thread is only narrative descriptions of character actions, settings, and outcomes. If it requires a die-roll, that's done in the actions thread.
- Chatter is the OOC conferencing by players, table chatter, and absence notifications.
- Rolls, Game, and Chatter.
- Rolls is just the die-rolls
- Game is both the actions and narratives
- chatter is all other discussion.
I've used version one for my current games, and have seen the other for Burning Empires on Google Wave; the rolls were separated out for technical reasons (the waves with rolls in them got ugly quick...)
Additional Threads
It is a great idea to have public character information in a separate thread, stickied.
It's also good to have any recurrent maps in another stickied thread.
Both of these I've seen and have used, and it really helps.
My group uses a private Google+ community to organise the games, and G+ alongside Roll20 to play the games. We play entirely online on a weekly basis, mainly because we're all about the same age and have small children and families, so it's difficult to get together for a face to face game.
For D&D 5th Ed you're pretty spoiled for choice, but when it all boils down the best two options are this:
Roll20, either in conjunction with G+ or on it's own. You can create an account and run your campaign through it for free, and the biggest pro (in my opinion) was the ease of use when it integrates with G+. Most everyone has a google account these days, so they also have a G+ account whether they know it or not. Once you've created your game in Roll20, you can choose to launch it in a g+ hangout.
Once you've done that for the first time, whenever you launch a G+ hangout the Roll20 app will be present, and you can launch it and select your campaign from within the hangout. Running the game each week becomes as simple as scheduling a G+ hangout event and showing up - the players don't even need Roll20 accounts, they just click the hangout invite link and game on. The D&D 5e character sheet for Roll20 seems pretty excellent too, with some dice rolling automation built into it. We're taking it for a test run soon hopefully.
The other main option right now, though it can get pricy, is Fantasy Grounds. It's not as simple for the players as Roll20 (which is, as i've said, just a link click), but if they're willing to install the program (available on Steam now as well), Fantasy Grounds is now the official online tool for D&D 5th, in partnership with Wizards of the Coast. It has excellent integration with the rules system and character sheets, as well as supporting hero lab. Some friends of mine swear by it, though it is a bit more complicated to get set up and running.
Both solutions support full voice, and I know Roll20 supports full video both in the app itself and through hangouts, as well as an online tabletop for maps, images, handouts and whatever else you like. This made it a lot easier for us to retain that "social tabletop" feeling, despite playing entirely remote. Using a large enough screen and a good set of speakers and microphone, you could play partial remote (with only a few players remote) or even with everyone in the room and disabling the voice and video altogether if you wanted.
Either way, if you do plan on getting in to running your games online through virtual tabletops, Google+ is your friend! There is a massive community of people there who will be more than happy to lend any assistance required.
Personally, I run a community geared at assisting people to set up, run or find games in the asia-pacific time zones. You can find it here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/100566740249118526694
For other timezones, such as the American zones, a great place to start is here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/107422815813208456454 It's an excellent community filled with friendly people.
Best Answer
Yes, definitely!
I have run some sessions of Dungeon World on there already, as well as a single session of Edge of the Empire - And it works like a charm.
The following is a list of pros and cons that I experienced first hand (playing RPGs, Dungeon Crawlers, Magic the Gathering and many other things on TTS, I bought it when it just came out, a long time ago) - There is much more to say for and against using the program for RPGs, but having a really long list with small nitpicks and praises will not be of use to you, so I will focus on the most relevant things.
The Pros
The cons
Final words
If you already own the Tabletop Simulator, I would advise you to just try it out for yourself. You will have to decide for yourself if the additional complexity is worth it for you and your players. (For me, personally, it was not and I returned to Roll20)
Be aware though (if you are the gm), that if you e.g. use pre-built maps (from mods) for your game, you might be setting player expectations that result in a lot of work for you. Keep that in mind.