• 4e works quite well over Google Wave. The RPG-Bones applet has a very acceptable interface for a battlemap.

• Trust your players. Don't worry about cheating. Just agree on what level of die roll honesty the group wants at the start of the game. My preference is: "You may always choose to fail any roll" but some groups may choose to play "just call them as you see them" or even "Anyone can fudge any roll." Adding technology adds complexity, and there's always a way to cheat, so don't worry about it.

• Be very clear on what the group's goals are. Do they want a tactical challenge? Do they want to share a story? In my game we have ended up toggling between combat encounters then a bit of narrative and then a bit of combat. Make sure you work this out with your group

• Figure out what to do about "timeouts" How long each player has to submit their turn, be it narrative or tactical. What happens when they don't?

• The DM must assume competency: if the player states something and there are multiple ways to achieve it, the DM must choose the most optimal way for the player.

• Explore batching: agree on when rolls are needed. If possible, let rolls ride (one roll to determine the use of the skill for at least the encounter). If at all possible, try to get batches of rolls that can be adjudicated in parallel.

• Agree on amount of shared control: can players determine scenery? Can players put words into other's mouths? The more shared control, the faster the game, but some people don't like to give it up. Try to have each player provide guidelines for writing their character. Voice, types of actions, taboo, etc.

In general, it's probably worth your while looking at our wave game (combined with the chat logs in The Back Room) For that matter, I'm happy to lead a group character creation (that worked incredibly well for my game) for your group.

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:

1. Game and Chat
   1. Thread one is both the narrative, the declared actions, and if included in the board, the dice rolls.
   2. thread two is the Out of Character chat, discussions about actions, and often, off topic table-chatter.
2. Narrative and OOC
   1. The Narrative thread is only narrative descriptions of character actions, settings, and outcomes.
   2. the OOC thread is used for actions, and often also for chatter.
3. Narrative and Actions
   1. The Narrative thread is only narrative descriptions of character actions, settings, and outcomes.
   2. 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:

1. Actions, Narrative, Chatter
   1. Actions is restricted to game mechanics.
   2. 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.
   3. Chatter is the OOC conferencing by players, table chatter, and absence notifications.
2. Rolls, Game, and Chatter.
   1. Rolls is just the die-rolls
   2. Game is both the actions and narratives
   3. 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.