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Comment by e12e | Hacker News Reader

> The big discussion "groups" on the other hand were mess. It was impossible to find where new comments in old threads were posted

Funny, this is the exact same problem I see with google+.

We're using hangouts to do some cross-continent roleplaying sessions, and g+ is a natural fit for having a discussion group/notes -- unfortunately it has horrible mail notifications (you get a notification, but not the content of new comments) -- and is pretty buggy (with posts randomly disappearing when you're accessing g+ across devices).

Having a few parallels discussions is almost hopeless -- and this is just within one "community". I couldn't imagine using it for anything involving more than a handful of people.

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I recently started using trello for RP group discussion notes stuff. It's amazing for this, and has well polished apps for phones and tablets too, so you can pull up your notes on an ipad in the middle of a session if need be.

That's actually a really interesting use-case for Trello. Can you describe a bit more the workflow?

This is very recent (last few months), and it's the first time ever using trello for any of us, so we don't really have a solid workflow yet, but we have lists for each character, and another for plot-points, etc.

We also have a "GM questions" list for things like "Can I use expansion ruleset X" or "I have an idea for a new Y for your approval" or "How do you house-rule Z"

We are just getting ready to startup a new game, and I've been quite impressed with how it works during startup. In a typical game I've played in the past, characters will get joint backstory when two players are informally talking about their character concepts. With this, players can draft their character concepts in a shared space and I've seen more joint-backstory than typical (though not quite as much as when all players lived on the same floor of a dormitory in college, but that's a level of intimacy most groups don't have).

For dedicated roleplaying, I really like Roll20. It's specifically designed for that, and I've used it for several different groups, both from the DM side and the player side.

Roll20 looks interesting, not sure how well it would work for our mix of "play-by-mail" and video sessions.

I'll have a look (and at Trello too) -- but I lean towards something I can self-host if I am to make the effort of dragging the rest of the group away from g+/hangouts in the first place.

Maybe the open source remote learning tool http://bigbluebutton.org would be helpful

roll20 is great for managing the actual sessions of any table-top oriented game, but I find external tools to still be useful for between-session stuff.

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