We occasionally run some some online games using IRC—Internet Relay Chat. This is a text-based, real time chat format, and is a pretty easy medium to use for gaming. IRC games can come pretty close to emulating the feel of a real face-to-face session. But IRC requires a little homework for the uninitiated; here's a link to a good Introduction.

One of the first things you will have to do is download an IRC client, which is a program that lets you participate in IRC. Most of us use mIRC, a great little shareware program for Windows machines. Another popular client is PIRC. Once you have downloaded the client, you'll need to install it onto your system. This is actually pretty easy; most clients have good help files. However, if all of this seems a bit intimidating, there's also the free Microsoft Chat client, which seems specifically designed for new users.

Once you have downloaded and installed your IRC client, the next step will be to connect to a network. There are several different networks out there, and (for now) Frilond games are run on Undernet, which is a game-friendly network with many servers across the globe. In general, try to log on to the Undernet server closest to where you are.

Before you log on to the network, you will have to choose a Nick (short for nickname). This unique name will appear before any of your text. For Frilond games, you should use your character's name for your Nick; Undernet will support Nicks of up to nine characters in length.

Once you have logged on to Undernet, you'll need to select a chat room —also called a channel. The channel we will be using for Frilond games will be called #Frilond (and the channel name is case sensitive). Just use your client program to join the "#Frilond" channel and you're there.

We use a neat little bot for our dice rolls; details on how to make this bot are available here. The Bot will appear in the channel to be another player, and usually has the Nick <Bear-Bot>. To use Bear-Bot, just type in "X YdZ," where X is the the number of sets, Y is the number of rolls, and Z is the type of dice. If you don't specify the number of sets or number of rolls, Bear-Bot assumes 1.

Examples:

• To roll one six-sider, type d6 or 1d6. 
• To roll five six-siders, and get the results added together as one sum, type 5d6. 
• To roll five six-siders, and get the results of each roll individually, type 5 <spacebar>d6. 
• To roll three sets of five six-siders, type 3<spacebar>5d6. 
•  Bear-Bot can also add modifiers (positive or negative), and multipliers. For example, 1d6+8 or 3<spacebar>1d10-2x5.