[See also our introduction to Frilond IRC Games]

One of the hardest parts about any online chat is keeping track of multiple, disjointed, and simultaneous conversations—and having to decipher all of this and respond in real time. And online role-playing games add another layer of complexity: people can also speak in and out of character.

Being able to follow online games takes a bit of practice. But after watching a few games and reading many game transcripts, I've found that most groups also use some sort of shorthand to help flag what is going on. Here follows a few conventions should also help straighten things out.

1. Distinguish between in-character and out-of-character comments. Once an IRC game has started, most people assume that they are reading in-character comments. It's often helpful to flag out-of-character comments with something like "OOC" or by putting the comment in parenthesis.

2. Use stage directions to indicate delivery. Spoken language offers all sorts of important cues to understanding a message, including volume, speed, and inflection. Because chat doesn't allow for such cues, it's often helpful to add some sort of short, descriptive tag, like stage directions in a play. All caps can be used to represent shouting.

3. Identify the speaker and the recipient. If you are running more than one character, it's crucial to identify which of your characters is actually talking. And if you are addressing a specific character, please specify which character.

4. Distinguish spoken words from physical actions or directions. Many online gamers flag action descriptions with colons, before and after: 

Stars or @ signs are also common.