Voice Chat vs Text: Uses?

So I'm about to start my first Roll20 Campaign with some RL friends that are just too far apart to commute to a common gaming place (plus some have kids, and this removes the need for a baby sitter). So for a RP moderate game, what do you use for what? My lean now is to save the chat window text ONLY for combat rolls, re-rolls, and that sort of thing and then use Voice for OOC and IC chatter. I thought briefly about changing it to be during RP sessions we do it all in voice/video but during combat all IC chatter needs to be in text and all voice chatter needs to be OOC communication about the fight. Or am I overthinking it?

I would say you're overthinking it. In my groups, we use Google Hangouts for the OOC and IC chatter (wish we had more IC, but that's just my players..). We use the text chat for die rolls and whispers, and as a back channel for not interrupting someone who's on a roll (ba-bum-ching!). I'd suggest starting with the video/voice and seeing how things naturally play out.

Kristin C. said: If you want to do some roleplaying in text chat, I'd suggest utilizing inline rolls which will keep the rolling text spam to a minimum. Yeah I want to try to get some macros put together so that I can do more "everyone roll iniative" and it all just happens with one button click for each. As it is we're using the 4e DND character sheets that have premade power pages so a lot of basic rolls will just "happen" with one click off their character sheets.

Aaron said: I would say you're overthinking it. In my groups, we use Google Hangouts for the OOC and IC chatter (wish we had more IC, but that's just my players..). We use the text chat for die rolls and whispers, and as a back channel for not interrupting someone who's on a roll (ba-bum-ching!). I'd suggest starting with the video/voice and seeing how things naturally play out. Pretty much this. Chat is used almost exclusively for die rolls and messages when someone else is talking. Voice chat is used by everything else.

Rob O. said: Or am I overthinking it? You are. Just use what you and your group wants and feels comfortable with. My game is pure text and we use the game text for IC text and skype for OOC text. This works fine for us.

Chat for in character, text for rolls, jokes, and characters who aren't in focus. ("Man, the elf's been with the secret agent a long time..." kind of stuff).

What I and two of my fellow GMs do is the GM uses voice chat, the players use text chat. GMs put loot in text chat, plus any other notes they want to make sure get saved in chat archive, and players are free to put notes in the archive as well.

As an inexperienced player, I'd think text would be good for improvising or describing actions, both as the GM and the Player. Gives you a bit of a buffer to think about and look at what you are going to say before you say it, instead of having to vocalize it all on the spot

Sam said: Pretty much this. Chat is used almost exclusively for die rolls and messages when someone else is talking. Voice chat is used by everything else. Same here, teamspeak for talking, ingame chatter, npc conversations what have you. Things like rolls, macros, system messages like time of day..etc is all done in chat. Basically anything youd do in real table top with voice we do in voice chat, anything thats a mechanic of the game (rolls, saves, combat rolls) is done in chat.