What's text only game like?

Hello! I was wondering what's text only games like? Is it just more writing or is it more like RPG (with more exact stats and numbers)?

In my experience, text-only games tend to have more role-play over "roll-play". Since you lose out on a lot of what makes up human communication (tone of voice, for example, and facial expressions/gestures if you're playing with video) players tend to make up for it by expressing their characters' actions more explicitly.

Text-only is generally rarely 'text only'. It's often a combination of text, with voice for OOC to help speed the game up, often to keep records of what the party has done without a record-keeper, or to place an emphasis on character and story over combat and numbers.
As a result, it tends to be slower paced, but more character driven overall. The story takes the forefront over heavy combat, and often results in characters who are infinitely more complex and fleshed out than those in voice-only games, in my experience.

It also gives the players and GMs more freedom to tell stories in the interim between sessions - often players who participate in text-only games engage in more storytelling and creative writing about their characters than in other games - in my experience.

At least in my experience it allows for a lot more variety story-and-character wise. It's easier for someone to play something they're not- a smartass, a schemer, someone of the other gender, you name it- because while typing a response you can go back and edit real quick if you realize something sounds stupid- which you can't do if you just said it aloud. Also- although I admit I've only seen one 'voice' game before- it seems to me to be a LOT more immersive. the "I do x" or "I tell the bartender no" stuff from voice becomes much more detailed in how it happened, and dialogue becomes actual dialogue instead of people just saying the general idea of what they're saying. 

Mind, I admit that voice games might not ALL be like that, as I've only had the one, but it seemed to me that there was almost no actual attempt at getting in char or the escapist angles, but a focus entirely on 'roll those dice.'  

I've ran text based games here since I joined here in 2012. The style varies from GM to GM but as people have indicated it is more story style than stats and mechanics but there is mechanics involved. 

Now this is just a small snip or two of a summary (the mechanics were removed) of a game I'm running on roll20 but not all games are like this.

Somewhere in the Rifts a voidjammer is under attack from pirates. Klaxons sounding, monitors flashing alerts as the damage is inflicted on the ship., the air is growing thick with the acrid smell of something burning until life support sucks it away to the scrubbers. The subliminal vibration of the engines disappear but echoes radiates through the plating as two pirate ships attach themselves to the hull.

Cloey is holding on to a nearby console, while studying the readouts from the engines as she is muttering something about how dare they hurt her baby, looks up to say “Cutting through the hull in Cargo bay 4 and 9”. Atty, quivering in excitement, is crouched poised to rush off into battle while Atty double checks Atty's weapons.

Rev, standing balanced, as the rocking of the ship is a natural feel to him. Without thought, he grins while efficiently checking his weapons and thinking about where to ambush the soon to be boarders.

Nator moving back and forth between a viewscreen showing the pirates ships which looks to worth a decent amount of credits and an internal monitor showing his small salvager ship “Fido” being exposed to vacuum as the pirates cut a hole in the hull.

Oda is jabbering in his native tongue as he is trying to twirl the mule about in an effort to dodge the attacks but soon realizes how futile that was as two of the pirate darts attach to the ship. Brossu laments to his buddy “Oda, I swear it was suppose to be a simple cargo run” as he thinks back to how it all started on Deep Space 6 when he placed his advert for a crew. Three days earlier......

While stopping in the Leaky Hull pub on his way home from work, Nator sees an advert looking for a spacer crew, since he was partly responsible for bringing the settler ship back in mostly one piece he wanders over to the ship after a beer or three to apply.

Brossu Berkesto had just lost his last credit in an ill advised wager, a fist fight between a Louhos and a puny human should have been easy money... how was he to know the human was a Heavy Worlder whose punches were like blows from a pneumatic hammer! There was nothing to it, he was going to have to head back out on some runs. At least he still had Oda, the Nibiran was smart, and loyal, enough to take his pay before letting Brossu loose in the bars and gambling dens. Having heard rumours of potential salvage options in the rift he was going to need more crew if turning a profit was likely... hopefully those adverts he'd put out would attract more than down and out space junk...

Rev had been lurking around with the more unsavory types of the station, earning some extra credits in illegal brawls. He recently knocked out a Louhos who underestimated his claims of advanced training and genes. He had spent most of his earning to stay under the radar as possible, he had been spending too much time on the station which made him nervous. "Finally found some info on a job for a crew," Vaina, his AI and friend, suddenly interrupts him as he was cleaning his weapons in his room. "Hmm...not sure if I'm up for a crew." He says a bit lazily as his focus remains on his weapons. "You better be, you need to get moving. And a voidjammer is the best place for that." Vaina states very strongly. Rev suddenly puts his weapons back together and gets up. Taking a deep breath he mutters, "Right." Vaina brings the information up as Rev puts his gear on. The last thing to be put on is his Vibro bladed spear, in its dagger mode, which he holsters at his side very carefully. He heads out looking to talk with who ever posted the advert for the open crew positions.

Does this help any?

Text only is quite boring but eh, that's not what you wanted

While I have not played in a classical "Text Only" game, I did play in a "Text Chat only" game, if that makes sense. We all met in the game chat and wrote with each other, instead of posting longer paragraphs. It was pretty much like a regular voice game, but progress was a bit slower. We played twice a week and made about as much progress as in a voice game. But what I really liked was, that it increased the quantity AND quality of the roleplaying! Especially for a kind of shy person like me, it was incredibly easy to play an outgoing and charismatic character. Of course planning and combat took a bit longer, but I think we made up for that by the quality of the roleplaying with each other. 

Now, in games where you make large posts, this is going to be different I imagine. It'll probably even be slower, but in the end it will result in something even more thought-out, coherent. It really is just a matter of personal preference and what you feel comfortable with.

Lol...  back in the day, in Dragon Magazine you could find plenty of adds for correspondence based campaigns.  When my dad was away in Vietnam, we used to exchange letters via casette tape!  And Vietnam was a long ways away, traveling by snail-mail!  :)

In these situations you learn to make the most out of your communications, and how to pay attention to details.  It is a valuable skill to develop -an art in itself actually.

Natty said:

Text only is quite boring but eh, that's not what you wanted

It certainly isn't what was asked. But it's also not true. You get as much fun as you put in. If you find that you can't stand to read, or alt-tab to play Hearthstone, or a clicker in the background, yeah: probably not very fun. If you participate however, have an active voice chat discussing what's going on and providing feedback, and a good group then... there's no reason it can't be entertaining.

For me, some of the best sessions of games I've played have been text only. With a good and descriptive GM, you're able to accurately picture the scenes in your mind and in some cases, role-play more efficiently with describing your characters subtle expressions and mood changes. While I can't say I prefer text over a more audio and visual setup, there is still a great amount of enjoyment and RP to be had with a text only setup. As others have stated here, with such games the focus is often more towards Role-playing and not dealing with game mechanics and combat. Which honestly is fine with me since I play table-top to act and Role-play rather than "Roll-play".

At the very least, you're never going to have someone speaking over someone else in a text-only game. It really helps shy or quiet players. 

Plus, because it's all text, it's easily archived and you won't have situations of "dude I just said that 2 minutes ago" because you can just scroll up and prove that yes, in fact, the statement in question was stated. 

Lots of advantages in text-only games, depending on what you like. I don't think on my feet well, and prefer to "craft" my role play. You will meet some truly impressive writers on Roll20, and a text-only game is perfectly built for those kinds of players. Perhaps most importantly, text-only does not mean "no pictures." For me, it just means you're not using voice.

I think Toboe highlighted one of the best features of text-only... which is that you can all be doing things at once. You don't have to worry so much about talking over other players, and everyone can be interacting even while you're driving through turn cycles. So the game can feel less constrained by turns.

Huh. I had always assumed that text-only was just that. Can someone say more about how voice is used with that?

I would assume that a 'text only' game that features 'voice' would mean that the actual game content itself is ran via the chat window. All actions and RP is done there and well documented as a result. However that doesn't mean that voice couldn't be used for OoC communication, general banter or even discussion about tactics etc?

It all boils down the group and the GM really on the scope of what is covered by the 'text-only' tag.

I have never tried text only because I'm always worrying it would literally kill people of old age before I could finish any of my campaigns. I've always been curious about two things though:

a) How do you prevent slow writers from "falling off from the train"?
 - A slow writer starts to write something that her/his character does in this situation. It can end up taking 15+ minutes even to get going. In the meanwhile the rest of the players are moving on. Or does the player indicate, that they have something to say and the rest just sit there waiting?
b) How do you handle in-character dialogue?
 - In my campaigns we can end up having discussions of 30+ minutes between even PCs let alone between NPCs and the party. If we had those in writing, one of those discussions would easily take few whole sessions.

Carl T said:

Huh. I had always assumed that text-only was just that. Can someone say more about how voice is used with that?

I do this for literally all of my games; most of my players have stated that they prefer this method, as it's a bit more immersive, and helps improve the speed.
The basics are that all In-Character actions, speaking, and rolls occur in the Roll20 chat window. In the case of my Exalted game, we use a couple of API scripts (PowerCards; ColoredEmotes, along with a couple of other basic scripts), as well as either Discord or Skype. My discord server is set up as seen on the right; we have two channels for each game, one In-Character, and one Out-of-Character. All OoC text discussion/image linking/joking occurs in that OoC channel, or if someone needs to type something rather than being able to speak (phone calls, another person in the room, alarms, etc.); if we have a problem with Roll20, we use the IC chat as a back-up. It also serves as an option for players to build character development, or chatter with NPCs in downtime.

We have two voice channels (mostly because we don't have a lot of people on the server), one that serves as our general purpose channel, and one invite-only channel expressly for interviewing new players, as to not confuse people on if we're in at a weird time. Our voice is used to ask questions, get clarifications, and to talk out posts as they're being written to help function as stream of consciousness and get things down before the post is written.

Overall, it serves to speed-up gameplay. We focus -heavily- on social and roleplay, rather than combat (in Exalted, we've had 3 combats in ~15 or so sessions; slightly more in my Pathfinder game, in fewer). We make slightly less progress overall, but the characters develop and story builds at a pace that is suitable to the players. 
They don't feel they need 2 combats a session, a social interaction, and time to craft/summon demons. They feel that the story itself is important, and getting involved in the world.

If you'd like, I can see if my players are also fine with me taking an excerpt of our sessions to give an idea of what the posts look like as well.

a) How do you prevent slow writers from "falling off from the train"?
- A slow writer starts to write something that her/his character does in this situation. It can end up taking 15+ minutes even to get going. In the meanwhile the rest of the players are moving on. Or does the player indicate, that they have something to say and the rest just sit there waiting?
b) How do you handle in-character dialogue?
- In my campaigns we can end up having discussions of 30+ minutes between even PCs let alone between NPCs and the party. If we had those in writing, one of those discussions would easily take few whole sessions

Both of these are actually pretty simple: stop playing games where the idea of "Splitting the Party" is bad. Give all of your players something to do. Or play in a game where you bend the rules; "Talking is a free action" - take an example from comics, manga, cartoons, anime: let characters say absurd things, have conversations in the midst of combat. Players don't care about 'turns' in that manner. If you want to enforce realism, make sure you're good at multi-tasking.

Character dialogue is handled naturally - people comment, and speak just as they would in real life. They speak to someone, wait, and then reply. If a character cuts someone off, they either do so by cutting in while their typing, indicating that they're cutting off that character, and the player writes what they were saying and indicates where they get cut-off (using a hyphen, generally); or they simply indicate after the post, and everyone rolls with it.

As an example of both, my Exalted group split three ways last Thursday.
They had to infiltrate a military encampment where a local Dynast was holding a Gala to celebrate his wealth. The party split into two groups initially:
Two characters (the Crafter-Swordsman, and the Vulgar Survivalist) went in search of an NPC they had met, and attempted to inform her about a threat on the Dynast's life, and warn her against trying to fight him - that she needed their help; they infiltrated the gala as legitimate guests.
The other two characters (The Assassin and the Guardian) looked to infiltrate the Gala as entertainment (a whore and her bodyguard), and when they got there, the Assassin went to hunt out an NPC who had informed her about the gala in the first place - the very one who served as the threat that the others were warning the local Wyld Hunt about.
Meanwhile, the Guardian was forced to try and find the Crafter and Survivalist on his own, in a situation where he stood out.

These all were occurring at the same time, in real time. I was writing for two NPCs, while establishing the scene. Nothing felt forced, slow, or bogged down by having 3 separate conversations at once, and the scene flowed naturally, focus shifting between one to another and players ceding spotlight as something bigger in the plot started elsewhere. No one was bored, lost interest, or got tired and went to do something else. In fact, I spent more time spamming them with images in Discord than anyone else did. Because I had the -least- to do for a good portion of the session.

The other big thing is: don't let your players get bogged down on minutia. Is the conversation they're having important? Is it adding to the story? Or is it character development? Is it focused on something irrelevant, or lack on information? If the players, perhaps, are barking up the wrong tree, and are spending a half-hour doing so, indicate to them more strongly to move on. If it's important, then perhaps help them get down to the brass tacks and resolve the issue quicker. If you find that your players discuss something for a half-hour and make essentially no progress, then, perhaps, you need to, as a GM, start giving them incentive to move on. In voice, that means you have to talk over your players, and hope they listen.

In text, it means: write something. Anything. Put it down, and hit enter. The players will either ask to make a roll, or, if it's clear that they witness it, will react. Absolutely, 100% of the time. Make things happen.

All of my games are text only.  It's not a mixture of text and voice chat or video, it is text only.  I make use of the maps, tokens, etc but I think the descriptions are more fleshed out and character interaction is a lot better.  There's also text to refer back to when your players don't take notes (my players are horrible at taking notes).  We don't write books and keep the action flowing.  It probably is a little slower than a voice game, but none of us seem to mind.