I've been following LordKat's and Spoony's recorded campaigns for well over a year now. They schedule a fixed time, same day every week, so nobody is caught by suprise. Chat is done over Skype (with an IRC chat where the 1000+ viewers discuss things while they watch). Dice rolls are done inside the program they're using for the gameboard;
OpenRPG and
Maptool both have their advantages and problems.
Regarding finding a good party of players... can't offer much help there. It helps if you are
all comfortable and laid-back with voice chat. As DM, let your players joke around, but don't let it get out of hand. Reign in any unreasonable OOC discussion of game events before they start metagaming too badly, but allow the characters themselves to discuss their plan of action if need be; just remind them that time is still passing while they argue.
As to conveying things to the party, script out your descriptive paragraphs beforehand and read out the necessary environmental info as your players discover it. If your players ask more specific info about an object or the room they're in, don't be afraid to improvise and make up some flavour on the spot. General rule of thumb here is this: anything that could have ANY importance to the party, should be pre-written and ready for them. Other detail such as the colour of the Elf's flaxen shirt, or the texture of the walls (unless that's important somehow for trap-spotting) can be made-up on the fly.
Finally, you may want to check out the
aforementioned campaigns if you want to learn more about how those guys do it.
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Topic: Wanting to start an online D&D 3e game. (Read 930 times)