I used to run an RPG on a chat server, but 1) chat games eat up a lot of time because everybody has to be online at the same time or the game dies and 2) I have the attention span of a gnat and always fail at #1.
I do miss that world I created, though, and if there was interest here I'd love to start it up again as a message board RP instead.
The game setting:
Two hundred years from now, science has solved many of the age-old problems of mankind. Humans are able to maintain a youthful appearance for nearly seventy years, with potential lifespans running an estimated two hundred years. Genetic augmentation can bring about abilities that humanity could have only dreamed of before. Most diseases have been wiped out.
Of course, there's a dark side to this, as well. To protect against unfit parents, the number of children a family is allowed to have is controlled through government permits and quotas, while the population has plummeted in many regions of the world as people decide not to bother fighting to have children. Most people are expected to have their children genetically engineered to avoid any undesirable traits and may in fact be denied the right to breed if they refuse. Biomechanical Androids or Mechs have been created to take over for the declining numbers of workers. The Earth has become a stressful place ruled by totalitarian governments. The space stations in orbit around her and the colonies on Mars share many of the same problems. It was in the year 2160 that war broke out between the world's superpowers, leaving huge portions of Asia and North America uninhabitable.
It was the fear that mankind might wipe itself out that led Adam Lombardo to put his wealth towards finding another world and a way to get there. It took twenty years to find a likely world and to prepare for the launch, leaving Earth behind forever. The two ships, named Espérer and Étoile, could approach the speed of light, not reach it, so that for those traveling thirty years would pass, while on Earth it would be millenia.
The planet they landed on was dubbed Terranova. That is where the story begins.
The focus was definitely more on politics and personal interaction than battle and there was no imposed quest or plot. The characters could go along with the machinations of their government or oppose them as they saw fit. It's definitely not much like any of the games we've had on here before, but Marsilia, Rabbit, wynblade and I all enjoyed it a lot when we played together before.