My friend Jon and I have been playing tabletop RPGs for quite a few years. We have had a gaming group and we have played a lot of solo campaigns. Sadly Jon moved away a while ago and playing over email didn’t work every well. We have been looking for a solution for a while and I think we found it: Slack.
Slack is that super hip, start-up messaging program. And it is amazing. I love it. I have been playing around with it for a while and finally found the perfect combination.
First thing you need to get is the @roll_bot. This bot allows you to roll any size dice with a simple /roll command followed by the size of dice (d4,d6,d8,etc.)
The second thing I would recommend is PDFs of a monster manual. You can then take screenshots of the monsters that will be fought. You can then upload them when combat starts.
This gives the players a visual of what they are fighting as well as a place to put creature actions.
Using comments on the individual file for monster actions and hit point loss gives you a historical record of how combat went. It also provides a nice visual for the players