Coming to table top RPs, I wish I could help you there, but unfortunately, I'm not familiar with that type of play, due to negative social development, and of course not having the materials or the clubs that do this sort of thing. The idea of doing it through Skype, sounds promising, but with the issue of timezones, its something I wouldn't recommend. As for you starting off with a blank state as to create a new character through a new unknown species and develop that character, have you ever tried a sea lion/seal species? I've recently gained a great interest and there's almost no anthro picture to be found about the said species, if not, non-existant. Maybe you can start there?

Seals huh? Sounds interesting. I've seen a fair share of sharks, dolphins, and orcas, but you're right, I can't say I've seen many seals.

If you're looking for uncommon species stay away from canines and felines, while there are some in both groups that are rare, the both are more dominant than most other species.

Exclusion by genus might be a bit much, but on the other hand, that may be a good place to start too. To a degree there may be whole genus's of critters that are greatly under-represented.

For online games, it really hinges on the group you can find. How seriously do they take things? How serious a game do you want?

As for the means... one of the best ways I've found so would probably have to be MapTool. Way more convenient than messing around with screen-sharing, for starters. IRC or even instant messengers can suffice if no maps are needed or people are good at keep track of things in their head. All being text-based brings a whole set of pros and cons I'm sure you can imagine if you're not already aware of them.

When it comes to underrepresented species, there's a huge range of weird and wonderful critters you could pick from. The tricky part will probably be avoiding making that rarity central to what makes them an interesting character.

Well, with the first thing, I don't really have a group of people I know that I can assemble, so it'd be using a site for such a purpose, like RPOL, to find people. The problem with that, and that all people on the site acknowledge, is that you're playing with a game with strangers. Strangers with similar interests, but strangers nonetheless. Game fatality is incredibly high because of loss of interest of players/GMs, leading to disappearances and the game fading into nothing, among other reasons. The trick is finding a group, though there is such a group set up here on FA that I might try being a bit more proactive in.

I'll have to look at MapTool, as I've heard it mentioned before. Likely has a better set of features than trying to screen share too. The main trick is trying to, once a group can be found, have everyone around at the same relative time. In a forum base, with everyone in different time zones posting when they can, it can take a week to get through an NPC dialogue section that would just take a few minutes in real time. It's that slow progression pace that kills games, which was why I was thinking Skype voice chat, so that everyone could communicate in real time, rather than have so many delays waiting for people to type what they want to say, even worse is the scene begins to progress and there was still something they wanted to do, but couldn't type fast enough. I'm hoping something as close to actual physical meetings, with a scheduled "gathering time" and real time communication, will help contribute to game longevity.

As for species, I know there is, but there is also a phrase called "out of sight, out of mind". It's not easy bringing something to mind if one rarely thinks of it. I've had the thought of using a wombat or a hyrax for base species, but it's been difficult to think of others, mostly because I never hear of them. Yeah, I could just try doing some internet searching, but I thought I'd ask this community first, and see what they thought. As for the species defining the character, that's not going to happen. Species of characters to me has only a little more impact than, say, native nationality between human characters. There's physiological things for sure, like being carnivores or herbivores, and other such natural traits consistent to species, but who they are beyond that is separate from species, except where it makes sense. Sure, it's a little bit "different for the sake of different", but that's not the crux of it. After all, what's really the difference between a gold hearted mercenary bear and a gold hearted mercenary snake, beyond physiology?

There's another trick, really. Make some friends -- definitely not as easy as it sounds, but absolutely possible. I don't mean 'real' ones. I hang out in a couple of IRC channels where both stranger and friend groups can be observed, yet practically none of us know each other in real life in both channels. At the same time, the channel of friends has four ongoing games, at least two of which have been going since before this year started whilst the other channel, which is mostly people who don't interact with each other a lot outside the games and don't take their games as seriously... has a fairly high failure rate.

Timezones are always a pain in the ass. Voice brings its own problems though -- it can be easier for some to communicate via text. Others might not have a mic, or they can't go using it at whatever the game time is due to noise concerns. Or maybe they're just better at expressing their thoughts in writing than actual speech. On top of that, people can and no doubt will start talking over each other. It can be natural for character interaction, but it's no good when people start arguing over something, because that often leads to escalation of loudness as people try to be heard over each other.

Yes, scene progression can be slow in text-based, but it also gives people more time to think about how their character would actually react. It offers more opportunity for descriptiveness of actions/behaviour/expression without the risk of someone interrupting and without having to ramble at people over voice. Nobody's forced to read the text, but who wants to listen to some guy start on some long-winded, possibly pre-typed/planned description of what his character is doing?

If folks are taking too long and don't get responses in before the GM shifts scene, then to some degree that's their problem. On the other hand the GM should also know when to wait (unless some plot element mandates bulldozing ahead, such as time pressure, in which case the players/characters need to get with the program!) so people can respond, and when to give time for little character interaction scenes to play out too.

The slowest thing by far, though? Combat, hands down.

I'd like to be in on this. I'd love to have something to play and someone to play it with.