Mujadaddy:

We tried to do several Vampire:the Masquerade sessions using only VOIP and Google Docs. There was very little combat so the Storyteller felt any kind of shared-map utility was unnecessary. We had four players, and a lot of cross-talk. We have to date tried one session using IM, and using several IM windows at once (a dedicated in-character window, and however many OOC windows people feel like using) kept the session a lot "neater" and also had the benefit of leaving behind a transcript of the session.

My friends and I (avid gamers in our college days, now spread out across four time zones) have been looking for months for an adequate virtual tabletop for roleplaying. None of us really care for FantasyGrounds, and the freeware virtual tabletops have a far steeper learning curve and just too many damn useless bells and whistles. We've tried fiddling with various whiteboard & chat utilities, and nothing really seems to satisfy any of us.

The only functions you need are:
1) multi-party chat, with the ability for users to chat under different handles (i.e. one for in-character chat, one for out-of character);
2) a whiteboard utility where the DM can throw down a map and everyone else has the ability to move their characters around on the map;
3) dice where everyone can see the results.

That's it. VOIP is nice, but unnecessary and I find results in too many people trying to talk over each other.