I kiiiind of get what you're saying, but I don't think it works exactly like that.  Since the only way OOC would be faster, to me anyway, than IC is if you had a chat option like AIM with the other player<i>and</i>caught them online.  In which case you could resolve it OOCly pretty quick.  Otherwise I don't see how OOC would be any faster than IC on a forum.  Either way you still have to wait for the other party to respond and both ways could take a day or two to get a response.  The only difference is that an IC interaction creates interesting character development plus also moves the game along a little bit.  Where as the OOC you're just planning it, and while it may still happen in IC, you're actually having to discuss it in OOC and then implement it in IC.  At which point it actually takes longer...<br/><br/>At least, to me.<br/><br/>Also, I don't see the down-times as the boring part.  I see that as the points at which we can really have our characters get to know one another and start to develop relationships with one another (not necessarily romantic ones, just friends, enemies, teammates or whatever else) and then the highlights, often fights, are where you take what they've learned and how they're getting along, and throw it into their fight or flight responses.  Either way it's the character interactions that are the cool and nifty parts of a story rather than just the fights.  You have to trust that the GM knows what they're doing in terms of that.  For all we know Cogs could be cooking up to have Elemental pop up from the ground and body-check the truck into next week.<br/><br/>I'm not saying it<i>will</i>happen, but it could.  There's never any guarantee that every one of Rachel's plans will pan out exactly the way she wants it to. Or anyone's plans for that matter... And that's kind of the exciting part of the game as well, anything can happen at any time.  A slow or "down-time" part of the story may be abruptly interrupted by the badguys crashing the party.  In the meantime we can make the most of it ICly and have our characters talk to one another, figure some stuff out, that kind of thing.<br/><br/>