Running combat in an online game

Hello everyone!

I mainly lurk here, but recently I've run into a small problem and I know the wonderful people at ENWorld can help. I've run several online games in the past, but with very few players. Recently I've started a new game, and I have a few more players than I'm used to. To keep combat simple and keep the game moving swiftly I adopted a method where everyone would send me initiative rolls, 10 attack rolls (base), 10 damage rolls (base), and 10 misc. rolls. I would then roll for the bad guys, and type out the entirety of the combat. If someone wanted to do something special, such as cast a spell, I'll have them roll the damage and send me the result. If they use a feat, then they tell me beforehand.

I have one player who really likes the method, since it really speeds up play, and combat kind of remains a mystery until I post the battle and everyone can see what actually happens.

I have one player who is undecided. "Paralyzed into indecision", as they would say.

One player doesn't care for it. They're not vehemently against it, but they don't get to make the small adjustments like you can in tabletop gaming.

The last few players I haven't heard from, but I have the distinct feeling that they may not care for it either.

So, how do you get that "crunchy" feel of combat online, without taking days or weeks to resolve what should be a simple fight? I don't want people to feel like I'm really controlling their characters, but if combat ends up taking a long time to resolve, then I'm afraid it won't be fun for me either.

Another point I'd like to make is that due to scheduling conflicts we cannot set up a time for online chat to hash things out either. Things are done through email and one-line sentences if we decide to do things round by round.

Any help anyone could give would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

In past PBeM games I have seen the combat flow when the DM handles all of the dice rolls. This may not be what you want as your players may *really* want to roll the dice, but sometimes PBeM's make that difficult.

Get the players to post their modifiers in the OOC thread and then as the DM roll their dice for them. From there you can work out the combat. This often leads to the combat posts reading quite nicely as the numbers and rolls are in the background.

Try to keep a quick pace when it comes to combat, try not to go more than a day, a day and half at most without a DM post. If someone hasn't posted their actions, either NPC them and have them do what they typically do (this is pretty easy to figure out if the group has been together long enough) and the pace keeps moving.

In some cases you can handle two rounds in one DM post depending on how many actions the players post in theirs.

In the PbP game I run my players enjoy rolling their own dice and stating their actions as the events unfold around them. I have a strick 24 hour policy on combat rounds. If the players doesn't post and state an action, I NPC the character for that round. I've seen some DMs that simply let the character skip a round if they don't post. Combat is part of the fun on playing D&D, and not being able to actively partake in it takes something away from the experience. With 24 hour posts, you can finish a 7 round combat in a week, which is good going by most standards.

Pinotage

I do all the dice rolls in combat, but I do that in the open (using the forum's built-in dice roller). This also improves the tension of combat, if the dice rolls are open (some of the modifiers are not open, of course, and secret dice rolls are still done in secrecy).

Combat generally goes like this:

There is an extra thread for players to post their actions at the start of each combat round (sometimes with conditions, if the situations asks for it). Prior to every round, I post a summary with the initiative, current status (wounds (no hps just a general descriptor, like lightly wounded, critically wounded), spell effects and such) and a link to the updated combat map.

There is an extra thread for dice rolls, where I - after all actions are declared - make all the dice rolls for the combat in one go. Out of combat, players use the thread for any dice rolls they need to do for their characters, but in combat I do them all, since otherwise things slow down too much.

Afterwards I post a single post for the combat round to the current IC thread, which is otherwise not used during combat, describing all the actions and reactions, adding in the bits the players provide me with as part of their action declaration (which is usually done in "IC style") and putting this all in context adding and changing bits where necessary.

Players have full control over their characters. They also have enough means to cooperate, considering the already declared actions when they post their own. The only thing "amiss" is that they cannot roll their own dice... but in a PbP they cannot really do that, anyways.

The only times where I take control of a PC is when I am asked to do so (if the player has not enough time to post quickly, usually within a day so combat goes fast), or when a declared action ceases to make sense at the time the PCs turn comes up and no useful alternative is given (often I just use delay then for the PC, or let them perform a completely obvious action).

Bye
Thanee

The DM rolling is really the best way. Usually a PC who wants to see the rolls has trust issues. However, there's a fairly good way to accomodate this. Have your players email you the rolls from the Irony Games dice server: http://www.irony.com/mailroll.html

Thank you kindly for the input everyone!

I actually had everyone send me their rolls from the Irony Games roller, but I don't have a map or anything, so movement may be a primary issue. Is there anyplace online to post a decent battlemap so things aren't so confused?

I normally just run my battlemaps out of Yahoo Groups. Every player becomes a member and it works out fine. In a PbP forum you can then simply attach the image as a link.

Pinotage

My first attempt at a PbEM, I rolled all the dice for everyone. It wasn't a combat intensive game. Combat was more to let them know if they did do something stupid, there were consequences. For the most part, they steered right out of combat and stuck to telling a cool story about sneaking around and envestigating, NOT killing everything that moved.

Palskane said:

I actually had everyone send me their rolls from the Irony Games roller, but I don't have a map or anything, so movement may be a primary issue. Is there anyplace online to post a decent battlemap so things aren't so confused?

Click to expand...

You either need some website, where you can upload stuff, or in some forums (like this one here) you can attach images, so you could upload them directly from your home computer.

In my case, I'm using a website where one of the players in my PbP is admin. He gave me FTP access to some subforum of the site, so I can upload the maps there and then link to them.

Bye
Thanee

oddly enough, irony.com has a solution for that as well....

It has a funky page where you draw a map, and generate some code-text. Paste that code text into your e-mail/post.

I then copy that code-text back into the field on Irony's page and it redraws the map.

It was made for pbem games.

It's pretty easy to use.