D&D 5E PbP games: what works and what doesn't?
Archon Basileus
First Post
Personally, I really think the topic is quite enticing. If you don't mind, I'd like to put a bit more into the thread now (earlier I was midway home from work, through the cell phone, so...)
1: I can't recall a single 1-20 campaign that lasted me the whole life spam, even table-top wise. Plus, I've been playing Fitz' Scourge of Daggerford, and I love what he does: a well-tailored story, a drawn line, a good degree of freedom and attention to detail. Loving his npc's so far. No need for huge game spams. I think that's why his stories work so well. They get the player involved.
2: Game start. That's a tricky one for me. The best game I managed to 'DM' in pbf was a Sabbat campaign for Vampire 2nd. Each character led a different pack within a city, and so each had a personal prologue to run. We ran two years worth of prologue. It was amazing, but many of them never got to meet. I'd still rather start with a prologue for each character, since it allows me to know the details of each player and her/his creation a bit better, but it can be boring for most, since it breaks the interactive aspect of the game. It was funny, though, to see players debating each others' choices with an objective perspective.
3: Railroad. So true. But I think it could be circumvented by writing pieces that pronounce more relevant choices a bit more. And if tha players still want to pursue something clearly designed to be secondary, let them! It's even kind of humorous when someone realizes all the unimportant paths and starts taking them on purpose, just to poke the DM. Some cool stories can come out of it.
4: Even if we start at lower levels - as suggested before - I think that tweaking monsters and scenarios could go a long way into breaking monotony.
5: Party components: I totally agree with this one. Except if we decide we can go separate ways. I had a table where the players rolled a troll warrior and a human necromancer. Unnecessary to say, they wanted to use each other - and eventually kill each other. At this point, circumstances split them, and when stronger circumstances allowed them to merge, well... This doesn't address roleplaying difficulties, such as silent characters, or anti-social types, even though it seems a lot easier to substitute silence for inner dialogue in written channels.
7: I tend to think numbers in terms of party balance. It gets a LOT harder to build the game around a horde of seven, for example. But roleplay is so satisfying with larger numbers! It's like having a world within a world.
My half-a-cent. I just felt like talking, I guess, lol.
1: I can't recall a single 1-20 campaign that lasted me the whole life spam, even table-top wise. Plus, I've been playing Fitz' Scourge of Daggerford, and I love what he does: a well-tailored story, a drawn line, a good degree of freedom and attention to detail. Loving his npc's so far. No need for huge game spams. I think that's why his stories work so well. They get the player involved.
2: Game start. That's a tricky one for me. The best game I managed to 'DM' in pbf was a Sabbat campaign for Vampire 2nd. Each character led a different pack within a city, and so each had a personal prologue to run. We ran two years worth of prologue. It was amazing, but many of them never got to meet. I'd still rather start with a prologue for each character, since it allows me to know the details of each player and her/his creation a bit better, but it can be boring for most, since it breaks the interactive aspect of the game. It was funny, though, to see players debating each others' choices with an objective perspective.
3: Railroad. So true. But I think it could be circumvented by writing pieces that pronounce more relevant choices a bit more. And if tha players still want to pursue something clearly designed to be secondary, let them! It's even kind of humorous when someone realizes all the unimportant paths and starts taking them on purpose, just to poke the DM. Some cool stories can come out of it.
4: Even if we start at lower levels - as suggested before - I think that tweaking monsters and scenarios could go a long way into breaking monotony.
5: Party components: I totally agree with this one. Except if we decide we can go separate ways. I had a table where the players rolled a troll warrior and a human necromancer. Unnecessary to say, they wanted to use each other - and eventually kill each other. At this point, circumstances split them, and when stronger circumstances allowed them to merge, well... This doesn't address roleplaying difficulties, such as silent characters, or anti-social types, even though it seems a lot easier to substitute silence for inner dialogue in written channels.
7: I tend to think numbers in terms of party balance. It gets a LOT harder to build the game around a horde of seven, for example. But roleplay is so satisfying with larger numbers! It's like having a world within a world.
My half-a-cent. I just felt like talking, I guess, lol.
Ancalagon
Dusty Dragon
How many games *are* you running btw?
jmucchiello
Hero
Curious myself, I went to the playing the game forum and searched for "Started by EarlyBird" and got 8 hits. And he has another game in the pipeline. All the games he is running are pre-made modules, I believe.
Li Shenron
Legend
I've played maybe half a dozen or more PbP games dugin the year, and I have mostly the same feelings as you. All those games lasted at more 2 encounters. The only game that lasted longer than that was the only PbP I DMed myself, which was 2 years to run basically half a Dungeon Magazine adventure (more or less 5-6 encounters) consisting of a dungeon crawl - the other half of the adventure was supposed to take place in the fortress above the dungeon, but we wrapped the game up after clearing the dungeon only.
The absolute biggest issue with PbP IMHO is always wanting to do way too much. The more ambition the DM, the louder the sound the game makes when it crashes.
If you want to do something BIG, remember how long it takes in a tabletop game (including the time between sessions), and multiply it at least by 10. Then you get an idea about how long it will take in a PbP.
You are absolutely right that having a "clear, achievable conclusion" is the way to go, but it seems that most people want to be reassured that the game can potentially continue forever. I think a module is a better idea: treat a PbP game as a project which implies a conclusion condition. If it really goes well enough to reach the conclusion, it'll be a piece of cake to pick up some adventure seeds and add another module afterwards.
Once again you're totally right... Every PbP starts with people swearing they'll post every day, writing huge character backgrounds, discussing the details of character generation, talking about house rules, the DM describing her complete fantasy setting... all of which becomes useless as soon as the game swamps at (or before) the first scene or encounter!
I really don't think PbP is the place where you should exercise your character-building or world-building skills. The more effort you put in the design part, the faster your enthusiasm will deplete, and you won't have much left to play the game itself. Keep those for your RL-tabletop gaming groups, and focus instead on getting into the story and action as soon as possible, while your hype for the game is still up.
A few practical suggestions for the DMs:
- use the PbP game to try out a couple of house rules, but nothing more, otherwise players will be distracted
- forget about detailing your fantasy settings fully in advance, players don't care and won't remember much of it
- never require players to write long backgrounds or lots of character details: they won't matter if the game doesn't last long, a few sketches are ok, everything else can be added later when (if) the game lasts
Also some for the players:
- stick to the DM's proposals, don't immediately try to deviate from the game premises (e.g. "We play an adventure where you are all X and Y". "Oh, can I play Z? I really really want to play Z!")
- don't bother with optimizing your character, combat will NEVER run in a way that will allow you to take advantage of min-maxing
Railroading in the open can alienate some players, but I agree that sandboxing is more difficult in PbP. Not because a DM can't improvise in PbP, but because when PbP players don't have a clue, they just don't post anything, and they wait for someone else to make a decision. This can seriously turn the game into a drag.
When you are instead sandboxing in a tabletop game, this is not a problem, simply because the situation in front of the table doesn't allow people to just stare at each other and do nothing for hours, or even minutes... in PbP that stalling could last weeks!
That's a good idea, but with a caveat: the higher the starting level, the more time and effort is needed for building the character, and this will work against the principle of trying to get into the game asap.
I don't think party balance in tactical terms should be a concern. The PbP game will be SHORT, so it's not important to make sure you have a healer, a trapfinder, a tank and so on... just gather up enough PC, and see how they play together tactically. The only reason to require some specific role (such as a trapfinder) is if the adventure expects it in order to surpass specific obstacles.
Intrigue is always challenging to run for a DM... we're not Agatha Christie unfortunately!
OTOH if there is one advantage of PbP versus tabletop, is that it gives players a lot more time to think... so personally I think that intrigue/investigation adventures might actually even work better in PbP.
Similarly, another advantage of PbP is that it gives shy players more possibilities for roleplay, that might be taken away by more exuberant players in tabletop. The risk of dominating social encounters exists also in PbP for sure, and quick question-and-answer conversations don't work well, but at least in PbP a player is more free to carefully word her character's speeches if desired.
Hard to say, but more or less I think it's the same as in tabletop. The smaller number, the easier the management of the group, but the more difficult to beat the adventure
I have yet to understand how a PbP game could be managed really well in terms of pacing everyone's contributions... One thing that could help to avoid the slowness of combat encounters, is to replace cyclic initiative with the old-style declaration of intent per turn, with the DM resolving everything at once.
The absolute biggest issue with PbP IMHO is always wanting to do way too much. The more ambition the DM, the louder the sound the game makes when it crashes.
If you want to do something BIG, remember how long it takes in a tabletop game (including the time between sessions), and multiply it at least by 10. Then you get an idea about how long it will take in a PbP.
You are absolutely right that having a "clear, achievable conclusion" is the way to go, but it seems that most people want to be reassured that the game can potentially continue forever. I think a module is a better idea: treat a PbP game as a project which implies a conclusion condition. If it really goes well enough to reach the conclusion, it'll be a piece of cake to pick up some adventure seeds and add another module afterwards.
Once again you're totally right... Every PbP starts with people swearing they'll post every day, writing huge character backgrounds, discussing the details of character generation, talking about house rules, the DM describing her complete fantasy setting... all of which becomes useless as soon as the game swamps at (or before) the first scene or encounter!
I really don't think PbP is the place where you should exercise your character-building or world-building skills. The more effort you put in the design part, the faster your enthusiasm will deplete, and you won't have much left to play the game itself. Keep those for your RL-tabletop gaming groups, and focus instead on getting into the story and action as soon as possible, while your hype for the game is still up.
A few practical suggestions for the DMs:
- use the PbP game to try out a couple of house rules, but nothing more, otherwise players will be distracted
- forget about detailing your fantasy settings fully in advance, players don't care and won't remember much of it
- never require players to write long backgrounds or lots of character details: they won't matter if the game doesn't last long, a few sketches are ok, everything else can be added later when (if) the game lasts
Also some for the players:
- stick to the DM's proposals, don't immediately try to deviate from the game premises (e.g. "We play an adventure where you are all X and Y". "Oh, can I play Z? I really really want to play Z!")
- don't bother with optimizing your character, combat will NEVER run in a way that will allow you to take advantage of min-maxing
Railroading in the open can alienate some players, but I agree that sandboxing is more difficult in PbP. Not because a DM can't improvise in PbP, but because when PbP players don't have a clue, they just don't post anything, and they wait for someone else to make a decision. This can seriously turn the game into a drag.
When you are instead sandboxing in a tabletop game, this is not a problem, simply because the situation in front of the table doesn't allow people to just stare at each other and do nothing for hours, or even minutes... in PbP that stalling could last weeks!
That's a good idea, but with a caveat: the higher the starting level, the more time and effort is needed for building the character, and this will work against the principle of trying to get into the game asap.
I don't think party balance in tactical terms should be a concern. The PbP game will be SHORT, so it's not important to make sure you have a healer, a trapfinder, a tank and so on... just gather up enough PC, and see how they play together tactically. The only reason to require some specific role (such as a trapfinder) is if the adventure expects it in order to surpass specific obstacles.
Intrigue is always challenging to run for a DM... we're not Agatha Christie unfortunately!
OTOH if there is one advantage of PbP versus tabletop, is that it gives players a lot more time to think... so personally I think that intrigue/investigation adventures might actually even work better in PbP.
Similarly, another advantage of PbP is that it gives shy players more possibilities for roleplay, that might be taken away by more exuberant players in tabletop. The risk of dominating social encounters exists also in PbP for sure, and quick question-and-answer conversations don't work well, but at least in PbP a player is more free to carefully word her character's speeches if desired.
Hard to say, but more or less I think it's the same as in tabletop. The smaller number, the easier the management of the group, but the more difficult to beat the adventure
I have yet to understand how a PbP game could be managed really well in terms of pacing everyone's contributions... One thing that could help to avoid the slowness of combat encounters, is to replace cyclic initiative with the old-style declaration of intent per turn, with the DM resolving everything at once.
Li Shenron
Legend
Oh and I have a suggestion for [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] too... try to see if there is a possibility for adding a forum functionality by which a forum member can subscribe to a thread and get notifications when someone else replies to the thread. AFAIK this is not how it works at the moment, you get notifications only if you receive a PM, mention or XP. Having notifications on subscribed threads would greatly help a PbP player know when a game has progressed, and reach the thread in a couple of clicks rather than having to find it in the subforums.
Let's see...
I am currently running 8 games (1 to come, and 1 will end in a few months), all are modules or Adventure League games. I find it easy because half the work is done for me, all I need do is apply what the characters do to change things when the time comes. I have a black composition book for everyone with notes as to the mid/high levels of the game and things PCs should "find" to progress the game along.
I have had 2 games start and successfully end, in the One Shot mode. And a few I have needed to pull by the hair to keep going lol. Maybe One Shots are what you are looking for? Short games that have a diffient ending and characters you can come back to.
I am currently running 8 games (1 to come, and 1 will end in a few months), all are modules or Adventure League games. I find it easy because half the work is done for me, all I need do is apply what the characters do to change things when the time comes. I have a black composition book for everyone with notes as to the mid/high levels of the game and things PCs should "find" to progress the game along.
I have had 2 games start and successfully end, in the One Shot mode. And a few I have needed to pull by the hair to keep going lol. Maybe One Shots are what you are looking for? Short games that have a diffient ending and characters you can come back to.
Ancalagon
Dusty Dragon
The fact that you have completed 2 games and running so many more indicates that you know what you are doing... any games that didn't work out?
jmucchiello
Hero
When you subscribe to a thread, you have to say instant email notification if that's what you want.
I just come here to the two PbP forums once or twice a day and look for threads with new posts that I have replied to. I open them all in a new tab and then respond as I have time. I hate notification emails but I understand others like them.
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