Play-by-post/online play: Experiences?

[Thanee]

but do u guys play with atributes and dice roll?

I play pretty much with the standard rules (some house rules, few rules to make the game more PbP friendly). Tactical combat with map and all dice rolls and everything. When not in combat, things obviously move on without much dice rolling as usual (only combat is really dice intensive in D&D).

If interested to take a look... the game is HERE (that's the Out Of Character thread, but at the bottom of the first post there are links to everything else).

And HERE's a battlemap from the middle of the last combat (javascript required to see the map).

The game's running for about 17 months now. Some ups and downs, but overall quite steady; all players from the beginning are still there.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Psion]

I've done systemless PbP, but my Return to the Tomb of Horrors game is my first real D&D PbP. I think I may have chosen poorly, as I am sort of getting the feel that the room-by-room investigation style drags in PbP. I have some techniques to help keep things flowing, but it still takes assertive players whose posting style is strident and forward looking.

I have been toying with the idea of starting a less dungeon-based PbP which is more event and interaction driven and less room-to-room. I suspect that would work better with the pace.

 

[Psion]

but do u guys play with atributes and dice roll?

As much as I do at the table, yeah.

I typically use invisible castle, which seems pretty popular. Some PbP websites like Myth-Weavers have built in dice facilities.

 

[Trench]

I should probably post one addendum to our positive PbP experience. It seems that, reading this over, the biggest problem people experience is the peeter-out affect. Keeping people interested over a long term and the like.

To be fair, the majority of players in Whizbang's group have been close friends for ten years on. The net and message boards have been a major method of communication for us. Hence, PbP is almost second nature to us. We know it won't peeter out, cause we're basically a family.

(Cue rainbow-cursed puppies and dewy-eyed rabbits going AAAWWWWW before they are run over by landshark driven monster trucks)

 

[Seeten]

My problem isnt the peter out effect, its the slow, dragging, over expositioning with a complete lack of action effect.

Basically: Every little minutiae of character interaction drags out, yet action is rare, and generally boring, due to multiple factors. Like a combat taking 2 weeks to complete. I have had as many ftf games peter out as pbp and chatbased, so thats true everywhere, not just online, no, the issue is the pacing on pbp.

Some people really just want to make up a character and play pretend/dolls/etc, and more power to them, certainly not badwrongfun, but not my fun. I want to defeat badguys, and loot them, and fight in interesting fights, as well as interact/roleplay. I find pbp terrible for much of that, but to each their own, ymmv, etc.