For those of you who have set up play-by-post games, how do you do it?

[Faolyn]

I brought up the idea to my friends last night, since we all want to game more but don't have the ability to coordinate a second date and time. They're all interested. We haven't settled on a game yet (since this was just last night) but I got a lot of interest when I talked up the game I'm currently reading, Legacy: Life Among The Ruins.

We currently play on Discord (since we live far enough apart that it's just much easier to gather online, and one player has three very small children). The group's moderator suggested opening up another channel for us to play on, but I've only seen PbP games on message boards. Only one of us (it's not me) has any experience with PbP games.

So, any advice or thoughts?

 

[Hriston]

I've participated in PbP games here on enworld and on the dndbeyond forums. Here, it was as a player only, but on dndbeyond I've both played and DM'd. I've had good experiences with both sites. I'm not familiar with discord and am not sure how running a PbP in a group chat would go, if that's the idea, but I can see it working.

 

[Argyle King]

In the past, I've used rpol.net.

 

[John Dallman]

I've tried it several times as a player, with one definite success and one partial success. The great difficulty with PbP is waiting for each other, and being uncertain if someone is going to respond.

The successful game was 1:1, with one player - me - and the GM. That format means there is no uncertainty about responses, and the game ran successfully at several exchanges a day for several months. Because combat in a PbP was clearly going to be slow, I created a character with no combat capability at all, who had to work entirely by wits and language (he was a court jester). Sadly, the GM decided to add a player, and it very rapidly bogged down and stopped.

The partial success had several players, and ran for multiple weeks, but then the GM changed jobs and didn't have time for it any more.

If I were trying it with multiple players, I'd try to find a way to avoid having to wait indefinitely. Some combination of deadlines and default actions might make that practical. But I'd prefer to run several 1:1 games in parallel.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I've run PBP here for what's turned out to be several years. I just kind of fell into it.

It has its benefits (you can take your time describing your turns. As DM, you can do actual proper research into your players' requests, or for when you write a lore-heavy post). And it has drawbacks (players ghost, everything takes forever, momentum gets lost).

Is there anything in particular that you want to know about?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Any medium can work for play by post -- back in the ooold days, people did it through the mail.

The referee needs to be good about checking in more often than everyone else to answer questions and give feedback that might be necessary on a given turn ("do I think I can jump that gap?" "yeah, it's well within your normal abilities" "OK, cool, that's what I'm doing") and the players need to be good about taking turns and not let one enthusiastic person run roughshod over everyone else.

I also recommend having some sort of outside database that people can use to keep up on lore, etc., because people will forget details over time, especially if your pbp game goes years or decades (which happens!). I use a wiki for my Ptolus game (which is great, but I wish I had used one where I didn't have to maintain the software myself) but have recently turned to creating hyper-linked Google docs and sharing those with the players.

It's a great format for roleplay- and lore-heavy games. Combat goes slooowly, even if everyone is there and posting, so choose your adventures appropriately. A gladiator combat that might be fun at a table will feel like death in pbp, but courtly intrigue is amazing in the format.

 

[overgeeked]

I've done pbp on dedicated forums before but never discord. So I'm not sure how well any of this will translate to discord. This also assumes asynchronous play, where you're not generally logged on at the same time or able to immediately reply.

I set up multiple threads to disseminate information because it's easier that way. It front-loads the work but it saves time in the long run. One thread for character creation, one for house rules, one for a setting primer, etc. There's also always one in-game thread for all the narration and PC actions. And always one thread for out-of-character chat, either about the game or general hang out and catch up. It's better to have it all down "on paper" and in one place you can point your players to. Things will get lost in the shuffle, things will be misplaced or forgotten otherwise.

Set an expected posting rate. Whatever it is, one post every 2 days, 3 days, 4 days, etc. keep it consistent. Whoever the referee is should post every time that interval passes to keep the game moving. If a player hasn't posted, they get skipped. Again, this is to keep the game moving. In pbp you can very quickly bog down into "I was waiting for X to post" and suddenly it's two weeks later and no one's posted.

The biggest bits of advice I can give are ditch initiative and minimize handling time. Both are for the same reason, they both slow the game to a crawl if not outright kill a pbp game.

Forcing players to wait to post in a particular order will kill the game dead. Either make every action simultaneous or have the referee handle initiative order. It's way easier to go with simultaneous actions.

Minimizing handling time is about reducing the number of posts required to accomplish something. In a face-to-face game having 3-5 steps to resolve an action is nothing and only takes a few seconds. In a pbp game that exact same interaction can take days for each step.

"I attack the orc. I got a 17. Does that hit?"

"Yes, that hits. What's your damage?"

"I deal 12 damage."

So anything and everything that can minimize the number of steps required (i.e. posts) to accomplish something will do wonders for your game. Announce DC up front, announce the HP and AC of monsters so the players don't have to ask, because that ask and answer can have days between them.

 

[Faolyn]

I've run PBP here for what's turned out to be several years. I just kind of fell into it.

It has its benefits (you can take your time describing your turns. As DM, you can do actual proper research into your players' requests, or for when you write a lore-heavy post). And it has drawbacks (players ghost, everything takes forever, momentum gets lost).

Is there anything in particular that you want to know about?

I'm not sure since I've never done it before. I guess mostly about what the set up would be like.

 

[Faolyn]

It's a great format for roleplay- and lore-heavy games. Combat goes slooowly, even if everyone is there and posting, so choose your adventures appropriately. A gladiator combat that might be fun at a table will feel like death in pbp, but courtly intrigue is amazing in the format.

Yeah, I think any game we'd pick would be far more RP-oriented than anything else.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Incidentally, anyone wanting to get a feel for play by post, check out the Playing The Game forum here. I've got a Pirate Borg game that's at a point where more people can jump in, if they wish.