How do you handle combat in a play-by-post game? (now with a follow-up question)

[Pinotage]

PBEM Combat

I've been running PBEM games for 3 years now, and these are the suggestions that I could offer:

1) Allow a 24 hour time cap on posting. 48 hours is far too long. In my experience, most PBEM players get disinterested if posting rate is not quick enough. With 48 hours a 7 round combat system would last 2 weeks. Rather one week than two weeks. Very, very, few players are going to stick to a game for more than a year. Either keep your games short or up your posting rate. Otherwise be prepared to keep searching for more players. If a player doesn't post, I decide their action for them, keeping it simple.

2) Always use a map. It's very difficult to run good combats with interesting actions and options without a map.

3) All talking is 'free for all' in the round, i.e. it can be done out of turn. Everything else follows initiative order. If a player's action affects the combat (e.g. a monster dies), send all the players a note to that affect and have them amend their actions. With talking free, a character last in initiatice can still make tactical suggestions. It works well to also post a If/Then type OOC comment at the bottom of your post, and let the DM handle dice rolls for this if necessary. Players should roll their own dice. If a combat degenerates to a slog fest, allow two rounds worth of actions for a 24 hour period.

4) Initiative works best if it is modified to some degree that players and monsters can take turns. There's nothing more painful than a Character/Monster/Character/Monster/Character/Monster initiative. I'll modify monster initiative so that it fits a more acceptable pattern such as Some Characters/Monsters/Remaining Characters. I will always let the 'Remaining Characters' know monster actions so they can decide their actions accordingly. Sometimes it works well to split long initiative rounds into shorter ones, so the above example could work (Round 1) Some Characters/Monsters (Round 2) Remaining Characters, Some Characters, Monsters (Round 3) Repeat. Same initiative order, but easier to handle. A simple round shuffle of the initiative often makes it easier to handle with monster and character acting in turn.

5) I personally think games with less than 4 players are very difficult. 6 players is my optimum. The more players you have, the more posts there'll be, and the more likely you can keep player interest. Players disappear quickly if posting rate is too slow.

6) I run all my games on PBW. Nice thread system and built in Dice Roller. The notes system allows quick and easy sending of private messages.

Hope that helps.

Pinotage

 

[Thanee]

About the OOC combat declaration, it's probably better to not do it on this board, since the OOC and IC forums are seperated.

My game runs in another forum, where we have a seperate subforum for our game and in there I have multiple threads for various topics (one to keep track of experience and treasure, one for information, one for IC, one for OOC, one for combat declaration, etc).

Still I like the idea to have exactly no OOC in the IC thread as it makes it better readable as a whole. And it works very well so far!


Anyways, here are two maps from our combats so far (one of the players was so nice to provide the webspace). First one is from the middle of a clash with a Zhenilar patrol led by a cleric of Bane (the campaign is set in the FR), where the group accompanied a traveling merchant and the last one is from the current combat, where the six heroes (plus animal companion) are attacked by three undead creatures (the water is actually an Entangle spell, I was just too lazy to make a tile for that yet ).

Map One
Map Two

Maps are done with a rather simple javascript someone has written for exactly this purpose (PbP mapping). It isn't perfect, but it's fairly easy to use with some basic knowledge and really, really quick to update once the map is set up.

You can even get some information (it's in german, tho), when you hover the mouse pointer over the tiles, and clicking on the character tiles will show a bigger picture in most cases.

(if you see some thick horizontal black lines there, that's a display error with some browsers, like Mozilla Firefox)

Bye
Thanee

 

[diaglo]

use action cards.

players roll init.

players write down what they do in the round.

the DM calls out the actions written.

if there is an action that doesn't make sense as you progress thru the init... contact that player and ask for an alternative response. or even have the players write alternatives after their initial response on each action card.

 

[IronWolf]

In the PBeM I am running we have six players (had seven at one point as I had suspicions one was dropping out and added the replacement a few weeks early). We use Yahoo Groups, so no separate OOC threads for us to look through.

As DM I handle all of the die rolling for combat. A bit more work for me, but makes for a slightly cleaner thread. The players post their actions IC describing with flair what combat actions they take. Occassionally in uncertain situations, they will insert an OOC line and then BIC post a variant set of actions. They usually at the very end of the email add an OOC section with appropriate bonuses, skill usage, feat usage, etc.

I then take all of those emails and start rolling initiative and combat rolls. Once the results are determined I add my fluff to the combat and post a pure IC combat save for the very last part where I list HP lost or any spell effects, etc. In some cases, the actions listed IC cover two rounds in which case I will actually post two rounds of combat (unless something significantly changes the course of combat from the first round).

Combat rounds move fast. If someone hasn't had a chance to post I tend to follow what their character has done in the past. Our game is in its 9th month so it is pretty easy to know what a character will most likely do. So far everyone seems happy with it.

As others have mentioned, maps do help immensely when it comes to a complex combat situation. I know my players prefer it when I post a map. I don't do anything too fancy, mainly a grid with some outlines of obstacles and colored dots to indicate people.

 

[Legildur]

There's a group of us who have been playing the same play-by-e-mail game for the last 11 years (well, some are newcomers at only 4 years or so).

We don't use a forum, but rely on e-mails via a Yahoo group address to keep the logistics simple. We also store journals, maps, and info databases on the Yahoo group page - you'd be amazed how many threads tie together after so many years - my DM is a marvel.

My current party (1 of 3 in this homebrew world) numbers 5 PCs and some NPCs. We have had up to 14 PCs in more than one battle.

DM paints the battle scene and calls for actions. Everyone posts their turn with room for some adjustment if your action will be awkward based on someone elses post. I prefer the DM to make all my rolls (saving throws and all). Each PC post is suffixed with basic modifiers (AC, hit points, saves, attack bonus, damage etc).

DM sends out very descriptive summary post and asks for next round. Sometimes he'll ask for multiple round actions and post a few at a time - particularly if there is little flexibility or just mopping up.

Players that don't respond either delay until next round (ie miss their turn) or DM decides on their action if things are tight (and they usually are!!).

We usually don't rely on maps too much except to clarify relative positions.

Have fun!

 

[haiiro]

Thanks again for the good suggestions, all.

I'm definitely going with "post in any order, act in initiative order," but I haven't yet made up my mind about condensing enemy initiative (to avoid PC/NPC/PC/NPC...) or posting an update mid-round.

At present, only one PC in the party has a good initiative bonus, so I could pretty easily do "him, enemies, rest of party," assuming he's OK with always posting first. Heck, maybe we'll just try posting in loose initiative order -- the more I think about it, the more that better approximates tabletop combat. Otherwise, the players don't know when to expect the NPCs to act. Hrm.

Edit: I guess where I'm really headed is a follow-up question: How do you approach monster and enemy NPC posts in combat?

Short of doing something like always having the baddies post first, it seems like the only thing that would work is posting in initiative order.

 

[Silver Moon]

We just ran through a major combat segment today and it worked great. Before we started the PBP I had gotten 20 percentile rolls from each player so whenever I needed either a d20 or d100 roll I'd just roll my own d20 against their chart.

The players didn't have to wait for other players either as they essentially mixed and matched who was in active combat with the enemy based upon who was online at the time so we were able to do a lot of back-and-forth action which helped keep the pace of the game going.

And now for the shameless plug - the "Story Hour" for this western Boot Hill/D&D hybrid game is up and running at the following link:
http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=99053