How does one go about playing/running a PBP game?

[Liquidsabre]

I have to admit I've never tried playing a play-by-post game before and I'm looking to try one (if anyone knows of an opening somewhere let me know ) but I have no clue how these things work.

The main reason I ask is that my group has lost a few players due to time/schedule restrictions and they are begging me to run a PbP for them. Plus, I've been wanting to add another dimension to gameplay for sometime now. I plan to run both campaigns together and likely will have the occasional camio for the PbP PCs, and both campaigns will have some influence on the other as far as events and consequences/repercussions.

Has anyone tried this? Do pbp games use dice rollers, how fast does combat work out, and how do you work with the character sheets? Gah, so many questions...looking for some answers. Thanks all!

 

[Emiricol]

Hi! I recommend use of dice rollers, but they aren't required. The common places to run PbP games of D&D are here at ENWorld, as well as www.rpol.net and www.playbyweb.com. RPOL and PBW have built-in dice rollers.

Merging a PbP game with a tabletop game would be difficult mostly because PlayByPost games take a *lot* longer than tabletop. Everything takes longer. On the other hand you can do things in PbP such as split the party up for a long time, or have one-on-one roleplay while the rest of the party is doing something else, because no one is sitting around bored waiting for their turn to come up.

Try it - you might really like it.

EDIT - People usually use text PC sheets. At RPOL and PBW the forum for the game has utilities to display the PC sheets. Here at EN World it is usually done via a thread in Rogues Gallery. Combat takes 1-2 days PER ROUND typically, so it does go slow...