How many ENWorld pbp games make it longer than three months?

[Hammerhead]

I think it's partly a matter of the players and the interest and committment they have to the game. The PbP game I'm in has been played for over three years and survived two restarts. At the beginning, we had a some people show interest and then drop the game, but there slots got filled pretty quickly by replacement characters. The big part, however, is how much interest the GM has in the game.

I've never found combat to be much of a problem, although we typically only average one fight per issue. Fortunately, the nature of the system means that any type of battlemat system that we would want to adopt would be useless given how many characters can fly around at hundreds of miles per hour.

 

[Barak]

One problem I've had in some games I joined is that DMs almost always go with "first-come, first-serve". And some players are not.. Well, all that good, in my opinion. I know it's petty, but posts with poor grammar/punctuation/spelling/etc.. makes it hard for me to get into things, as well as people being extremely vague, or just.. Too weird. That tends to make playing in the game a chore, and I don't see a point, so it's hard for me to stick with them. And well, sometimes the DM has similar problems, but those can usually be spotted in the game announcement post. Picking players based on characters/backgrounds could probably eliminate that problem.

Luckily, I'm in one of the 3 games Bobitron mentioned, Wing & Sword, which has both an excellent DM and excellent players, so it's actually fun to post in there.

 

[A'koss]

I absolutely agree with RA...DMs disappearing are the main cause of PBP death. They just seem to just vanish into thin air, as do players from time to time. Over the last 6-8 months I've probably joined over 20 games, and not a single one of them has lasted more then a few months (other than the two I am DMing).

I haven't been in that many myself but I see exactly the same thing. DMs just... vanishing in six games I've been in after one or two encounters, never to be seen again (under that screen-name anyway... ).

I really can't figure it out. I mean, I understand that real life gets in the way sometimes, but how hard is it to get online for an hour or two a week? I mean, one or two posts a week will keep a game going...not quickly, but it will keep a game going. I am really considering only joing PBP games that are run by long-time DMs from now on. It takes too much effort to create a character to have the game drop after a month or two.

What really just drives me spare is that all they'd have to do is say they can't keep a game going any longer. DMs - go ahead and make up any excuse you want but just let your players know so they're not having to check every. day. for. weeks. wondering if you'll come back to it. You'll spare yourself a whole load of player resentment if you just come clean.

I've only run one PbP game, but it's been going on now for almost a year and I make sure I let the players know if there will be some sort of extended absence on my part. That's just common curtesy as far as I'm concerned.

As far as running a game is concerned I see a lot of my do's are on other people's don'ts lists...

1. I like making battlemaps (which I use NWN and Photoshop to create). But the limitations of what you can make in it is frustrating sometimes... Yes, it's time consuming. Yes, it can be a pain dealing with a several hundred meg PS file each time you resolve a round of combat. But it just looks so nice when you're done... I'm looking forward to NWN2 just for making the battlemaps for my game.

2. The first few months of the game were fairly combat heavy, the last 5 or 6 though were very RP heavy. One PC actually went three months without facing a single combat encounter. Just RP. And in the year we've played I don't think any single PC has been in more than 6 or 7 battles.

3. As I run the game from my own ezboard, I can spin off PCs into private threads and run mini-adventures that focus on specific characters with ease. Right now the PCs are in three different groups - 2 on solo advantures, 2 on a joint adventure. I think the occasional "personal time" is good to maintain interest.

Just my 2 bits.

Cheers!


edit:
Now that I think about it, running a standard dungeon crawl in a PbP is just going to be rough given the pace of the format. The enounters I've run in my game have all been... self-contained is probably the best way to put it. There are no string of rooms/caverns to clear one after the other. I've set it up (not entirely intentionally mind you) so that after each encounter the plot progresses. But given that it can take upwards of a month to resolve a single big fight I don't think I'd want to have to endure a room-by-room dungeon crawl.

edit 2:
Oh, and if you're looking to actually have the PCs gain levels in a PbP game - just handwave a bunch of encounters. This one I learned the hard way. The plan now is to run ~3 combat encounters per level and work the rest of the XP into the story.

 

[Branding Opportunity]

Interesting topic. I'm coming at it from the opposite side of the fence. I did the classic "Disappearing DM" trick on three games I was running at the end of last year. I got sick, work got overwhelming, the excuses were endless. The truth is that after a while I felt so guilty for having let so many people down that I simply couldn't bring myself to show my face again. After that I left town on two business trips which took me out of the country for eight months.

Now it's almost a year later and I have come back to the boards. I have been extremely lucky, and have been able to restart two of the three games after apologizing to everyone for being such a inconsiderate jerk.

I am just trying to do the right thing and restore some trust, post by post.

 

[Nonlethal Force]

This too is a topic that interests me. I've had my hand in DMing 3 typical PbP games. 2 have been going since August 2005. Both are starting to get hit by player attrition and player non-posting. That makes me a bit sad. The one that failed was because of several players refusing to post more than once a week when it was advertized at a post-per-day kind of pace.

I've had my hand in playing in 5 games as a player. Two fizzled within a month of its start because the DM vanished. A third fizzled within 3 months because the DM vanished. A fourth fizzled after 8 months because the DM confessed he didn't have time anymore so it ended amicably. My fifth game is a game that is DMed by RA and like most games has moments of intense posting and moments where nobody posts for nearly 4-5 days. I don't see that game ending anytime soon, though.

So all in all, I'm batting 67% as a DM and 20% as a player in terms of success. I don't join many games as a player anymore unless I know the DM and they've been around for a while.

I've just now started up on something that I think I'm rather keen on. Velmont and Unleashed took me up on an offer to run solo games. Since Velmont and I are near the same time zone - perhaps even in the same time zone, I've honestly not checked - we can often crank out 4-5 posts apiece each day. I don't expect that pace to be daily ... but that's a much quicker pace than the other games. Unleashed and I are a bit at odds regarding the time zone thing so that game doesn't post as often per day. But even there it can be as much as 2-3 posts per day. Not only that, but I am finding the character development in the solo games to be at a greater depth.

[If I count these two games, I'm batting 80% as a DM! ]

I've not tried LEW. It's just too ... scary ... for me. There seems to be such a huge learning curve at the beginning and I'm not that brave. I can admit that. Plus the whole "anyone can create their own feat/part of the world/god(dess)" thing kinda bothers me. I like a stable world. I'm not trying to slam LEW. I think it is great for those people that can manage it. I admit I haven't tried it, but it just doesn't seem to be my cup of tea. But those of you that enjoy it, rock on!

 

[Nonlethal Force]

I do agree with him that making grids and maps is anathema. Players always ask me for them and I never want to make them because it wastes so much of my time.

Map making can be a time-void ... but I have found that online it can help in combat. I employ a simple sblock/code package that keeps it neat and tidy. Plus, while it might take 8-10 minutes to come up with the original it only takes seconds for the rest of the combat to update it. For example:

[Sblock=Sample Battlefield Map]

--------
|  4 56|
| 1 23 |
|  GR  |
|E    A|
---/----

Each space represents 5 feet

Key:
1-6 are zombies
A = Aaron (PC)
E = Erica (PC)
G = Greg (PC)
R = Rachel (PC)

Explanation:
That took no more than 5 minutes to make. It repesents a 20x30 foot room. I have no doubt that anyone looking at that can immediately tell that there are 6 zombie opponents, the location of the opponents in relation to themselves and their allies, and that there is a door in the south wall.

With it, I can simply cut and paste from the last post to update this one - you don't even have to edit the former post! Also, the players can designate movements and opponents that they would like to strike out against.[/Sblock]

 

[Velmont]

As a player, I have stopped to count the number of game I'ev join and died before three month (should be over 50%). Even many have died even before starting. You end up by creating a character for nothing. A bit frustrating. I've even kept two of them that I hope to play at some time, but it is not easy to fit a character of one game into another one.

As a master, 1 died within 3 months... and it was my fault. A second is still running, slowly, even if it is a solo game. It must go something around 4 posst in a week for me and my player, but it has seldom been over 6 in a single day. I've been running two adventure on LEW. The first one took a month before it end (very quick advnture), the second is prently running. I'm trying to post once a day, but the nature of the adventure (I have 8 players in the same city, but not necesserly as a group) I can hardly post more quicker.

As Nonlethal Force, being on the continent make things easy to run, and it run many post per day during the week, when both can be online mostly all the day.

Nonlethal Force, seeing what you've done with your homebrew world, I understand your concerns. I must tells for feats and spells, it continue to grow, but the world itself starts to stabilize, people try to reuse things more and more. Even me, I am running an adventure in the central city of LEW, and I do great use of all what the other have done.

 

[Victim]

It's been my observation that most PbP or Pbem games have significant longevity problems. I don't think it's any worse here than most anywhere else.