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Message: <blockquote data-quote="A'koss" data-source="post: 3135079" data-attributes="member: 840">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...  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ). 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...  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" /> 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...  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" />  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.</blockquote>

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