In PBP is a Sandbox filled with Quicksand?

[Thomas Shey]

Ironically, I suspect you'd be able to run a better PBP like some old PBM games where the players were not even intended to be operating together; at that point you need to keep track of relative time (so some players might be operating after a while at a much earlier period than others) but the waiting issue would go away.

Of course at that point there's not a great degree of reason to have everyone able to see each other's posts, and in fact it might be counterproductive in forcing firewalling that was otherwise unnecessary.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

You know what else doesn't work well in D&D PBP?

Caution! I mean it's perfectly fine to say "I do this (action) being careful to not make noise/disturb whatever" but for the party to be generally unwilling to act due to an abundance of caution? (Or worse, argue about the relative safety of an approach?)

Not good. Much better to act, even if the action turns out to be a bit of a mistake.

 

[jmucchiello]

I've been doing most of my PBF on rpg.net. This forum is a ghost town of what it once was.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I've been doing most of my PBF on rpg.net. This forum is a ghost town of what it once was.

Yeah, that's true. I think PBP is dying out as the modes of online play are improving. It makes sense, as it's not the best way to play if you want to get anywhere. I like it because of the writing exercise, and because I'd likely never be able to find a proper block of time to devote to a face-to-face online game.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, that's true. I think PBP is dying out as the modes of online play are improving. It makes sense, as it's not the best way to play if you want to get anywhere. I like it because of the writing exercise, and because I'd likely never be able to find a proper block of time to devote to a face-to-face online game.

Its also time-shiftable. While remote VTT play allows you to overcome space problems, in some ways it can make time problems worse, since the people you connect with may be on very different timezones.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Its also time-shiftable. While remote VTT play allows you to overcome space problems, in some ways it can make time problems worse, since the people you connect with may be on very different timezones.

Yes, exactly. My players are in all sorts of time zones. I have had players from both coasts of Canada and the US, France, Croatia, Brazil, Australia, and the UK. And that's just the ones that I know about. I don't think it would even be possible for us all to meet at the same time. Someone would either be working or sleeping (or both!)

 

[jmucchiello]

I find multiple timezones beneficial to PbF as long as your posting frequency requirement is greater than one post per 23 hours 59 minutes. And as long as you don't use strict initiative. Time zone becomes initiative order.

 

[jmucchiello]

I would like to address the splitting the party part though. On the one hand, it would seem PbF could handle that really well. Just keep posting and have separate plot threads running or create new threads for the split and truly split the party. The only true downside would be having more active posters in one split than the other. This could make later synchronization difficult.

 

[Neurotic]

I would like to address the splitting the party part though. On the one hand, it would seem PbF could handle that really well. Just keep posting and have separate plot threads running or create new threads for the split and truly split the party. The only true downside would be having more active posters in one split than the other. This could make later synchronization difficult.

Or stop the active party while they wait for the others to resolve to the same time point.

 

[Steve Gorak]

I've been doing most of my PBF on rpg.net. This forum is a ghost town of what it once was.

This is so true, the Enworld PBP forums are slowly dying. I remember a time when you had several new games per week! This was about 10 years ago. Now, we're lucky to have one new one per month, and it'll likely be @FitzTheRuke DMing (thank you by the way and please don't disapear! ;-)
Cheers,

SG