Let's talk about play by post gaming!

[garyh]

I'm not the oldest Play by Poster by far, but I've been around here since well before the forums became as large as they are now. I mean, were not rules or GD, but were next in line now.

Some info, as of 11:35 PM Pacific, November 18th.

Top 5 Forums by postcount:
1 - General - 486,387
2 - D&D Rules - 181,748
3 - Playing the Game - 82,099
4 - House Rules - 51,203
5 - Talking the Talk - 48,536

We DO make up a big chunk, don't we?!

 

[Fanog]

"SPEECH"
THOUGHTS
ACTIONS

Aarh, Jemal. Speech, thoughts and actions in all caps. That's just hidious!

j/k

For my more serious contribution, I don't really like colors in a post. They seem to distract from the continuity of a post. Breaking it down in speech/thought/action through different colors doesn't make it really 'flow' all that well when reading. Personal preference... As for ambiguity, I sometimes add descriptive verbs to make it clear:

Blablabla, he thinks. This is going no where. "Hey, can we get on now?", Fanog calls out to his companions, slightly frustrated.

Seems to work pretty well, thought it can be a hassle sometimes, and is a bit longer to write up. (Never mind the actual text of the example, it isn't related in any way to the present discussion. I must be in a bit of a bad mood as this was the first thing to pop into my head. )

I'd also like to add something to the aspect of speeding up combat. I've found (from playing in the Resident Evil game, very combat-intensive) that it can help to add long-term objectives to a player post. That way, if you can't make it to post for each round, the DM can fill in the blanks. These objectives can be added in the form of thoughts, of through conversation with other characters.

Interesting thread, Garyh.

Fanog

 

[Inez Hull]

I'm curious if I'm unlucky in PbP games. Here's my rough stats:
Months playing: 10
Games started (as player): 18
Games officially dead as of now: 7
Games that progress very slowly (if they're even still alive):4
Total levels my PCs have gained: 3

Sounds OK compared to my run. I've been PbP'ing here for about 11 months and have had 9 of the 13 games I've played in collapse, with one more looking that it will go that way. Mind you I have played in 3 Middle Earth games which as we know are all ill-fated to begin with. In most of those the GM has gone AWOL, which is very frustrating as some of those games had great potential. Mind you, even more frustrating is when a GM has to can a game from lack of interest when you are still actively posting and enjoying the game.

 

[Uriel]

Yes, but if you can keep a campaign like that GOING for the seveal years, then I'ld say it'd be highly worth it!

Anyways, I always check my posts from at home anyways, I'm currently at a place in my life where sometimes I'll go a week with nothing happening IRL and other times WHAM life's so full of stuff that has to be done that I don't know where to start. As for the combat, I usually don't find it too hard, though it is a bit time consuming. What I've seen some DMs do is ask the players to post all the relevant info (IE post their total attack modifiers, AC, HP, etc for a round based on whether they charged, raged, power attacked, and counting buffs they have on, etc.) That makes it go a bit quicker as you don't have to always check their char. sheets for the info. Another I've actually been thinking of doing myself is letting players make their own rolls for combat, and then telling them the results... I'ld still make all the rolls for saves, skill checks, etc, but it would make combat easier. BUT then you get into the problem that it means the PCs have to be around their dice + characters to do it... Unless they know where to find a good online dice roller.

Wouldn't it be cool if ENworld had a dice roller built on here somewhere with a link to it?


And, don't forget if all else fails - You're the DM, make something up.




*L* actually that's how a lot of my the games I'm in IRL have been starting lately.. not many of them last too long either (But that's b/c recently my gaming group's been going through several changes, people coming + going)

But I agree, and with Online I usually try to have a good (From my PoV) hook for the characters, and I've found it's probably best to figure out how the PCs know each other (Or whether they DON'T know each other) before the game starts.

I agree with the charactersknowing each other bit. In Under a Vaulted
Sky:The Silver Door (The recently Completed Game, running just shy of a year ), all of the characters knew each other, four were relatives(Drow Nobles), with another a lover of one of those three, another the companion of that character, while the remaining two were servants of the House that the PCs belonged to. All-in-all, it made for an interesting interaction between the players,as well as starting the whole thing off with a bang of plotting.

 

[Knight Otu]

Let's see, I started my PbP "career" with the IRR, that must have been about 15 months now. Some time later, I joined the YB! and YB!A ranks.
The next games have been Randomling's Big Trouble in the Tzin, Sniktch's Land of Og game and Yellow Sign's Empire of Sands.

I also tried to get into Keia's Stargate game, but couldn't.

The aforementioned games that I had joined (not Keia's SG game) have died in one way or another, sadly. The YB! and YB!A games also are rather dead now.
The only game I'm in that is still running is Uriel's Sceptre of Kings.

I've been joking about being cursed in regards to PbP games a few times.

 

[Aeolius]

My background with message-based games:

------------------------------

In January of 1995, a brief weekend campaign known as “Isle of the Unknown” (IoU) was born. It had been five years since I had finished college and one year since I had married. A high level adventure loosely based on "B1: In Search of the Unknown", the game was designed to rekindle the waning imaginations of the players and DM. There were but five of us that weekend and time passed all too quickly, leaving the adventure unfinished but the imaginations fueled.

Attempting to keep the campaign alive, though great distances separated many players from one another, I began to devise the means to run the game by alternate means. In February of 1995, I began investigating the possibility of playing AD&D by mail, fax, e-mail, and AOL. Alas, my efforts did not come to fruition.

In February of 1995, I became an online chat host for TSR. In May of 1995, I began a new campaign, “Into the Land of Black Ice” (LoBI), a message-based game in the RPG Forum of America Online. I moved the game to TSR’s message-boards on AOL shortly thereafter.

While both campaigns utilized the older First Edition AD&D rules, LoBI was meant to be diametrically opposed to IoU; an arctic clime instead of tropical, a frozen wasteland in place of the sea. Also, as the Land of Black Ice was uncharted territory, I could do as I pleased with the setting. While researching the region, I became enamored with both the "Mysterious Places" of GH.

It was at this time that I began my obsession with night hags, starting with Nigel Findley's "Ecology of the Greenhag" in DRAGON #125 (Sept '87). Xaetra, a night hag NPC, made her first appearance in LoBI in January of 1996, as the mother of one of the PCs (an alu-demon). As I began writing about hags, I discovered that Nigel had passed away eleven months earlier (2/19/95).

In September of 1997, TSR left AOL and established their own website, complete with chat-rooms and message-boards. The message-boards were delayed, in coming online, so I ran the game via e-mail for awhile. The TSR message-boards, an iChat program, proved to be slow and cumbersome. They crashed frequently, causing my players to complain.

In November or 1997, lobi.com was born. Having hastily researched web providers and the discussion groups made possible by MS FrontPage, I took my meager knowledge of web page design and made the next step; running my game on my own site. I started a second Message-Based Game, “Beneath the Pinnacles of Azor’Alq” (BPAA), in March of 1998.

Again, BPAA was meant to be an extreme opposite of my other campaign. I decided to use a second "Mysterious Place", the Pinnacles of Azor'alq, as the setting. Almost on a whim, I decided to set the game underwater. I had started keeping saltwater aquariums and my campaigns already had a reputation for being somewhat unorthodox, so it seemed a natural fit; the perfect amalgamation of my interests in writing, D&D, and marine aquaria.

In July of 1998, I left the TSR team. Their direction and focus seemed quite different than my own, at the time, plus I wanted to spend more time with my own games. In May of 2000, LoBI fell apart, mainly due to player disputes. A five year run for an online game was not too shabby, after all.

In November of 2000, I did something completely unpredictable, for a 1e AD&D diehard old-timer. I converted BPAA over to 3e D&D.

Now 2003 has arrived. BPAA will celebrate its sixth anniversary this year, while my marriage will be celebrating its tenth. I now have 765 gallons in saltwater aquariums in my house. The background for BPAA, which began as a one page blurb, has grown to seventeen pages in length. Xaetra is still around, albeit as a spectral hag.

------------------------------

Five days ago, I posted a lighthearted recruiting notice on the boards at EN World, WotC, and rpg.net; which have garnered 28, 20, and 26 views respectively. But no replies. I realize that PbP games require a special breed of role-player; one with patience, who enjoys writing, and uses a spell-checker. I also realize that I have set my campaign in an environment which excludes standard races and typical dungeon encounters. Perhaps it is my fixation with hags, which alienates potential players.

 

[garyh]

Interesting thread, Garyh.

Thanks, Fanog! I thought some casual discussion might be interesting, helpful... or both!

 

[Erekose13]

Thought I would ask another question given that lots of people seem to be running adventures. How much prep work do you do to get a campaign started? And how much work do you do while running it?

For myself, I started my first game with a quickie module off of the WotC site just to sink my teeth in. I found that combat required quite a bit of effort to run because with each round taking between a day or two it was easy to forget all the buffs and such. I also play at home and at work, so I write random number scripts in excel to handle rolls and keep track of hp and init and stuff.

With the second campaign I started in Arcana Unearthed I worked for quite a while setting up the npcs/factions and maps, but left the plot open as I would like the pcs to mix it up with the city and get involved in things. I think i need to plan a few more encounters for it though.

The third one I am running off the cuff at the moment, taking inspiration from a novel I read. I think it is working well so far, though I have to say that Fanog is helping out a lot with his character.

 

[sophist]

I realize that PbP games require a special breed of role-player; one with patience, who enjoys writing, and uses a spell-checker.

Darn, I'm out.

On another note, there was this theory that many posts would give a measure
of commitment: I think a better measure would be posts per day from the
profile. Granted, this will not say much (as in my case) when the number of
posts is low, but once you get past 200 posts, this should give a mucho more accurate picture of posting than the absolute number alone.

 

[Velmont]

I realize that PbP games require a special breed of role-player; one with patience,

True.

who enjoys writing,

True. Always fun to write a good little text with emotions. It is sometimes harder to do it around a table, as the atmosphere is not always good for such emotiannal moment.

and uses a spell-checker.

Hmmmm... Yes, I should use it, but I don't. And I know I am not the best writer (even in French, my primary language), but I think I am clear enough to be a good PbP RP, but it may affect a bit my play because of that.