Pbem/pbp?
- Thread starter Gwaihir
- Start date
Gwaihir said:
The general format for such a game is simple. The DM writes a description of an event, or a response to PC actions, and post this to a public place for all players to read. A 'public place' can be a mailing list with everybody else's e-mails on, or a dedicated forum. Players then respond to the DM post by writing their own IC character responses, interacting with each other at the same time. Because the players and DM have much more time to thin about responses and events, they're often 'richer' than you'd find for 'spur of the moment' responses over a table. Not always as funny or ingenious, though, but they can be.
There have been several threads here on ENW on combat, and I've seen a lot of different opinions. I generally post a battlemap to my players, and they have 24 hours to respond and state their actions, rolling their own dice (I use PbP with dedicated dice rollers), and adding additional information in the event their action becomes void, by say, killing a creature. As DM I adjudicate the actions as they come in, so that I can let other players know if something happens as a result of an earlier PC's action that may affect their own, or a monster's action. With 24 hours, it never happens that a PC can't complete their action or come up with a different one before the round deadline. Within a week, combat is generally over. If a PC doesn't respond within 24 hours, I'll NPC him based on the situation at hand.
The main trick to any good and enjoyable PbP/PBEM game is to find one that posts frequently enough. 3 times per week is absolute minimum and I normally require 5 times per week as a minimum. As DM I post every day, unless player actions hold things up, but then I'll prompt them for at least an OOC note on their actions. Dedicated and Commited is what you're looking for in players and DMs alike.
Pinotage
haiiro
First Post
When I was looking to take my tabletop campaign online as a PbP, I spent some time browsing through the Playing the Game forum here to see how different groups approached things. When I saw things I liked, I took notes, and after a couple days of browsing I had a pretty solid idea of how I wanted to handle my game. This was a good idea for me, and it might work well for you too. 
punkorange
First Post
I've often thought about looking into a pbp game, but it just seems to me like it would take forever then a few days to do anything. Is this the case?
haiiro
First Post
punkorange said:
It's certainly the case in my game, but that's because we're not very agressive about posting regularly. If you make a rule about how often everyone should post, and your group knows it up front, that should go a long way towards alleviating this situation.
I've looked at games in the Playing the Game forum that move along quite quickly, so it can be done!
punkorange said:
It naturally takes longer, but a good PbP DM tends to gloss over a lot of things in order to speed the game up. Not rules or anything, but, for example, doesn't require 'pointless' roleplaying around a campfire at night or while travelling long distances, but keeps the game focused on the story the whole time. Each post I make, for example, I try to end on a cliffhanger or something that forces the players to respond. Posts that don't advance the story are limited. Combat encounters are generally less, but more intense since they're several CRs higher, and decision making can often take long if everybody has a different opinion. Appointing a party leader is always helpful.
To give you an idea, one PbP I'm in has been going for 2 years now, playing Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. We've just about cleared half to two-thirds of the Crater Ridge Mines. In another game City of the Spider Queen, we've been playing for 10 months now, and have delved some way into the first drow city.
Pinotage
Thanee
First Post
punkorange said:
It definitely takes much, much longer. You cannot view it in the same light as a gaming session, because the content of one session is probably stretched over a month or even longer.
The good thing is, that with such a long time at your hand, there is really plenty of time to make careful and well-thought-out decisions (not that everyone does that, tho
).I can give you an example from my own PbP, which runs for almost a year now.
In that time the party has completed two missions (the whole thing is very open and "mission-based", i.e. there are several missions on a bulletin board, which the party can choose from, but they could also just go exploring on their own) and is on their third now (first mission was to scout a graveyard and to report any undead activity, the party went a bit far there and had a few clashes with the undeads, too; second mission was to free a temple from a large group of orcs, which had desecrated it for their own nefarious ends; currently they are after some bandits, which had attacked them on their way back from the temple), with some time between each mission spent in town, where they could forge alliances, get help, and dig up useful information, and there was a journey to the adventure site (where characters could get to know each other and get used to the flow of the game and so on) inititially.
There have been nine combat encounters so far, of which three were pretty big fights with a dozen or two opponents against the party.
Here are a few combat maps from some of the bigger fights (some maps take some time to show up, there are literally thousands of tiles in some, which are placed by a Java script, so be patient):
Zenthilar Patrol
Undead Attack
Temple of Bane
Webbed
The characters have leveled from 2nd to 4th level so far.
Out of six PCs, one has retired quite early, since the player wanted to do something else instead, and one PC is currently "on extended vacation", since of extended time issues one player has (so instead of tagging along all the time, the PC just left for some time to hopefully come back eventually). There hasn't been any PC death yet, tho it has been close a few times already.
So far, it has been a lot of fun!
Bye
Thanee
punkorange
First Post
So where is a good place to find a pbp game. I wouldn't want to really jump in one that's been going on for years, and is the turnover rate as bad as mirc style games?
Try pbem.com
Personally I don't think scenarios written for tabletop play work in PBEMs, it's a very different format. Maybe plot/character heavy scenarios as in some 2e stuff might (hope so - I'm currently playing in "Touch of Death").
Some things work really well in PBEMs, like conversations w interesting NPCs. Some don't, eg dungeon mazes where the GM asks you at each intersection if you go left or right - I once played an IM game where I said "we always go left" - the GM flipped out and killed my PC...
Personally I don't think scenarios written for tabletop play work in PBEMs, it's a very different format. Maybe plot/character heavy scenarios as in some 2e stuff might (hope so - I'm currently playing in "Touch of Death").
Some things work really well in PBEMs, like conversations w interesting NPCs. Some don't, eg dungeon mazes where the GM asks you at each intersection if you go left or right - I once played an IM game where I said "we always go left" - the GM flipped out and killed my PC...
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