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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ryryguy" data-source="post: 4888429" data-attributes="member: 64945">Hey all, as I'm planning to try my hand at DMing here for the first time, I thought I'd start a thread to discuss different techniques in running PbP games, and also maybe a bit about adventure design. If you have any particular tricks, things that you find work well or maybe things that don't, please post them here! There's also a few specific things I thought worth discussing. One is Mal Malenkirk's style of running combats, where all the players act as a group and in any order. He describes it here: <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/4862357-post9.html" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/4862357-post9.html</a> and a little bit more here: <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/4863253-post19.html" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/4863253-post19.html</a>. It seems like it ought to work pretty well to keep things moving. One thing I was wondering (maybe Mal can answer), does this technique cause any problems as far as interrupt and opportunity actions go? Having the players roll for monsters' simple opportunity attacks is fine, but how do you handle stuff like goblin tactics (?) where the goblin can shift in response to a missed attack? Do you actually let the players move the goblin? How about if it's something more exotic, with a trigger condition you don't want to tell the players about advance?  I suppose these things are hard to handle in "regular" style of turn sequence, too, not just Mal's style... hidden combatants and traps could also be a problem. Surprises in general.  How do you deal with it? On a different note: adventure design. It looks to me like the PbP adventures here tend towards the scripted/set-piece style of design, rather than open-ended and event based.  Caveat: As mentioned, my PbP experience is limited, and I've hardly read every adventure thread here, so I could be completely wrong! But that's my impression. Also, I'm not trying to start some argument about "railroading" vs. "sandbox" here... but assuming I'm not completely off base, is there something about PbP that makes it harder to run a looser style? One thing that comes to mind is that you may not know who the players and PCs are in advance. I'd think this could make it a little harder to "prep for improvisation".  Also, is there anything about having to come up with a complete proposal up front that leads to a more scripted style?</blockquote>

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