PbP GMing: Maintaining Desire

[Vigwyn the Unruly]

I have both played and GMed PbP games. I think as a GM you have to realize that the game is more important to you than it is to the players. Therefore, it's up to you really to keep it fun and interesting. Here are some pointers, for what they're worth.

1. Keep it short. PbP is excruciatingly slow. Even short adventures can take months to play out. By the time July rolls around, players don't remember or even care about the obscure NPC they met in January. So, instead of running campaigns, I would stick to short adventures. Five or six encounters is really plenty for a PbP game.

2. Keep it moving. PbP is better when it's about roll-playing, rather than role-playing. The latter is very rewarding in real life, but not so much by post. Players are more motivated to do or say something interesting in their post when something interesting is happening in the game. Action counts in PbP. If the players have to gather info in a tavern, a couple of rounds of posts should do it. After that, just give them the info if the posts were good, or roll a Gather Information check to see if they get it.

3. Keep it simple. Face to face, communication is easy. Questions can be asked and answered very quickly, and you can build an intricate, fantastic world for your characters. In PbP, that kind of communication just takes too much time, and isn't really that fun. Communication should focus on the action. The only way for that to happen is if you follow most or all fantasy conventions. Orcs should come from mountains, goblins should be cannon fodder, and necromancers should be evil geniuses. That way everyone starts with the same assumptions, and there is little room for player confusion/frustration. Player confusion and frustration kill a PbP game. And remember, the players just don't have the same level of commitment to the game as you do. The more complex it is, the more difficult it is, and the more likely they will be to bail on you or start posting simple posts.

 

[Thanee]

1. Keep it short. PbP is excruciatingly slow. Even short adventures can take months to play out. By the time July rolls around, players don't remember or even care about the obscure NPC they met in January. So, instead of running campaigns, I would stick to short adventures. Five or six encounters is really plenty for a PbP game.

As for that, I can't really agree.

A longer running campaign usually gives more incentive and is more interesting. You just need to make sure, that the important information is summarized and collected, because you will need to look it up every now and then as a reminder, but it's always more interesting to see how things evolve in the long run, I think.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Ferrix]

1. Keep it short.

3. Keep it simple.

I'm with Thanee on the first point, I find PbP can come off very well in long story lines, and I think it really works well for that. Making them involved can really keep players invested.

I also disagree about the third point, I think PbP games are an excellent medium to experiment with new rules, worlds and world views. I actually think having a ton of house-rules or nonstandardness can sometimes be more difficult to deal with in a face to face situation, cause referencing is harder for people unfamiliar with the changes since most decisions in face to face games are much quicker. You can do a lot more checking and rechecking, and organizing to get a more cohesive feel in a PbP game sometimes. That is unless your face to face group is excellent and gets accustomed to specific campaigns very quickly.

 

[Evilhalfling]

I

2. Keep it moving.

Okay I am going to disagree with this.
I am in 2 games, running one, playing one and lurking a third.

The bits I like most are the roleplaying.
Halfling Quest and Kobold quest are spectacular in this.
My own campaign, not as much.

 

[driver8]

I saw this great suggestion by this great DM here once.

If in doubt, post.

I agree. That and keeping the game moving are probably two cardinal rules.

Ive played and Dmd quite abit of PbP on other sites or thru EZboard. It can be a challenge- dungeon crawls can be hard since PbP goes so slow..so can NPC interaction.

Your advice is best though..post anything. Overlong posts can get tiresome, but just posting you action without roleplaying becomes tedious too. Ask questions of ppl in the world around you, explore..anything. Give other players and the DM material to work with. And dont just post your action, embellelish it.

Also it seems hard to get players to know they have freedom to do anything just like in a face to face game. You often get a "lemming" effect when interacting with NPCs where one PC will do one thing and the others just follow along.

And while short episodic stuff may be better that doesnt mean you cant do long adventures, you just have to chop it up into manageble bites. And unfortunately big mega overarching plots can be hard to pull off when one days of action make take a week of posting to do.

 

[Hammerhead]

Hmm, I was in one in a very successful Play By Post Mutants and Masterminds game called Generation Legacy by Tokiwong. It was well-above any other PbP game I've seen, and I've tried to analyze why. The primary reason, in my mind, was that Generation Legacy was nearly perfectly adapted to its format and structure; most PbP games unsuccessfully attempt to emulate a tabletop game.

Other reasons were great chemistry between characters, spotlight time for nearly everyone, fast posting where it seemed everyone posted at least once a day, and a good genre. Superhero games tend not to involve dungeons or other time-wasters...when we got into combat, which was about once every issue, we knew we were in combat and finished it quickly. Another cool part was the cutscenes where the bad guys would talk; we were in the dark for a lot of the game, and the tantalizing hints in the cutscenes kept the players interested.

Edit: Oh, yeah. Big important thing. GRAMMAR! Structure is important too. Nothing is uglier than a huge block of text.