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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The_Magician" data-source="post: 2602053" data-attributes="member: 14978">Regarding time - When you announce your game you better set a posting rate for it. One of my games has a 4+/week rate. That means my players have to post at least once every 48 hours. Now, we all know different players have different lives and different availability to post. That means some will post more than others. What I do is treat the chronology of the game as scene sequences. I post and describe a scene. Characters are free to interact in that scene. If a PC asks a question to a NPC, I dont feel like I have to wait for all the other PCs to post before I respond. That is actually a bad idea, because the game gets messed up chronologically. You could have 6 people asking the same person questions all the time. So, when dialogue is concerned, I see no problem with having a couple of players posting a dozen posts while another posts a few. When you are with your friends drinking at a pub, do you all speak all the time for hours on end, or do some of you stay quiet and listen to the conversations for minutes? Others go to the toilet, others go shoot pool, etc etc. Unless something major is happening in that scene that requires the action of every PC, I will send quick reponses to my players. Now, here is another situation. The party is through with that scene and they decide to move on. Then I put the posting rate into action.Lets say 5 of the 6 PCs decide to go SW. 48 hours pass by and the 6th PC didnt post his actions. I move the game forward and send the party SW. I tend to wait the 48 hours, because sometimes a PC may decide against the party and even though that seems like a delay in the game, you never know what players will come up with, and they can come up with unusual and interesting situations, as it just happened a couple of weeks ago in one of my games. Everybody was ready to follow a NPC. One of the PCs was against because he didnt trust that NPC and decided to use Speak with Animals to howl a greeting to the wolves from the forest. He wanted to ask the wolves instead. So I sent 6 dire wolves to 'talk' to him. =PRegarding applications: Look, you dont have to feel bad about hurting people's feelings. I put a lot of effort in my games and I expect players to put a lot of effort in their characters. Truth be told, a LOT of players dont. If the first applicatiosn you get are from lazy players creating crappy characters with a one paragraph background, do you think it's worth it to accept those people into your game? Heck, I had an application once that had a 1 sentence background: "Nothing is known about the mysterious life of (insert character name)." Puh-lease. So, I advise to set a deadline for applications. When you set a deadline, out of respect for the potential applicants, it is best to hold until the deadline comes, because some people only apply in the last minute (as I do. I tend to work for more than a week in my characters). That means you could end up getting more good applications than you have slots in your game. That's not a bad thing. That is a good thing. Getting booted form the game: I boot players who write crappy posts, dont pay attention to the game and are not commited with the posting rate. If something happens in your player's life that will prevent him from posting, he should warn you about it, so you know why he isn't posting, otherwise you would think he is not interested in your game. It's simple, dude. If you feel a player is not adding anything positive to your game, boot him and get another to cover his slot. Do it mercilessly, or you'd be risking getting your game killed and all your effort wasted. Remember the saying about the rotten apple....Combat: Posting rate should be watched for combats as well. In my 4+ posts/week game, if a player doesnt post an action in 48 hours, I am NPCing his character that round. I have tried all sorts of combat. I prefer a round by round kind of combat. I play in a PBP portal that allows players to roll their own dice, so that adds a special flavor to the game, but if you could roll all the dice if you want to. I have had a DM that didnt like combats to take too long, so he would ask us to send our present and possible future actions in combat. That way he would resolve multiple rounds at once. I dont like that, neither as a player or as a DM. I like seeing the combat resolve itself step by step. I just resolved a combat in a party of 6 mid-level PCs, against 8 skeletons and a level 5 dwarven werebadger fighter. One of the players was travelling away, so I NPCed his character. We were done in less than a week and it was a rich and fun combat, with some luckstrikes, several crittical hits, a good rolepalying.Having a webpage or yahoogroups: It helps a little. For instance, when you are having a combat, it is more practical to have the combat map uploaded and updated somewhere, so players can reach it easily without the burden of searching for your last e-mail with the combat map attached. Same thing with party journals and other info important for the adventure, like Rumors heard by the party that could be useful. You can easily receive hundreads of e-mails per month with a game of average speed. Imagine, after one year of gaming, a player trying to search for the rumors the party collected at the first month of play? That is a pain. So it does help, but some PBEM/PBP portals offer you all the features you need to run a successful online game. Some good PBP/PBEM portals: <a href="http://www.rondaksportal.com" target="_blank">www.rondaksportal.com</a>, <a href="http://www.barroks-tower.net" target="_blank">www.barroks-tower.net</a>, <a href="http://www.rpol.net" target="_blank">www.rpol.net</a>, <a href="http://www.playbyweb.com" target="_blank">www.playbyweb.com</a>.</blockquote>

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