Running a play by post

[soulforge]

I'm interested in running a play by post. I've never run or played in a play by post before, but recently some of my friends as well as myself have moved away from home, and I imagine play by post would at least give us some of the feeling of playing together.

I'm curious as to whether there is an explanation of play by post somewhere as well as a "how-to" for it. The other part I'm curious about is how to do online dice rolling, and maybe even if there's an online resource for tracking token movement on a grid.

How do you run Play by Posts, and what resources are there?

 

[Jdvn1]

Most people just 'jump in' to PbP games. If you'd like an example of play, look at some of the current games.

As for rolling dice, there are two common ways to do it. One is to use an online dice roller (like invisiblecastle.com, but there are many others if you google for it), and another is for the players to include their roll modifiers in a post and for the GM to do all the actual rolling.

I've been in the process of making a how-to here:
http://www.roleplayershome.net/forum/index.php/topic,1378.0.html

 

[Hussar]

Something that might help, although if you are playing with friends, you might not need to, is establish ground rules for how often you expect people to post. I've seen way too many games grind to a screeching halt because two or three players post once a month while everyone else posts once a week or more. Set a baseline expectation and stick to it. If people cannot meet that baseline, politely remove them.

Another idea, since you are gaming with friends, is www.openrpg.com OpenRPG. It's a chat based platform for gaming. Works very well. The learning curve is a tad steep, but, if you go online, you can almost always find a nice person to help you.

 

[Festivus]

There are several online "virtual tabletops" out there. Klooge, Fantasy Grounds, OpenRPG. There was a post somewhere where one of the developers posted links to all the various manufacturers so you could compare features of all the options... but I suspect it was lost in the crash. Perhaps he will be nice and post here again

As stated above, there is a learning curve with any of those systems however. My group has found it rewarding, but YMMV.

 

[doghead]

Enworld's PbP forum is in the Gaming Action sub-forum (just in case). Its a fairly simple set up, there is a OOC forum and an IC forum. Mosts games have a thread in each, as well as one in the Rogue's Gallery. Clck though a few of these and you should get a fairly good idea of how it is run, here at least.

Other on-line forums for gaming can be set up differently. Role Play on Line, for example, has a number of additional features for each game, such as a dice roller, character section, game outline as well as a area for all your game threads (which can be grouped with different access given to different people). The features are nice, but after having played here for a while, it took me a while to work it all out. GroovyGamer's is another pbp site. I'm sure if you google a bit, you can find more.

But basically, posting is the key issue. No posts, no game.

The only other thing I would suggest is 'when in doubt, be obvious'; clues, plot hooks etc. In pbp, there are none of the visual clues of table top, so players often miss things they would perhaps pick up on around a table.

Good Luck

thotd

 

[Voadam]

Dice rolling:

www.invisiblecastle.com lets you link to rolls for others to see them.

I like http://kevinsavage.ca/pub/dir_rpg/DiceRoller.html as a more discrete looking one.

PbP in general:

Check out some games in the gaming forum here, lots of different styles.

Sometimes it is DM does all the rolling, sometimes he shows the rolls, sometimes not.

Sometimes the DM has the player explicitly state all the mechanical numbers and effects for their actions ("5' move diagonally away, draw a cure light potion as a move action and drink it as a standard action for 1d8+1 hp"). Others want to keep things more narrative.

PBP allows linking to websites so you could say "You see this thing as you open the door." Then link to the MM art gallery entry for a xorn from the WotC D&D site.

Since you are online you can reference the srd and cut and paste easily as needed which is very convenient. I find the html online one at www.d20srd.org very useful and easy to use. It even has one click dice rollers for monster entry attacks, saves, and hp.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I've been running a pbp for a group of friends since January and getting into ENWorld games that mostly seem doomed to stall out, sometimes for reasons the players never hear about.

My advice:

1) Roll all the dice and simplify where you can. The battlemat-level of D&D doesn't really work when slowed way down, unless you want to have one adventure a year. Likewise, I toss out initiative, since what I think pbp does best (roleplaying) doesn't really need it, and it's just one more set of dice to roll. And waiting on the first-in-initiative to post holds up the game unnecessarily, and it'll be slow enough already.

2) Play with folks who are really committed to playing and have an adventure with jumping on and off points to dump characters and pick up replacements when people can't play. I broke my campaign into smaller adventures to aid in this as well.

3) Post regularly. The lower you set the bar on post rate, the further people will push it, and the more unexpected delays you'll have. If you get enough, the game will be over. My players post at least twice a day, and once a day on weekends. We're finishing up our third adventure currently.

4) Don't start off ambitious. Start small. Smaller than that, even. Games take a long time to play out, especially combat. You don't want the group fighting 500 goblins, you want them fighting nine, at most. (My first combat in my pbp featured 16 combatants total and it took two weeks to resolve and I was about out of my mind at the end.)

5) Have supplemental material. If you're using the Web, use it to its best effect. Create a player's guide, link to evocative images, post logs, etc.

 

[Dracorat]

As for dice rolls, you are welcomed to use my site:

http://keithratliff.com/dice/

I wrote that myself and if you enter a unique game name, it will keep all your rolls etc to that name (private as long as you dont share the game name).

It is also real-time. If you and a player connect at the same time and both are working in it, you will see each other's rolls etc. (I programmed it using AJAX)

This program is still a work in progress, but anyone is free to use it at no charge.

 

[Dracorat]

Feel free to log in to the game name 'test' to test it out.

You roll using the following syntax:

I swing my sword, hitting AC ([D20] +8)

Or if there is no modifier, just place the bracketted set:

I do [2D6] damage.

 

[Raj]

You might want to check out www.dndonlinegames.com as an avenue to explore pBp gaming.

Raj