Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Odhanan" data-source="post: 5443342" data-attributes="member: 12324">To those who can't keep up with PbP games, you definitely are not alone. This is a usual problem with PbP. There are two related problems with PbP: the pacing, and the overall flow of time in the game. Since it takes a lot more time to go around the table in a PbP game, with a few hours delays between posts, some player might be MIA for a day or two, etc, the pacing may vary greatly - sometimes it'll move very fast, sometimes it'll move at a crawl over days or even weeks of real-time game play. First, as a DM, you need to make sure you are super motivated and can commit to months of regular postings before throwing your hat in the ring. Then, it is critical to start the game with something that really catches the players' interest, like starting in media res or something that is really intriguing, so that they are drawn into the game and take things in charge themselves pretty fast. Then, not getting bogged down with details and moving things along (by having procedures to give control of characters to others when their players are MIA for a while, having a Caller, etc) becomes really important. Combat deserves particular attention. The procedure should be very well organized, the players should keep up, and you should be ready to delay actions of players that take too long, even skipping them altogether if they're taking forever to answer. Also have a strong, engaging Out-Of-Character thread that players treat as the place where they discuss and joke as if they were OOC around the gaming table for real. This participates to a group dynamic that creates the impetus to keep on playing, because you start liking people, you're all on the same page, you share the socialization (if virtual) as well as the game itself, just like you would at a real table. Just a few pointers coming to my mind. I'm running my own play-by-posts AD&D Ptolus game right now, I know how much passion, time and dedication this requires, so I sympathize for those who struggle with this sort of thing.</blockquote>

Verification