Tips on running a play-by-post campaign

[whydirt]

Hello!

I've been running a PbP Planescape game (using the Mutants and Masterminds rules to allow more character flexibility) for the past 6 weeks. Things are going well so far at a slow, but fairly steady pace.

Since this is both my first major experience DMing a group of this size (5 players) as well as through a message board, I was hoping to get some advice on how to use this particular media to my advantage in running the game.

One thing I've done is have the players allow me to roll all the die behind the scenes here at my place and just post the results. This speeds certain things (especially the brief combat I had) up quite a bit.

If you're interested in seeing my game so far, you can check it out here:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=554907

Notice that if you're not a member of the forums that there will be a slightly annoying message up top, but since the thread is long, it shouldn't be hard to scroll over.

Tips/suggestions/comments all requested and appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[Emiricol]

My first advice is to get a forum at either www.rpol.net or www.playbyweb.com. Both of these allow a bunch of options that really, really speed up game play.

First, the players can roll dice. That means they DONT have to wait for you to roll before they can complete their post.

Second, you can easily post maps and such, and there's nothing like a good, simple combat map to speed up play-by-post games. This is because players can just look at it instead of asking you "what can I see" and then waiting for your reply.

I also recommend in combat a round-by-round recap by the DM of everyone's actions and results, in initiative order. More work on your part, but massively speeds things up in my experience as a player in play-by-post games.

Hope that's what you had in mind for advice...