Play By Post RPG forum?

January 31, 2007 7:28 PM

I'm thinking about starting a new Play By Post RPG for some friends, and wondered if anyone had any recommendations.

I have a new baby, and thus am not able to play with my regular Thursday night group. However, I'd love to have an outlet for the gamer geek inside of me, and want to start a Play By Post game for my buddies (some of whom have moved away and left are local gaming group).

What I want to know is what sites are most useful for GMs wanting to run a Play By Post forum? Easiest to use?

posted by geekhorde to sports, hobbies, & recreation (7 comments total)

Here's a shout-out for this board which I like: you might find it helpful in terms of seeing how a PBP board tends to run, and you could set up your own "community" board for yourself and your friends on the ezboards system: d20 World Of Greyhawk
posted by Rubber Soul at 7:35 PM on January 31, 2007

Hm. Ezboards. Should have thought of that. That just might work.
posted by geekhorde at 7:56 PM on January 31, 2007

Online Roleplaying.com has been great in my experience. Responsive mods, nice interface, very reliable.
posted by Shutter at 8:30 PM on January 31, 2007

Me and a group of globally dispersed friends did this twice over recent years. Some odd pieces of advice:

* Most play-by-post games fail to finish. We had one that just ground to a halt, but after studying other games, it seems this is the fate of many. How do you avoid this? Read on ...

* Keep a schedule. You don't have to be ridiculous about it, but a steady flow of turns / decisions keeps people in the game. If the gap between turns gets erratic or long, you're asking for people to lose interest and drift away. (Conversely, people will sometimes be unable to take part for a while. Allow for this and keep moving.)

* Keep it simple. A plot that seems obvious over a tabletop, may be opaque via email when extended over several months.

* Keep it general. The GM of one of our games got us to give finely detailed orders, sometimes for each round of a fight. I thought this actually bogged things down (a day of "game time" needing a month of "realtime" to handle) and was one of the reasons leading that game collapsed. Let players give general instructions and interpret them liberally.

* Keep everyone involved. This applies to all RPGs and doubly for play-by-post where someone can be left out of the action for weeks.
posted by outlier at 2:28 AM on February 1, 2007

ALthough I haven't haunted the site in a couple years, this subject used to come up on fairly frequently. There are a number of third party sites that supposedly support this kind of game, but since I never tried, I can't really comment.

I did conduct a game by mail once (in the days before easy internet access. sometimes we emailed, sometimes we wrote actual paper letters), and I would back-up what outlier said above. I would especially emphasize the point about keeping a reasonable schedule. Be fair and honest about setting one up, make sure it is something that everyone involved with can actually stick to, but then stand by it. These kinds of games are very easy to let fall by the wayside, since they take a bit more work from everyone involved. Lots of fun when they work though, especially since you have a built in log of everything that happened. "Remember when Balbo the Brave decided to sit in the bone chair? What a riot!"
posted by schwap23 at 9:07 AM on February 1, 2007

This is all very helpful. Thanks.
posted by geekhorde at 9:26 AM on February 1, 2007

Although it seems to be down at this exact moment, normally Myth-Weavers is an excellent PbP resource, designed for that purpose specifically.

I've played in a PbP campaign on MSN Groups, which had the benefits of being able to create custom boards, had an image upload space, static pages for Game Info/homebrew stats/etc, and decent new post-notification options. Downsides are no game-specific utilities(dice rollers, etc.), and especially compared to modern standards the amount of storage space provided(3 MB per user) is pathetic.

I'm currently playing in a PbP on one of Penny Arcade's forums, Of Dice and Men. If you want to get some people outside your local gaming group involved(or want to build a reputation if you want to do so someday), this is a great place to do it. Beyond that, no special benefits for PbP gaming.

Some general PbP tips:
-Combat slows down the game more than anything else. You'll need to come up with some kind of streamlined solution for it if you don't want 1 round to take a week, and the combat session itself to take a month or more(if it doesn't kill your game outright). You could do combat sessions real-time, over IRC or another chat program. If nothing else, take out initiative, have people act in the order they post, and insert NPC actions intermittently.

-Strongly seconding the schedule recommendation. After every GM post, players get a 2-3 day window(depending on how long you want the overall campaign to last) to post a response. If they don't post by the end of it, you NPC them and move on. If you have to do it enough times, clearly you have an inactive player.

-If you're not using a service with a built-in dice roller, have a clear policy on rolls. Either you're using the honor system, or people should post links to their rolls at a service like Invisible Castle.

-Setup a separate reference area. Details tend to get lost after pages and pages of posts, and it's difficult to read through so many lengthy posts looking for a name or details of a specific event. Setup a static page somewhere with a dramatis personae, descriptions of everyone's characters, and other relevant information. Or you can keep editing the Op post of the thread to include this info. Or even better, you can setup a free wiki and encourage your players to help with it.

Good luck, have fun, and feel free to e-mail me if you have other questions about PbP gaming.
posted by ElfWord at 9:44 AM on February 9, 2007 [1 favorite]