So has anyone seriously attempted calculating how long a game lasts on rpol/pbp as opposed to the same game run in real life?

Taking D&D for instance (only because it's the most popular system, system is not that important in this experiment IMO), games that can be played for hours over a weekend or even one evening in real life can last for years on pbp.

There is no real reason I'm asking this, just something that I have always wondered. And also sometimes I toy with wondering how one might go about designing a good game that's designed to be run via pbp rather than in real life. Such a game would have to take into account, for instance, slow leveling, the fact that combat can take days/weeks, descriptive content by players instead of speaking in character, the ability to construct a novel type story, difficulty in replacing lost players rather than lost characters, problems with forming a story around players etc etc.

For controls consider that the game is updated 4 days a week on average by the Narrator.

 It seems to me that one can play a game for equally as long IRL as PbP, it only matters about the level of enthusiasm by players and GMs. If someone comes in seeking something that's never given, you've obviously not got the right people is what I've found and not set the right expectations.

 So the formula I've found that works best is engaging the players with things they like as well as finding players that won't shut down after a certain period of time. You can't treat it as a job or you end up with problems, and you can't put too much on the players or they too will end up feeling burdened by your game.

 That said, I've had some games that last for years on RPoL and one I've played in that has made a resurgence recently making it over ten years old.

Utterly reliant on the game and the group.  Even within the same group, results can vary drastically.  I used to be in a RL Star Wars group where we'd blow through most of a written adventure in a few hours...and a couple of weeks later, the same group would be lucky if we actually got half an hour of actual playing, because we were so busy shooting the breeze as we sat around the table.

The pace of play is drastically different in PbP gaming, yes...but the level of detail and interaction also tends to be reduced in compensation for that...a combat scenario that would potentially take a couple of hours in a tabletop game is often simplified to the point where it can be resolved in three or four rounds of posting in PbP (not always...but often.  Almost everyone I've heard weigh in on the subject agrees that simplifying combat is one of the primary steps to take to keep the game from dying from lack of momentum...)

I honestly don't think there's any effective way to try and make the comparison.  Even if you ran the same game with the same group, you're likely to wind up with different results which could drastically alter the duration of the game.  And, most games I participate in are open-ended, anyway...the game ends when either the GM or too many players decide it's time to end.  The aforementioned Star Wars game ran for about three years, almost every weekend...then the GM moved and it kind of died, until the GM moved back to the area and we picked it back up again, and ran with that for the better part of a decade before the GM decided that he just didn't have any more ideas to keep things going.

How are you supposed to compare a scenario like that with a PbP game?

IMO there's no way to 'calculate' how long either will last.  There are too many variables, a compatible mix of players, GM, system, plot, expectations, and most of all timing.  Even if everything else is in place, the intrusion of real life can derail things.  But you can learn ways to encourage the mix, how to pick players, how to create an interesting scenario, how to handle game play, for either format.  For online play, if combat is a part of the game, knowing how to manage it efficiently seems to be especially important; it is all too easy to bore the players if combat drags on and on, yet you need enough detail to cover the scenario.

For me PBP lasts untill someone gets sick or cant post for more then 3 days. Then the engines fail and the plane hurdles towards the ground. RL games last until someone makes someone else mad which if you play with good friends, can last for years of enjoyable sessions.

I came to the same conclusion and asked the very same question as the OP did right here on these very forums, and was told in no uncertain terms that any attempt to speed up or streamline PbP play with a system designed for PbP was a stupid idea. It was pretty hostile, actually. But in general I find that PbP lasts until either player or GM lose motivation to keep going with it. I have run only one PbP game that lasted for more than 6 months, and and it's also the only one where I ever reached a satisfying conclusion.

it all boils down to somehow finding a dedicated DM matched with dedicated players...or maybe rather a DM dedicated to having dedicated players as you never seem end up with your initial group, over half the players will drop within the first month, so he has to keep recruiting new player until he finds ones that will stick with it.

Long running games are not as rare as you think, just hard to find, over the 10 or so years I've played on rpol, I've had dozens of games last over a year, many as long as 3 years, but that being said probably 90% fizzle out after a few month, you just have to keep trying and hope for the best, lol.

In my experience it takes about 1000 posts per "Chapter" of a module in pbp whereas it takes about 1 game session per "Chapter" in real life.  How long does it take a pbp to reach 1000 posts?  Really fast paced games call it a month?  Really slow call it a year?

So that makes the pbp range from 5 or 6 months to several years (depending on the pace) vs. 4 or 5 game sessions at the tabletop (assuming a weekly schedule) call that a month or two.

I really think it's like trying to compare apples on oranges.  There are things that both have over the other and some advantages that just can't compare even.

I tracked my dnd 4e game at about an encounter takes somewhere around 7-10 days. So a three encounter sitting, what I feel is all I could get in person per session, takes about a month. We finishes keep on the shadow fell in about 14 months. That is with players posting about everyother day.

Trying to convert apples and oranges to common currant-cy ... we could think of it in terms of actual time spent:

Average face to face game session lasts what ?  3-4 hours ?  Call it 3 1/2, so 210 minutes.

Average time per online post (reading new posts, composing your own), what ?  5-10 mins ?  Call it 10 to be conservative.

So to cover the same ground, it's going to take 21 posts.  At 1 post per day, that's 3 weeks, whereas at 1 post per week, that's 21 weeks.

Even so, you don't have any of the sideways discussions that face to face games sometimes have.  I know every one I've played in has had those, sometimes to the point of barely playing during a 6 hour long game.

Plus the added ability to run separate groups if the PCs go different ways.  Certain games like Shadowrun are really bad about this, you can have a Matrix group, a vehicle/drone group, an astral group, and a real world group.  All of that can eat into gaming time in a face to face game, where pbp it continues at the same pace, just with the GM working at a faster pace to keep the posts up.

In my zombie game, if the Operators split into two groups and then have two snipers in different spots, the game won't slow down at all for them.  IRL, this would slow the game down by a factor of four if I were devoting equal time amongst the groups.

That's what I mean by comparing apples and oranges.  There is time related things you can do in pbp, that you can't do in a face to face game.  Not to mention the benefits of being able to cast a wide net to play more niche games, not having to devote all the time at once, and providing people a chance to play that couldn't otherwise.

That's what OOC is for ... but yes, definitely helps with immersion as it doesn't distract from the unfolding adventure.

And yes, I've GM'd a face to face game where in four hours my players managed to move the length of one corridor ...

After playing online, I'd never go back to face to face.  That's just me.  ;>

I'm running pathfinder and I'm getting about the same rate. One combat or challenging encounter completed in about 7-10 days.
This message was last edited by the user at 06:00, Sun 21 Sept 2014.

In reply to Skald (msg # 13):

Then there's always those occasions when the GM says, "Okay, wait...let's see if there would actually be time for all of this to happen..."  Like when some large object drops from the top of a very tall tower and the party notices it when it's about a third of the way down...

The group I played with back in high school was populated by physics nerds.  We ended up burning 45 minutes calculating and resolving what was actually about 3 seconds of time for the characters.  And while it didn't often reach that extreme a degree, such pauses were commonplace with that group.  (We played together for almost four years, too...)

But a pause like that would never happen in a pbp game, for the simple fact that all that math and physics jargon (and explanation to the players who hadn't studied that much physics) would likely have been wrapped up in a single post.

They seam to last about the same to me.

However you can get more done in one get together a week IRL than you can in spread if posts through the week.

So unless you have some dedicated players with agred times and maybe even chat or talk RPing rather than posts, the IRL will usaly make the most progress

The asynchronous nature of these games here seems to be a huge advantage, you can slip the play in the gaps in the rest of your life, or you can make it a substantial part of your life, but its up to you, and the other players could do things totally differently.  As opposed to IRL where everyone has to commit that time (plus travel time in many cases) exclusively to the game.   So it feels like IRL would be a more compressed amount of time with a deeper immersion during those hours, and on here would be a variety of immersion levels depending on how much time and attention you give it.

(then again thats probably obvious to you guys, and I didn't need to mention it.)

This message was deleted by the user at 09:03, Tue 30 Sept 2014.

It depends on how you want to measure it. In RL hours or campaign progress?

If a PbP game doesn't keel over before it gets going, I would guess it lasts longer than a game played face-to-face over a table.

But a face-to-face game also runs faster. PbP games last longer because it take longer to get through the story arc. By the same token I'd guess that campaigns are completed more often face-to-face.

**NB I have done no maths on this, it's purely based on my experience of both mediums and discounts games which don't get through the first act of the first arc

I have two games that are around ~4500 posts. They're both between 4 and 5 years old. The players in each are 3rd level, I think? In one, a published Pathfinder adventure path, the players are in part 3 of book 1 of 6 books, each with 3 parts. So they're not quite 18% of the way through.

It entirely depends on the game.

If one post is fully IC in D&D 3.5, it consists of 6 seconds of time. The only way I can think to measure out the OOC, is to read it and then say it out loud as casually as possible, and time how long it takes to say all of it.

So now, you have an approximation of how much IC and OOC time has been spent inside the game, then measure based on an average of how many hours the group would spend IRL to accomplish the same amount of time.

For instance, if you have a total of 20 hours worth of dialog accounting both IC and OOC, and break it into the average of a group that meets and plays D&D 3.5 for an estimated time of 2 hours per week, that's ten weeks of being together. Now mind you, the 2 hours would be based on that type of group if it meets daily. Some groups meet for longer times or less frequently, so that variable is up to you to define.

So, the formula is

((iH + oH) / T)/F
Where;
iH = IC hours
oH = OOC hours
T = Time per session
F = Frequency per month the group meets.

Then take that number and direct compare it. That would tell you how many months the group meets on PBP and in person.
This message was last edited by the user at 08:28, Sun 02 Nov 2014.

Six seconds of playing?  Or six seconds of in-game time?  Because I've NEVER been in a table-top game where anyone finished their turn in six seconds.  I've been in a couple of games where there was a good 45 minutes spent determining just what happened in a single six-second span of time (it wasn't always that slow...)

I honestly don't think there is any practical way to try and make a formula that says 'X number of posts in-game, pbp, equals Y number of hours of play, ftf.'  There are too many variables that can only begin to be calculated.  Time spent writing a pbp post is immeasurable...but it's every bit as much a part of a game as time spent around the table discussing the pros and cons of a particular action.  I know not every gaming group works the same way, and the one I was in was hardly consistent about it, but there were nights where we sat down to play for five hours...and got about 30 minutes of actual play-time between all the catching up and telling jokes and editorializing and...(you get the idea).

With the possible exception of combat (and even that isn't absolute), this is completely untrue, at least for some folks. There can be a lot more to a game then simple round by round combat.

Well 6 seconds counts as a round.

Per the standard rules, though as DLH points out house rules can overrule this, a round consists of 6 seconds.

A standard action is 3.5 seconds, a move action is 2.5 seconds, and a free action can happen in the same time as the other two with no time spent. This is of course a very rigid understanding of the rules, many GMs don't follow this 100% of the time (as well they shouldn't).