I want to give advice in using a couple of house rules I've had great success with.

First posting, I've been using a strict two-day rule in my posting as GM.  By this, I mean that I post to advance the story every two days regardless of whether or not all my players have posted.  This rule isn't just for the sake of the GM, in every game, you have both active and inactive players and waiting days on end for the input of an inactive player isn't fair to the rest of the players.  The most important thing a GM can do to keeping games viable is to make sure that it moves forward at a steady pace.

Players need to show their commitment to a game by posting even if their characters aren't really doing much in the scene.  Nagging players to always post isn't an effective tool to do this, but once they realize that if they don't post they won't get to play they will either make a better effort or leave the game, this has never happened to me.  Remember that as GM your primary focus needs to be on not just those who want to play but are putting in the effort to play.

Finally, it can be very tempting to break this rule if the scene is currently being by a player who suddenly stops posting.  Do not let this stop you from applying the rule, it is both the GM and the player's responsibility to keep the game moving forward if the player fails then the GM must keep doing their job.

To not punish those who simply cannot fin the time to post in combat I suggest granting a  +2 to all rolls of a chosen action next turn as a result of the character taking the time to mentally center themselves.  This must be an action you take voluntarily, not rectory actions like making a saving throw.

Second, initiative, many games have players roll for initiative at the start of a battle to determine the order of play.  Few realized that this rule was created mostly for the sake of preventing the players from shouting over one another all wanting to say what their character does first.  This is not a problem on a forum like RPOL.  Instead, I used a post first, act first, rule in my games and it has helped combat move much swifter.   Rather than trying to explain it all I'll just reprint the rule below:

When the party faces a group of opponents the party will always have the advantage of initiative, which is to say that the party will go first.  This is the 'hero's advantage'.

Against lone monsters, pared monsters, and named opponents initiative will be resolved with a single group initiative rolled by the GM.  The group initiative will be the average of characters initiatives.

A group that successfully approaches another with stealth always has the advantage of initiative.  The party will be considered to have detected a stealthy opponent if at least two members, or half the group's number, successful detect the opponent, but not just one.

Among the members of the party initiative will be determined by post, whoever posts first, acts first and so on.  Of course, if a player wants to go after another player they simply must wait for that player to act.  If they wish to ready an action against an opponent I suggest having them roll ahead of time or getting them to all the GM to roll for them.


I apologize if I posted this in the incorrect forum, this one seemed to be the best choice.

I had a bit of an issue with how I was going to handle combat in the DnD game I'm running - I hadn't done one before via forum-based posting so it was a new problem. I had run the same game before, with one player, over Skype, so in that case we were just typing things out conversation-style and doing it that way. Then a few years later when I decided to continue the game via RPOL but had picked up an extra couple of players, I wasn't sure on how to manage combat since it can take a whole page or two of posts just to sort out one person's actions if they have questions or want to interrupt someone else's actions (eg if the actions of an enemy have triggered one of their Interrupt abilities so they get to take an action before the attack completes). I didn't want to have half a thread dedicated to a single fight - fights in 4th Edition can take a long time as it is so I came up with a solution that seems to work okay, though we've only had a couple of combat situations so far.

Basically everyone rolls Initiative as normal but then tells me via PM (I have a PM "combat thread" open for each player) what they want their character to do and how they want to act and stuff, but in slightly more general terms (eg "I'm prioritising going after this creature but if player X is in trouble I'll go help her instead") rather than spelling out exactly hwo they want their turns to play out. Once I have input from everyone I will make a single post in the IC thread which contains the entire actions for that round (no-one else posts in the IC thread during combat), making all the rolls and stuff myself. It does mean that the players aren't making their own rolls or specifically describing what they want their characters to do/say (though they can, of course, provide dialogue and stuff in their PMs which I will add in), but the balance is that combat is over in just a few posts in the IC thread and we don't spend several days of real time planning out what one person is going to do that round. It also means people aren't conferring OOC about what they want to do but I don't like to get meta - they can have their characters shout to each other if one of them has figured out that the bad guy is vulnerable to cold or that they should back away from the exploding zombie before it dies, or whatever.

Not perfect, but it's been working so far. My players and I have known each other online for a varying number of years (one I have known since 2003, the other since erm...I don't know, maybe about five years or so now...we met in the first game I joined on RPOL) so we're used to how we play and we kind of know and can trust each other. I know my players aren't the type to try and "cheat" anything and focus on the RP side of things, and they know I'm not a very good/experienced GM so it's all good ;).

I deal with Initiative (outside of stealth and surprise, of course) by a combination of ignoring it and using GM fiat. Most times, Initiative doesn't matter, but if I say the orc has drawn its weapon first, the orc has drawn its weapon first. Most players respect my sense of fair play (wouldn't work for all GMs, of course - we've all played with THAT GM...)


However, pace seems to be a perennial problem for me. I know it's a problem, but I'm at my wits end to figure out how to solve it.

I've tried letting people post at their own pace, and I've got a couple of long games out of it, but at the cost of an enormous turnover of players and a glacial pace that most players (including me) struggle with.

I've tried nagging and cajoling but, you're right, it has limited effect apart from annoying everyone.

I've also tried moving a game forward as you suggest and, yes, it does improve the pace of the game dramatically, but at the cost of it becoming almost a solo game - one post in three is either a GM transition description or a 'bucking up' post by a NPC to get things moving.

For me, the latter option is the more demoralizing - Firstly, I feel like I'm railroading the PCs, secondly I struggle to do ALL the posting myself (I have a home life too) and last but not least, if I'm doing all the posting in order to keep the pace up, I might as well write the story as a novel and give up gaming altogether. I might even be able to sell the darn thing!

I think I'm about to lose another game to pace, so I'd be interested to know the secret of your success, Ryu. How do you move things forward without it becoming a solo venture with a near-passive 'audience' of players who just chip in an occasional comment?

In reply to icosahedron152 (msg # 3):

I'm having the same basic problem you are with pace.   So I'd be interested in hearing a solution rather than GM fiat also.

I'll be honest, I don't think there's a posting solution that's going to work every time.

Games are made up of people, and people are all very different. What works for Ryu's group(s) may not work for the players in the types of games I run, or vice versa. Sometimes a game may need the push, but it might need it less often. Sometimes a game will propel itself into infinity with barely any input. It's all up to what works for the GM and the players, and that's something that can not only vary from game to game, but from week to week. Myself, I tend to run a bit of a middle ground. I try to make certain I post at least once a week, but I don't always move things forwards. I just post to make certain that players know I'm watching, and I give them avenues to move forwards if that's what they need or want. And, most importantly, I make certain my players know in advance what the schedule will be and how to work it out. It doesn't always work out, but it works out well-enough and often-enough that I can say it's something I'll probably continue with. Maybe I tweak it here and there, but that's life.

There's no one formula for success. There can't be, at least not until we're all robots who can control every aspect of our daily lives. And, in fact, there might not be a good way at all for your game. Maybe it'll work for you, but your players just can't ever seem to hold up. Maybe it'll work for them, but it's painful for you (for whatever reason). And maybe, just maybe, every time you find a way that works something happens and it doesn't again. I don't mean to sound pessimistic here, because as Ryu has exemplified there are time it all works out, but if it doesn't that doesn't mean you chose wrong. Sometimes there's just no right answer, and that's okay. It's not great, but it's okay.

As far as initiative, I tend to run mine with everyone rolling initiative along with a description of their intended actions for the round, and any rolls they might need to accomplish this. In systems with rolled defenses, I have them also roll a defense or two in advance regardless of whether they get attacked or not that round (because having them wait to make a roll, or several, that get resolved later, is just nonsense). Then I make a cumulative post with successes, failures, and in the case that anyone needs to do other actions based on what has happened, I let them make a reactions post before finalizing the round. It doesn't fully eliminate meta-gaming, which the private threads does, but I tend to weed out players that do that anyways, and have players post "alternative actions" in PMs to me if they think they might do something else based on what others are doing.

Again, it's not perfect, but it works for me and my games and that's the best one can hope for.

Incidentally, I will add that my method of dealing with combat only applies to combat, and we really don't have a lot of combat - like I said, just two since I started continuing the game on RPOL. I tend to prefer the RP side of things, really, plus it is much easier to run ;). So I only do the "taking over" of posting very rarely and even then, I've been told privately what it is the players want me to do. I just do it this way to avoid cluttering the IC thread with lodas of OOC back-and-forth as people sort out tactics or whatever, and don't have to worry about actions being interrupted by other actions since I can just write it all out nicely in the one post for that round :D.

My game is a thrice per week. The players all knew coming in what the game speed is and which days I update. Outside of Nanowrimo month, the days and times of week that I post are fairly predictable.

In general, if at least one player in a thread has posted, I update the thread and assume that the non-posting players did nothing during that time. If it's a solo thread, I'll wait for the other player to post. If nobody has posted (this rarely happens), I'll ask in the OOC where everyone is. ;)

I also open a separate OOC combat thread when there's going to be lengthy complex combat, where people can post their dice rolls and actions and etc. After each round of combat, I make a post to the IC thread summarizing what just happened. My current game is fairly rules-lite and I haven't had to do this very often; back when I was running a WoD game it worked fairly well.
This message was last edited by the user at 19:49, Sat 26 Nov 2016.

I use an initiative board at the bottom of my posts along with the current battlemap (I use Gyazo + maptool),
Here's a snip of one from a recent fight:


EFFECT:

https://i.gyazo.com/901134cbbb...8a617b07b99e3d88.png
This message was last edited by the user at 14:35, Sun 04 Dec 2016.

One successful GM I played with made posts moving the game Tuesday and Thursday (he's a teacher).  He may have made posts as needed other times but those were the days when we needed to be done any roleplaying, rolls for combat and the like, etc.  Another technique for dealing with rapid posting is to have each player give a summary of their characters' probable actions in certain circumstances, so that if you need to NPC them now and again, you have some idea what would be in character.

Some rulesets have their combat systems built around the 'round robin' approach, particularly 3rd- and 4th-edition D&D. In those games, initiative was a fixed value that was established at the beginning of a fight and rarely changed. Timed effects were based on those values, to prevent someone from squeezing an extra action or two out of an effect. If something said it worked on you for three rounds, than that's exactly what you got.

When I've run games here using those rules, I maintain the initiative order, but don't require my players to post in any particular order. Often, for the sake of convenience, I'll have all the enemies in a combat delay their turns to group them together. (Basically, they all end up acting when the slowest member goes.) When everyone has posted something, I make a mass update that covers everything.

Sometimes, this creates potential conflicts, as when someone targets an enemy who might not be a valid target by the time their turn comes around. In those cases, I try to simply redirect the intended action on another valid target. I prefer my players to give me some wiggle-room with these actions — say, by stating they're simply attacking the nearest enemy, or shooting whoever would be the easiest to hit, or aiming a spell at the most enemies they can.

As a fall-back, I ask my players to post a Plan B. That way, if their original intended action won't work and won't easily move to someone else, I know what to give them as an alternative.

For players that go too long without posting, my preferred action is to have them perform whatever defensive measure the game allows. This might be just taking a defensive stance, or using a healing effect if they have one to spare (and need it).