When I play-by-post, I prefer to not see all the game mechanics and OOC questions and chat in the IC threads. It's not hard to have any game, with any system, end up looking (and feeling) more like a collaborative story than a "game", giving it all the appearance of a "free form" game despite having a hard system behind/beneath it all.

If done "right", the players start to find more immersion in the storyline, and forget about the mechanics and simply run their characters - and that's when it really starts to get good imo.


I'd like to run a fantasy game with that approach.  If someone wanted to play, they would not need to know (all) the rules (altho' it wouldn't hurt) - a good, detailed description would allow the GM to create the character, you post the intended actions for your character, the GM makes some dice rolls "behind the curtain" and posts the results - and the process continues, without anyone ever seeing or even needing to think about Armour Class or To Hit or Saving Throws or Damage or Movement Allowance... we all just write about the action, and the story flows from that action, seamlessly and without interruption.

The specific storyline I had in mind would be a story of some fledgeling heroes, who go into the wild to rescue a noble and save a small kingdom from war.  The action would be largely outdoors, but with some stops in cities/towns, and some interaction with the "local population" (both civilized and less so), and even a short bit of a "dungeon crawl" thrown in at one point.  So (almost?) any character concept would have their time to shine at some point.

I'd like to use D&D 3.5 as the machine behind the story, but Pathfinder classes would rarely be unacceptable.  The characters themselves would be experienced but not "heroic", so maybe Level 4-5 to start, gaining a level about half-way thru the story (there are some obvious pauses in the action to rest and level up). (And if/when the game starts, there would be more details to CharGen/etc. of course - this is all just roughing it out for now.)


I would NOT be starting anything this week - this would take a little while to set up, so don't panic. Just testing the waters, see how much interest there is, etc. etc.


I DO know that I'd like to see...

o A posting rate of ~once/day. So be prepared to commit to that, please (within reason, of course).

o Decent, enthusiastic writers - no-one line posts please. I believe that players should entertain the GM (and each other) as much as he entertains them, that any post should add something to the scene if not the story, and that the story itself should move fast enough that "filler" won't be necessary. Fair enough?

o A long story arc - several sub-sections to the adventure I have in mind, so if school will stop your play in September, pls don't sign up to quit in a month, thanks. :)

So... questions, comments, suggestions, roses or rotten tomatoes... let's have 'em!

With the noted exception that weekends are not prime posting times for me, this could intrigue me.

Years ago, I played on a freeform chat server; and there's something to be said for this - freeform encourages RP a lot more; though conflict resolution is a problem, but this might avoid that.

re posting rate:

I'd probably aim for 6x/week - 1/weekday, and 1 over the weekend (unless everyone's checked in).

Mainly though, as the GM, I'd make one "IC" post/day at about the same time that sums up the action and updates the situation, whether that's detailed combat or rough narrative of travel, or whatever. So no matter anyone's schedule, they have ~23+ hours after the last GM post to make their new one.

That seems to keep things moving at a nice clip, and players don't have to wrench their memories as far back to remember what was said "just a few moments ago".



re "conflict resolution"

Yeah, but there's always OOC if there's a hot topic that a couple players want to bat back and forth.

IC, if a couple/few characters do the same, then other characters are being left behind - forced to be "mute" while the debate proceeds (or whatever).  I've always felt that everyone should have an equal voice, or at least an equal chance at one.  Nothing worse than logging in and discovering that a new issue has been "settled" without you even knowing it had been raised. :/

In general; this is something that always frustrates me. I'm Australian; and number of times I've had to deal with something where the game advanced several 10s of posts whilst I'm sleeping, whilst not a lot, has happened a lot for this to mean a lot.

I am at a similar point as well. I tank that too much crunch is prohibitive of gameplay on PBP's like RPoL. My summary of what you were putting forth 42Nato is that you as the DM would just take care of all of this "behind the curtain" so that the players don't have to get bogged down by numbers, actions, etc ...

Is this correct?

@ SK - 100%.

There are many practices that are necessary in tabletop that only hurt a play-by-post game - for instance, asking/expecting/letting players roll their own dice - or, worse, asking players to roll them and waiting for that!

Example...

Day 1:
GM: "Make spot rolls"
Players <roll and post numbers>

Day 2:
GM: "You see trouble. Make initiative rolls!"
Players <roll and post numbers>

Day 3:
GM: "Post your actions - make attack rolls!"
Players <roll and post numbers, and first "descriptions">

Day 4:
GM: <makes 1st report for combat> "Now make more initiative rolls"
Players: <bored stiff, wonder how long this combat will take>

...OR...

Day 1:
GM: <Makes spot rolls, makes initiative rolls> "Some of you spot trouble, some of you can act, some are surprised (PL's info to each, as approp) - post your intended actions!"
Players: <post intentions, keep fingers crossed for lucky dice>

Day 2:
GM: <Makes combat rolls for both sides, makes 1st combat summary description> "(That's the sitch - what next?)"
Players:  <post new intentions for Round 2>

<etc., 1 round/post>

Now that may (or may not!) be an exaggerated example, but that's the idea - players only worry about what they're going to do, not what the modifiers or rules or game mechanics are. If their Character is a Rogue, then they may work the word "flank" into their post (and the GM would do likewise in his new-round summary), but otherwise it's all narrative.

It also removes the question of "I rolled a 13 - did that hit? What are the modifiers?" For one, as a GM, I may not want to share all the mods - some may be magical/invisible, and that surprise could be part of the story! In a magical world, anything is possible, and spelling everything out does nothing to add "fun" to the process.

It also removes both the "chess game" movement, which is very odd to describe "realistically" in pbp, and the meta-gaming that inevitably (consciously or not!) comes from knowing if you rolled exceptionally well or poorly before your action.

If done right, a reader (and possibly even a player!) wouldn't know (or care?) just from the text whether it's D&D or GURPS or Rolemaster or what - or anything - action happens, descriptions appear, the story flows, all good.


And to be clear, I've done this before, and it's worked really well with the right people - but it's not right for everyone, no doubt.
This message was last edited by the user at 22:51, Thu 24 July 2014.

I am interested then also.

An ongoing campaign would be wonderful, something that I can really sink my teeth into.

Though, to be fair, I should make this clear also - for my own sanity, I do ask that basic numbers - to hit, armour class, weapon damage, basic skill bonuses, etc. - be included in Private Lines, as approp to the action, so I don't have to look up every last detail on character sheets.

I'd be willing to do a lot of the work each round, but not all of it.

I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid. (Or is it the other way around?...)
;)


And, yes, this would be an ongoing campaign. The first story is multi-part (and has subplots that can be expanded/explored), and we can go from there as the Characters wish once that's resolved.
This message was last edited by the user at 22:53, Thu 24 July 2014.

Might be fun to try this, psuedo freeform? the idea came up for doing this for a silent hill game, but no one ever stepped up for gm.

(btw - I'll be incommunicado until Sunday. Just so no one thinks I'm slacking on responding, or is a bad sign re things to come. This will not be a normal state of affairs.)

This wouldn't be freeform, though, right?  It would still be D&D/Pathfinder/whatever, but you as GM would deal with all the mechanics?   This is actually one of my two preferred ways of playing, and in experience it works really well.

I try and do that when ever possible as a gm here.

IRL people like to roll there own dice. But here I will roll peoples dice for them most of the time and just give them the way things work out, seldom I'll have to throw in some stuff and some times they will have to put detail into what there doing... or say they wan't to spend points here and there. But the big cut down on OOC dose work out quite well.

This message was deleted by a moderator, as it was a bump, at 05:48, Tue 29 July 2014.