Play-by-Post: How do you do combat?

[Godric]

Hey folks, I'm about to start DMing a play-by-post game and I was wondering how any of you out there who play pbp manage tactics and combat.

Any help would be much appreciated!

[Quietus]

With description. A battlemap is nice and all, but picking a single frame of reference "You're all 100 feet from the riverbed" or "The archer/mage is 30 feet away from the minotaur, everyone else is in melee with it" helps. Also, simplify Flanking; Either use a descriptive way of getting the Rogue to the other side of the meatbag target, or simply rule, as we have in my games, that two people attacking one target = flanking, regardless of where those attackers are.

[DMfromTheAbyss]

First off mark off combat by officially having "the initiative" happen when the combat starts, don't let player post order or precombat actions do more than set the stage.

Once combat has begun let the players state their actions,(with rolls or possibly even if/then style qualifiers) don't worry too much about what order different players state their actions in, just do a rundown after everybody relevant has posted for the round that recaps the actions in the proper initiative order. Don't be afraid to let a player fix actions that no longer make sense (if orc#2 is dead let them target orc #3, or do something else)

Also it really helps if the GM run black-hats go without PC's between them, so it helps to just roll one initiative for the NPC's to simplify, or try to arrange your recaps so you have the bad-guys grouped up. Failing this break the round into smaller recaps so the players can follow the action and react better to the opponents actions.

So Initiative..

Then let players state their initiative roll and what they want to do.

Then do a running tally of things in your next post of things according to initiative that have happened up to and including what the bad guy/NPC's are doing and call for the next round (or group of characters to go if you have multiple bad guy initiatives)

Repeat until bad guys are crispy, or PC's are well done.

[Sinfire Titan]

I use Photoshop to make maps/use WotC's premade maps from modules and tweak them until I get them the way I wanted. I then use Dragon Magazine's Monster Token to mark where everyone is, and mark down difficult/blocking terrain with a thick layer of differently-colored tile (IE I use a green patch to represent undergrowth that blocks LoS or provides cover, and blue patches to mark water).

We then roll init using Invisible Castle. After that, who ever's action it is is the next to post. They post their actions, and then the next person goes (just like normal DnD). The markers are labeled by their player's names, not by the character's names (though I sometimes mix it up if the player's screenname is too long to fit).


The only trouble I have is positioning. I don't know how to label the grid like a Battleship screen, so the players have to announce what space they are moving to via directions (3 spaces north, 5 east).

[DragoonWraith]

We just post all the actions we can think of with our current information (if then else style), and then the DM collects all of these and sorts it out and tells us what happened in the round. The enemies don't all go at once, but we all post before he does (usually), so we generally get one round per DM post. A lot of that has to do with the fact that the DM is the least frequent poster, but it works out pretty well. Of course, if any of our "planned" actions are no longer relevant, we're allowed to change them, in which case he just lists a blank in the round results.

[InaVegt]

Making initiative be less reliant on everyone being there exactly when needed is key.

Step one: Make all the monster's initiative bonuses equal.
Step two: Make monsters go on the same initiative count, which should be easy after step one.
Step three: Make the players roll init, those who have higher than the monsters can go first, then DM update, then all PCs can go, DM, PCs, ad infinitum. Don't worry about the individual player's counts beyond whether they get to act before the monsters in the first round.

In addition, promote creative writing in your players, PBP is a written medium, with all the advantages and disadvantages that come with it. One of the biggest advantages is that you have the time to think about what you write, allowing you to go into more detail. If face to face is on the fly acting, play by post is on the fly cooperative writing, use this to your advantage.

Compare the following two example posts.


Gregoric charges the troll. ((dicerolls))


Gregoric looked at the towering creature, knowing its great strength and regenerative capabilities. Nevertheless, he had to take it on. His team, and by extension the entirety of Neverwinter, depended on him keeping the beast occupied. Occupied long enough for Ioaniva to think of a solution.

As such, he lunged forward, to surprise the troll with his rapid assault.

Gregoric charges the troll ((Dicerolls))

While the first might technically be sufficient, the second is much more interesting to read, and should allow people to keep attention longer.

[potatocubed]

I found that posting monsters' defences and hp made combat flow much faster because the players could do a lot of their own bookkeeping. Instead of waiting to see if an attack hits, they can roll, see if it hits, know if it kills the baddie, then write the post accordingly.

On the down side, this takes away some of the GM's ability to a) surprise the PCs and b) fudge. It's a tradeoff.

[Gaiwecoor]

I run some PbP games on my own forums on one of my domains ... I've developed a battle mat for use in them. It lets the PCs drag their tokens around the map and place them wherever necessary, as well as seeing a basic status for each of the combatants (wounded, paralyzed ...). It seems to take a lot of the guesswork out of the narrative combat.

It's in the middle of a rewrite right now, but once the next version is up, I'll be posting about it here.

[toasty]

How do I run my PbP games?

I’m running two different games right now. One is Fireborn, a game with a more descriptive, less tactical, more “rule of cool” combat system, and the other is DnD 4E.

In Fireborn, I don’t use a battle map. Just descriptions. There are two thugs for each of you. Etc. Mostly this is fine since I have a very small group and battles are very small and not very tactical (in a DnD sense, anyways).

DnD, I use a battle map and I don’t know how else to do it, especially in 4E. There are so many AoE powers, combat advantage, flanking, shifting, etc stuff that I don’t know how else to play the game. I upload the map at the beginning of the battle and have my players declare their actions. Currently I’m using init for each different type of monster as well as having each player roll init. I might change to group Init for the players later on if this system gets rather cumbersome, but it works so far.

At first it took me a LONG time to make my battle maps, but I’ve gotten better and figured out how to do everything. I can easily make my battle maps now.