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Cogidubnus
2010-05-25, 10:23 AM
Is it common for DMs in PbP games to seemingly vanish? It's just, I've had two go incommunicado on me recently, though one has only been gone since saturday. I'm not whining at them, I'm sure they have very good reasons, I'm merely wondering how common it is?

Lin Bayaseda
2010-05-25, 10:25 AM
10-20% of the time, from my limited personal experience. Don't be discouraged, there are a lot of other good games out there.


has only been gone since saturdayDoesn't count.

Cogidubnus
2010-05-25, 10:27 AM
I'm not saying he's GONE gone. Just dematerialised for now XD

kamikasei
2010-05-25, 10:36 AM
It's common for people in PbP to vanish, whether DMs or players. It's a regrettably volatile medium. Generally you just need to find a game with a good, distinctive concept, see who from it sticks around and who flakes, and try to join the former for future games. Eventually you get a group who can probably be relied upon to stick together.

Keeping up communication is a good idea too. If you can ask the DM questions without waiting for a post-and-reply cycle, or prompt one another to post etc. via IM, it gets people more invested, gives them something to do when they're idle IC, and keeps everyone from posting nothing because they think it's someone else's turn. Even something as simple as an active OOC thread where people joke around about events in the game can do the trick.

Dust
2010-05-25, 10:37 AM
I play pretty commonly on rpol.net (http://rpol.net), and it's been my experience that a good 60% of games end within the first month. Perhaps its just that site in particular.

Thajocoth
2010-05-25, 10:50 AM
With any game you play online, you'll have a lot of trouble with people being very unreliable about showing up. That's why I simply don't play online anymore. Take online play to be exceedingly casual and you might enjoy it.

Shademan
2010-05-25, 10:54 AM
I tend do to this as DM...
I have learnt that PBP does just not work for me. as DM.

Boci
2010-05-25, 11:04 AM
I tend do to this as DM...
I have learnt that PBP does just not work for me. as DM.

But don't you tell the players, "Sorry, this isn't working out I am going to have to leave"?


I play pretty commonly on rpol.net (http://rpol.net), and it's been my experience that a good 60% of games end within the first month. Perhaps its just that site in particular.

Yeah its definatly a problem over there. My longest running game (1.2k posts) wasn't origionally mine. The DM explained the setting, added a load of players, and then vanished before he could even make the first in game post. Players looked for a replacement DM and I took over.

Jair Barik
2010-05-25, 11:09 AM
I have found that players in large groups often vanish so much so to the extent I rarely DM games other than solo adventures now over the net. High level games are often detined to failure (players dropping as soon as you hit combat or when they decide their characters are under optimised compared to everyone elses or when it degenerates into a rules argument between DM and some munchkin). The worst one for me though was a case of a solo player. Guy was doing fine in this adventure posting regularly and such. Then I agreed to DM a game for a group. Solo guy submits a sheet for said game. He isn't accepted. Stops posting in the solo adventure without leaving any notice whatsoever.

Boci
2010-05-25, 11:18 AM
I have found that players in large groups often vanish so much so to the extent I rarely DM games other than solo adventures now over the net. High level games are often detined to failure (players dropping as soon as you hit combat or when they decide their characters are under optimised compared to everyone elses or when it degenerates into a rules argument between DM and some munchkin). The worst one for me though was a case of a solo player. Guy was doing fine in this adventure posting regularly and such. Then I agreed to DM a game for a group. Solo guy submits a sheet for said game. He isn't accepted. Stops posting in the solo adventure without leaving any notice whatsoever.

I'm actually not that keen on solo games because then if one player drops out then the whole game is over. In one I my games I have a 4 player group, of which only one has been in the game since the start.

Shademan
2010-05-25, 11:21 AM
But don't you tell the players, "Sorry, this isn't working out I am going to have to leave"?


nope. I quietly skulk away, never to be seen again

Hzurr
2010-05-25, 11:39 AM
DMs disappear, players disappear, it happens. The current PbP game I'm DMing has been going since February, and we've fortunately only lose 1 PC (and that was within the first week). There are times where posting is more frequent, less frequent, but we've managed to make it through pretty well. It all depends on the PCs. If they're dedicated, and having fun, they'll most likely stick around.

If you're going to be in a PbP game, here's a few tips I noticed that seem to help with longevity:

1) Did the DM accept the first 5 people who submitted characters, or did he let lots of people submit, then choose those he thought would be best? If it was just the first 5, that means that the game is populated by those who happened to be online at the right time, not necessarily by those who are best suited to join the game.

2) Are the PCs interesting, and will there be good interaction between them? This is one of the reason I stay away from "evil" campaigns, because 75% of the people who play in them simply want a chance to play their @#$%# characters that they'd never be able to get away with in a regular game. In addition, if the character discriptions are things like "I'm Bob the fighter, and I want to kill things and take their stuff," there tends to be less long-term interest than there would be if the character had a more fleshed out backstory

3) Is the tone set very clearly early on? If some people come in expecting a super-heavy role-play, and some want hack-n-slash, things are going to fall apart. Try and make sure that people are more or less on the same page.

4) How heavy are the house rules? While house rules can be awesome, I've noticed that games that have large chunks of the system thrown out or replaced, or whatever tend to struggle. I remember once there was a push on the PbP boards for a 4th Edition level 30 game, that got a huge amount of interest. but once the DM came forward and said that there would be absolutely no magic items (plus a few other odd restrictions), the interest dropped off very sharply. A few house rules are good; too many are simply frustrating.


Anyway, just a few thoughts I had.

Ernir
2010-05-25, 02:42 PM
For me, DMing a PbP game is like buying a hamster. It's fun, but sometimes they poop all over the place, and you must go in knowing you probably have to keep the little rascal alive for the next few years.

Some people treat their games more like gold fish. :smallannoyed:

CockroachTeaParty
2010-05-25, 03:36 PM
I have sworn off playing PBP D&D until I get a job. It is slowly driving me mad.

Octopus Jack
2010-05-25, 03:42 PM
I'm currently DMing a PbP game on here with a whole 8players ( *gasp* ) I'm hoping that no-one drops our or vanishes, but i suppose it can't be helped if it happens. I certainly arn't planning on vanishing, well as long as that van outside leaves soon.

Lin Bayaseda
2010-05-25, 03:45 PM
That van outside is a surveillance unit sent by the players (yep, we all chipped in!) to make sure you're not going anywhere.

Maryring
2010-05-25, 03:51 PM
It is very luck based really. I've tried to get... I think it's over five games up and running. Only one is still running, and it has been running for years. I think it is because I managed to create a very good story for it, with many interesting world changes, little mechanical changes and some luck. Only one of the original players is still around though, but I think she's having fun, and I pretty much end up with good replacements anyway. Just too bad that I only got to keep my ideal group for a very short time... but that happens.

Eldan
2010-05-25, 04:08 PM
It seems to depend on the site a little, really. I was on a german forum for a while, in which every game got it's own subforum, in which the DM would usually start half a dozen or so threads. Most games there lasted quite long. 40, 50 pages, sometimes, and the record holder was over 400 pages and still running after several years.

Oslecamo
2010-05-25, 05:19 PM
It is very luck based really. I've tried to get... I think it's over five games up and running. Only one is still running, and it has been running for years. I think it is because I managed to create a very good story for it, with many interesting world changes, little mechanical changes and some luck. Only one of the original players is still around though, but I think she's having fun, and I pretty much end up with good replacements anyway. Just too bad that I only got to keep my ideal group for a very short time... but that happens.

Kinda reminds me of my situation. I DMd a lo of games but only one of them actualy lasted a good amount of time (aproaching 3 years now). Most others lasted some months at best.

On the other hand, around half the party is still the same of the original group! Yay me! Altough all but one changed characters. Quite interesting to explain to your employer why did you leave with a wizard, demon, human psion, swordman, barbarian and dragon disciple and return with a wizard, two clerics, one warforged psion, and one gargantuan dragon.:smalltongue:

Geting a good story backed up by good mechanics is indeed essential. You got to captivate your party, make them dream and hope and wanting to interact with your world. You have make sure they feel like their time is well expended when they check your posts.:smallsmile:

Weimann
2010-05-25, 05:28 PM
A PbP game featuring players you've recruited off a website is possibly the most detached gaming group you can have. I think that the lack of pre-existing relationship is as much a reason for games falling apart as the medium.

I have personally tried PbP and it's just not working for me. Instead, I joined two games over MSN which I'm greatly enjoying. If it's only the "online" quality you are seeking, I would suggest trying to find a group for a chat-based game, and if you have Skype and a mick, it'll be like just around the table. Well, not really, but as close as you get.

Since there mere switch to MSN from PbP has had my two first games last 2 months each, I would surmise that actually being able to quip jokes at each other without having to adjust them to the written medium would do a whole lot for group integrity.

Good luck in finding your style :smallsmile:

Another_Poet
2010-05-25, 06:31 PM
It's very common.

There are some things you can do to avoid it, when choosing which games to play in:

-ask the GM outright if they have ever run a PbP game that lasted more than 2 months, and if they have ever abandoned a game

-look at their house rules. A Gm who knows what it takes to run a PbP game will have rules to speed up combat, possibly change/abolish initiative, and reduce "ping" time waiting for player responses.

-look at how they're choosing players. First-come, first-served is a bad policy. If the players stop posting often enough, the DM loses interest and lets the game drop. They should be looking for dedicated players from the get-go.

Daimbert
2010-05-25, 07:20 PM
It's very common.

There are some things you can do to avoid it, when choosing which games to play in:

-ask the GM outright if they have ever run a PbP game that lasted more than 2 months, and if they have ever abandoned a game

-look at their house rules. A Gm who knows what it takes to run a PbP game will have rules to speed up combat, possibly change/abolish initiative, and reduce "ping" time waiting for player responses.

-look at how they're choosing players. First-come, first-served is a bad policy. If the players stop posting often enough, the DM loses interest and lets the game drop. They should be looking for dedicated players from the get-go.

I'm running an Amber game at the moment, with two players. If they'd taken this advice, they'd have never played with me (first time GM'ing, no house rules, and took everyone who was interested). The game's been running since October and is still going well. Only two players, though ...

And I can't explain it either ...

Irreverent Fool
2010-05-25, 09:07 PM
-look at their house rules. A Gm who knows what it takes to run a PbP game will have rules to speed up combat, possibly change/abolish initiative, and reduce "ping" time waiting for player responses.

What sort of rules to speed up combat do you suggest? I've noticed that standard combat drags on and on without adding much to the game, yet one doesn't want to divorce players from their characters' actions too much.

WorstDMEver
2010-05-25, 10:38 PM
What sort of rules to speed up combat do you suggest? I've noticed that standard combat drags on and on without adding much to the game, yet one doesn't want to divorce players from their characters' actions too much.

Well, try this one - roll a d6 for each side. High roll wins. Award XP. How's that for fast?:smallbiggrin: Actually, my group tends to stretch combat out a little by going back to the older initiative rules. We roll for initiative each round because battlefield conditions change rapidly - you might be first now, but you'll probably lose and regain the advantage many times during the fight. Many of us are accustomed to more detailed combat systems, so we felt that D&D was dumbed down about as far as we cared to go.

Actually, I've never even tried to play on a bulletin board. Played a game on AOL in chat about 14 years ago and that worked ok for a few months, but that's the closest. Right now I play around a table with a group of six fairly regular players and two floaters, and we're going to try to translate that into Neverwinter Nights because one of the group is moving out of town shortly. Not exactly bulletin board gaming either, but it's as close as we want to get.

Grifthin
2010-05-25, 11:03 PM
Has anyone here tried playing using something like Skype ? I've always thought that using the skype conference ability would be the next best thing to being in the same room.

WorstDMEver
2010-05-25, 11:06 PM
Has anyone here tried playing using something like Skype ? I've always thought that using the skype conference ability would be the next best thing to being in the same room.

When we start our Neverwinter Nights game we're going to use Ventrilo. And the DM Client as well - that allows you to do a ton of stuff that is just too much trouble to script.

Maerok
2010-05-25, 11:33 PM
DnD combat on the forums kills more than just characters.

Grifthin
2010-05-26, 01:14 AM
When we start our Neverwinter Nights game we're going to use Ventrilo. And the DM Client as well - that allows you to do a ton of stuff that is just too much trouble to script.

DM client ? What's that ? Sounds fuN! :smallbiggrin:

Eldan
2010-05-26, 07:40 AM
The first thing to do would be to remove classic initiative: if players live in different time zones, that means that you'd have to wait for perhaps 12 hours or more before the next player in the order even has a chance to post. Kills a game.

What I'd suggest, instead, is group initiative: the entire player group has one initiative count (average of all their rolls, perhaps), all enemies have another. That way, you can do all monster action in one post, then let all the players post whenever they are online.

poisonoustea
2010-05-26, 08:24 AM
I tend to vanish when I'm DMing PBP, and PBP only.
There's just something that drives me off the campaign at some point (generally very early), and I can't help but leave when I feel the game's going the wrong way. Maybe I just get frustrated because PBP games are so terribly slow; maybe because they tend to become awfully linear. Last time this happened was with a Vampire: the Requiem campaign I was very fond of, and I swore I'd have never joined a PBP campaign as a DM again. I tried a Mage game later, and left it. Then I took my oath seriously and it's three years I'm staying away from PBPs.

Strangely enough, I'm quite comfortable with PBP as a player, and I love running campaigns on IRC. I'm currently narrating a campaign on Google Wave, and everything is going just fine aside from some minor delays (due to exams in my case). Wave is really amazing and I found a nice gaming group.
It's much, much better than PBP. I love DMing on tabletop too, but my friends are unreliable.
So I think it's PBP's fault if DMs tend to disappear. There's so little interaction between the players, DM included, that even Planescape loses all its charm; games are horribly slow, and if you try to make 'em faster it's even more painful. Very frustrating for a DM.

Lost Demiurge
2010-05-26, 09:18 AM
It's tough. It's really damn tough. You face a whole different set of problems in PbP than you do in a face to face setting.

The first game I ever tried running in PbP was the best. I couldn't duplicate it today if I tried... Every one since then has kind of faded, to the point I only run when I've got a serious hunger to try out a new idea.

They're a lot of work, but when they pay off it's pretty awesome. When they flop, it's like watching a dead fish twitch in the sun.

I've never abandoned a game that I was running. The times I had to drop one, I put up an "okay, we're done, sorry" message. I HAVE abandoned games that I've played in. Usually because other players stop posting, and I can't get worked up enough to bother if other people aren't, either.

You need momentum, to keep a game going. You need players posting and working off of each other and the GM, and you need a GM willing to keep things kicking along at a good pace. If the GM fails, or the majority of the players fail, then the game's done.

Lin Bayaseda
2010-05-26, 09:53 AM
An idea I've been considering is for the DM to make all mandatory rolls.

- If the players run into a group of Orcs in a dungeon corridor, there's really no way to avoid rolling initiative - DM rolls for both parties to speed things up.
- If a player is targeted by a hostile spell that allows a saving throw, the DM can roll his save for him. Not attempting a save isn't really an option, so why wait 12 hours for the player to see the thread and roll the save?

Of course, some players will be miffed when the DM fails a critical save on their behalf. Others will just be thankful for the acceleration (at least until the DM fails their save :smallbiggrin:). But I think it could work if all players are aware of this in advance.

Opinions?

Lost Demiurge
2010-05-26, 11:58 AM
That's a good idea. I've adopted the initiative rule for all of my own campaigns, and things go much more smoothly.

I also don't enforce a posting order. Post your actions whenever, and the initiative order only determines when they go off. True, it means that precise tactics in games like 4E suffer a bit sometimes, but it's a small price to pay.

I don't know about the saving throw rule... Might work better with a blanket rule that the game goes on regardless of when you save, and if you don't make your save within a 24 hour period, THEN the GM does it for you.

AstralFire
2010-05-26, 11:59 AM
I just don't do PbPs. As player or as DM. My several attempts taught me that I can't adhere to that, and the extra time spent organizing people who can play at the same time as me is worth it.

Murphy80
2010-05-26, 01:46 PM
The single most important ingredient in PBP is a persistent DM.

For combat;
1- I roll all initiatives(1 for all monsters) and spot checks, determining surprise and such.
2- Ask for posts from anybody who goes before the monsters (any order)
3- determine results* and post monster actions
4- Everyone posts (either end of last round or begining of next round)
5- return to 3

*it is important to be flexible and reasonable when determining results. If 2 players attack 1 target and the 1st player takes it down, I will switch the 2nd player to another reasonable target if at all possible. If a player says they are attacking a target 10' away, but forgets to include "I step forward 5'", I will move them forward 5'.

If you are a DM who refuses to use commonsense when adjudicating action, don't even bother running PBP.

WorstDMEver
2010-05-26, 03:42 PM
DM client ? What's that ? Sounds fuN! :smallbiggrin:

When you start the NWN Launcher, you have several options. One of them is the DM Client. Basically, you enter a multiplayer game as the DM - you can create, destroy, give, take, heal, kill, anything in the game. You can teleport stuff to you, move things to other areas or to the Limbo area (great place to store NPCs until they're needed) and a ton of other stuff. You can spawn prepared encounters, or spawn one of the standard encounters, give or take XP, and just about anything else that you can do as a DM.

Check out http://www.neverwinterconnections.com/ if you want to read up on being a DM in NWN. They have some good articles.

Thing is - this is not bulletin board gaming, it's effectively real time. The DM can pause the game at will, but he can also choose not to allow players to pause. Since this is my approach, we need voice chat to allow a player to tell me if he wants to do something that the game doesn't directly support. If he wants to knock a bookshelf over on top of an enemy I can pause the game, have him make his strength check, have the enemy make a reflex save, apply damage, destroy the bookshelf and then unpause the game. Most combat should flow much faster and more smoothly because the general rules are handled by the game. No more 2 hour fights. Since my group is more role-play oriented this is a good thing for us - less time spent for the same amount of monster-killing means more time to actually play D&D. I mean, if we wanted to focus on battle mechanics we'd be playing Squad Leader....

Grifthin
2010-05-27, 03:32 AM
Holycrap that's awesome. Why didn't I think of this ?

Another_Poet
2010-05-28, 02:08 AM
I'm running an Amber game at the moment, with two players. If they'd taken this advice, they'd have never played with me (first time GM'ing, no house rules, and took everyone who was interested). The game's been running since October and is still going well. Only two players, though ...

And I can't explain it either ...

There're smokers who live to 100 with no lung problems, too :smalltongue:

Seriously though, I'm happy your game is going well. What I offered are general guidelines. In general, they're thinks to look for in a GM who knows how to keep PbP games running. There're lots of reasons why a player might go with a GM who doesn't meet my suggested criterion. Maybe they know the person, or the setting or genre just sounds too good to pass up, or the person just seems really "together."



What sort of rules to speed up combat do you suggest? I've noticed that standard combat drags on and on without adding much to the game, yet one doesn't want to divorce players from their characters' actions too much.

Others have given good ideas. Personally in my games I've just done away with initiative altogether. If the players got the jump on the baddies, the PCs go first. If the baddies ambushed 'em, baddies go first. All the players post in whatever order they want, then when I have their posts I write up the monsters' actions, then it's back to the players. Pretty easy.

If the rogues complain you could allow them to make a Dex check versus, say, 10+CR to see if they can sneak attack someone in the first round (the equivalent of flatfooted). But I've never had any complaints.

ap