Play-by-post: What do I need to know?

[Mr. Zolrane]

Just what the thread title says. I'm looking to DM a PbP game this summer, but I have no experience with PbP, and I was wondering if any veterans of that mode of play can tell me what tools I should have, what's different from normal PnP DnD, and what the general way of going about things as a PbP DM is. I know these are rather vague questions, but hopefully someone can help.

[Bang!]

People flake fast.

[The-Mage-King]

Link to guide. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=181299)


I suggest that you make use of Google Docs spread sheet for your map- here's a link (https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?authkey=CNrLtpoC&hl=en&key=t6mhafjGZY207WPzC0S26wg&hl=en&authkey=CNrLtpoC#) to one that I'm currently using for a pokemon tabletop game.

[Saintheart]

Only comment to really add is that once you figure out how it works, MapTools is a gorgeous timesaving map resource for PbP -- I think personally even better than it does for online sessions. They've even inbuilt the grid references on the latest versions, so for your mapping needs you don't even have to go to MS Paint or Excel anymore (as I used to).

The basic difference to PnP is, as said, flakeouts are harder to identify and harder to get around. I think in IT terms you could describe PbP processing as serial whereas PnP is parallel; it can take weeks for a couple of rounds of combat to play out if you don't set some groundrules for posting limits during combat.

Outside combat the rules can be laxer, but within combat, posting silences are death.

Also, have some groundrules if someone goes quiet. If you've got a party of 6, if 3 of the party decide to go with a particular course, the rule of thumb should be that the party goes with that, so you don't wind up waiting for the ayes or nays from the whole 6 every time. Like I said, rule of thumb, and make it clear that if someone's got a big objection to the proposed course you can retrofit, but in general it's not uncommon for what would be a "Yeah, whatever you all think" at a PnP session to be weeks of "..." from an equivalent PbP player.

[Mr. Zolrane]

Link to guide. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=181299) Thanks, that thread seems quite helpful.

[Tengu_temp]

How to reduce the number of people flaking:

1. Go with a strong, specific premise. Generic games die fastest.
2. PbP games should be more railroad-y than normal ones. If the PCs are unsure what to do next, they start to hesitate and posting slows down.
3. Pick only the players who look like they're going to invest a lot in the game. Don't pick half-assed submissions or people who are known for having Game ADD and dropping from games.
4. In combat, use one averaged initiative roll for all enemies. First all the PCs who beat this initiative move at once, in any order, then all enemies, then all the players, then all the enemies, and so on. This speeds up combat significantly.

[Quietus]

How to reduce the number of people flaking:

1. Go with a strong, specific premise. Generic games die fastest.
2. PbP games should be more railroad-y than normal ones. If the PCs are unsure what to do next, they start to hesitate and posting slows down.
3. Pick only the players who look like they're going to invest a lot in the game. Don't pick half-assed submissions or people who are known for having Game ADD and dropping from games.
4. In combat, use one averaged initiative roll for all enemies. First all the PCs who beat this initiative move at once, in any order, then all enemies, then all the players, then all the enemies, and so on. This speeds up combat significantly.

Bolded for emphasis. Saph expounded on this very well here. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6045678&postcount=1)

Also, I suggest working out some way of handling reactive rolls that doesn't rely on your players posting them when asked. Sitting around a table, asking for spot checks, initiative, whatever from everyone is quick. Around a PbP game, however, this can be anywhere from one to three days of dead time. Either make it clear that you'll roll reactive checks for them, or do what I do, which is to take 10-20 pre-rolled d20's (so they're still rolling for themselves), and then each time something like that comes up, add the modifier to the first roll in the list, then cross it off. This way, when combat is joined, you can say "Okay, these are the initiatives, players X and Y act, then the enemies, then everyone". Or if you're cruising through a jungle and the players are being stalked, you don't have to spend days asking for spot checks to see if they notice the jaguar sneaking up on them - you take from their pool of pre-rolled dice, add their spot modifiers, and give them the information.

As an alternative to that, you can give them information in spoilers - for example, in the above jaguar situation, you could instead do something like :

DC 17 spot check
Holy crap jaguar!

and trust that only those people who make that spot check will open it. Doing it this way can give players quite a bit of information - they know that in the above example, they can figure out a rough range of numbers its Hide modifier is likely to fall within. Or if you make someone save vs. a spell, they know the spell's DC. But to make things go faster, I find it's better to tell the players that the fireball is reflex DC 18 (giving them information about the enemy spellcaster), than having each of them make rolls and then giving damage afterward.

As a general rule with PbP, it does combat poorly. Each round takes much longer, and frankly, it can become poorly. PbP shines when you have a roleplay-heavy environment. For this reason, I recommend at least starting the players out somewhere that provides ample NPCs for you to interact with them - even something like a small town. They're going to need direction to start out with. Think about every game you've ever played, at the start of a campaign. The players haven't touched these characters before, they haven't got a good feel for them. You have to give them a push to get them rolling down the hill, have interesting things to do that aren't combat, so they can learn who their characters are in play. Once you've got the group roleplaying amongst themselves, then you can consider the snake-themed jungle dungeon crawl.

[Lateral]

In short? It's damn hard to keep a game running, since people always tend to flake. Out of all the PbPs I've ever been in, there has been only one that got past about 3 or 4 pages of IC posts, and that's partially because the DM and two of the PCs know each other in real life and the other two of us are obsessive posters.

No offense, Greenish. :smallwink:

[Greenish]

No offense, Greenish. :smallwink:What, you weren't trying to flatter me? :smallamused:

Yeah, my second PbP, the first one was the Legend playtesting one-shot. Both times the games used group initiative, it should be noted, and it's worked fine thus far. In the current one, we've cleared a small dungeon in less than a week.

One thing to note as a DM is that doing things secret from other players is much easier in PbP where you can just PM the player in question, instead of scribbling notes.

[Mr. Zolrane]

How to reduce the number of people flaking:

1. Go with a strong, specific premise. Generic games die fastest.
2. PbP games should be more railroad-y than normal ones. If the PCs are unsure what to do next, they start to hesitate and posting slows down.
3. Pick only the players who look like they're going to invest a lot in the game. Don't pick half-assed submissions or people who are known for having Game ADD and dropping from games.
4. In combat, use one averaged initiative roll for all enemies. First all the PCs who beat this initiative move at once, in any order, then all enemies, then all the players, then all the enemies, and so on. This speeds up combat significantly.

1. I abhor generic games anyway, so that one's covered.
2. Could you expound upon this point a bit? At what point should I push them along, and in what manner would you deem best?
3. In your experience, what is a good way to spot those types?
4. That's a good idea, I may do something along those lines. That seems like a good idea ever for PnP.


Bolded for emphasis. Saph expounded on this very well here. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6045678&postcount=1)

Also, I suggest working out some way of handling reactive rolls that doesn't rely on your players posting them when asked. Sitting around a table, asking for spot checks, initiative, whatever from everyone is quick. Around a PbP game, however, this can be anywhere from one to three days of dead time. Either make it clear that you'll roll reactive checks for them, or do what I do, which is to take 10-20 pre-rolled d20's (so they're still rolling for themselves), and then each time something like that comes up, add the modifier to the first roll in the list, then cross it off. This way, when combat is joined, you can say "Okay, these are the initiatives, players X and Y act, then the enemies, then everyone". Or if you're cruising through a jungle and the players are being stalked, you don't have to spend days asking for spot checks to see if they notice the jaguar sneaking up on them - you take from their pool of pre-rolled dice, add their spot modifiers, and give them the information.

As an alternative to that, you can give them information in spoilers - for example, in the above jaguar situation, you could instead do something like :

DC 17 spot check
Holy crap jaguar!

and trust that only those people who make that spot check will open it. Doing it this way can give players quite a bit of information - they know that in the above example, they can figure out a rough range of numbers its Hide modifier is likely to fall within. Or if you make someone save vs. a spell, they know the spell's DC. But to make things go faster, I find it's better to tell the players that the fireball is reflex DC 18 (giving them information about the enemy spellcaster), than having each of them make rolls and then giving damage afterward.

As a general rule with PbP, it does combat poorly. Each round takes much longer, and frankly, it can become poorly. PbP shines when you have a roleplay-heavy environment. For this reason, I recommend at least starting the players out somewhere that provides ample NPCs for you to interact with them - even something like a small town. They're going to need direction to start out with. Think about every game you've ever played, at the start of a campaign. The players haven't touched these characters before, they haven't got a good feel for them. You have to give them a push to get them rolling down the hill, have interesting things to do that aren't combat, so they can learn who their characters are in play. Once you've got the group roleplaying amongst themselves, then you can consider the snake-themed jungle dungeon crawl.

That thing with the spot check is quite clever; I'll have to remember that. And as for PbP doing combat rather poorly, I kind of figured that. I'm more of an RP-focused guy in general, so I can deal.

EDIT, NINJA'D:

One thing to note as a DM is that doing things secret from other players is much easier in PbP where you can just PM the player in question, instead of scribbling notes.

That's a good point. Granted, in the PnP game I just concluded this morning (sad ending btw *sniff*:smallfrown: ) there was a fair bit of texting and notepassing for secret business. A PM would be preferable, IMO.

[Ajadea]

Tend to is a gross understatement. Nearly a third of all games (31.802203%) never get to the second page of posting. The Playground has less than two pages of games that got to the 50th page of posts.

Most of the games aren't concluded.

Sometimes it's the players being indecisive or hesitating or being forgetful or being flaky. Sometimes it's the DM who flakes. Sometimes life strikes hard. If you're willing to deal with that, you can find some really amazing games, and nice people.

I recommend getting players with high post-per-day rates and good backstories. More posts-per-day hints at a higher level of interaction. Good backstory means they might be more interesting roleplayers, and are willing to invest more into the game. There's a lot of luck involved too.

[Mr. Zolrane]

Tend to is a gross understatement. Nearly a third of all games (31.802203%) never get to the second page of posting. The Playground has less than two pages of games that got to the 50th page of posts.

Most of the games aren't concluded.

Sometimes it's the players being indecisive or hesitating or being forgetful or being flaky. Sometimes it's the DM who flakes. Sometimes life strikes hard. If you're willing to deal with that, you can find some really amazing games, and nice people.

Would you say a campaign that's planned to conclude relatively quickly (say, the equivalent of 36 PnP hours) is better suited for PbP?

[Tengu_temp]

2. Could you expound upon this point a bit? At what point should I push them along, and in what manner would you deem best?
3. In your experience, what is a good way to spot those types?


2. The PCs always should have something to do. The only situation when they don't have to is when there's downtime and they want to do some RPing among themselves. If the game stalls for too long, assume that they do the most logical, generic action in this situation, or suddenly make something happen.
3. Personal experience and asking around people who were on this forum and played PbP games for longer. People who start a buttload of games but none of which take off ground are a pretty bad sign, too. And finally, the most obvious - if the application looks as if the player barely devoted any time into making the character, he will probably barely devote any time to the game as well.

[Ajadea]

Probably. One shots are good. What might be just as good is having multiple points where the campaign could stop.

Example: The campaign I'm running can stop after the planned first attack which may effectively decide the war depending on how much curb stomp there is in the victory.

If they decided to run away to another continent (not a bad idea), that is also an acceptable ending.

If they defeat the cannibal sorceress, whether it is before or after her insane plans come to fruitition, that is a good end. Saving the world is always fun.

If they defeat the Seven (they really don't know anything about the Seven other than there are Seven of them, and one of them is apparently chilling out in the same city they're in) that is a good ending.

If they side with the Seven to destroy the theocratic country they are in, this is also a good ending.

If they crack and fall into PvP, that actually works as an ending too, due to the way the setting works (they are expecting the player paladin to kill the druid for the crime of being a druid).

If you have points where the story could end, and you hit even one, that is satisfying.

[LCP]

Everyone else has said the most important things, so I'm just going to add a couple of less important points that I think are significant.

1. Define everything. If you say to a PBP player "you start in an inn", he may feel disoriented and disconnected: if he wants to ask you questions about his surroundings, each question and reply could take upwards of a day. In such a situation, it's easy to feel that you're floating in white space.

To avoid this, make GM updates descriptive and full of detail, and always be sure to clearly identify points of interest for the players. Where you have time, make maps and other supplemental materials to flesh out the world around them - in my current WFRP game, I have a reserved OOC post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10699699&postcount=2) which I use to provide the players with a library of maps and NPCs. This is the big advantage of PBP: you have much more time to craft your responses to the players.

2. Make full use of an OOC thread to keep things moving. In PBP, all your communication times are usually of the order of a day; therefore, misunderstandings kill pacing. A healthily-used OOC thread is invaluable for making sure people know when they're being called upon to post, and for a host of other little things that you can keep separate from the workings of the IC in order to keep the game rolling along smoothly.

[Conners]

I remember once having one or two Co-GMs ready.... I got sick, and there were no co-GMs available... Even if you have well thought out plans, things can go badly. MY game went on pretty well for about, ten pages, I think it was... but it stopped, possibly due to a poor decision on my part as to the plot.

[Renegade Paladin]

Just what the thread title says. I'm looking to DM a PbP game this summer, but I have no experience with PbP, and I was wondering if any veterans of that mode of play can tell me what tools I should have, what's different from normal PnP DnD, and what the general way of going about things as a PbP DM is. I know these are rather vague questions, but hopefully someone can help.
It'll die within a couple of weeks, probably when you get to the first combat, because some people will want to post faster than others, which hoses any semblance of initiative order.