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View Full Version : Can someone explain to me how play by post works?



Windrammer
2016-01-19, 05:03 PM
Just that. I'm interested in it but I don't know how it works at all. Do characters hold any real back-and-forth conversations? Do people just post when they can or does everyone have a day to post or what? What's it like?

Grinner
2016-01-19, 05:25 PM
In theory, it proceeds basically as a normal session, complete with discussion amongst characters. In practice and at best, people post when they can, and if they fail to post, the GM just moves on.

Typically, the game loses momentum over the course of two or three weeks, posting intervals become longer and longer, and finally the game falls apart entirely.

It works best for games where the participation of other players is not mandatory.

If you're interested in online RPGs, I'd recommend looking for a chat-based game.

Talion
2016-01-19, 06:55 PM
Pros:

Everyone has time to work out exactly what their character says/does.
It's easier to ignore someone going off topic/tangent.
People can do it throughout a regular day without having to set up a specific time.
People can take their turns in any given order unless something like combat turns up (its hard to hog the spotlight).
The GM can address several people's actions at once, even with split parties.

Cons:

People may fail to post during crucial moments, or at all.
It's harder to maintain interest when you're not playing in person.
Posts may be too verbose and cause miscommunications/disinterest.
Posts will be very erratically timed.

As Grinner stated, they don't generally last more than a couple of weeks before the game falls apart. While it lasts, it can be some of the best roleplaying you'll ever have. But, unless the plot is particularly loose (a sandbox if you will) it'll usually end before you accomplish anything of lasting significance.

blacklight101
2016-01-19, 07:17 PM
It really can be some of the most rewarding, most frustrating roleplaying you ever do. Some of the games I've been in have made me dig good and deep for motivations and responses and others don't interest me after the first post but I keep playing. If you can make it through a few games failing and still want to stick it out and play, this is a pretty solid community for it in my experience. Lots of good people here.

nedz
2016-01-19, 07:37 PM
We have some here - take a look (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?51-Finding-Players-%28Recruitment%29)
Check out the stickies and then browse a few threads.
Eventually the recruitment thread should spawn an IC and an OOC thread on this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?13-Ongoing-Games-%28In-Character%29)sub-forum.

I tried three: they all failed to launch :smallannoyed:

Âmesang
2016-01-19, 08:38 PM
Some friends and I had attempted a play-by-post Pathfinder game some years back. Didn't last as long as I would have hoped, but that's mostly due to the referee suffering from writer's block (I believe involving a library the paladin was exploring). Worked surprisingly well for the most part since the "party" was split up (our character had barely interacted, actually).

https://www.schadenfreudestudios.com/forum/thread.php?thread=32

While it fizzled out the play-by-post was great since we had all moved away from each other, so that made for a convenient way to play; plus it made it easier to keep track of what was going on, since all I'd have to do was go back in the thread to read earlier posts. :smallbiggrin:

If I ever get the chance to do so again I'd like to try and integrate this "interactive map" webpage I hastily put together last summer (just needs some tinkering):

https://www.schadenfreudestudios.com/dnd/map/map.php?game=scap&map=cathedral_feathers_underground

A special upside to playing on my forum was that I had added a special block of code that'd send me a text message whenever the referee posted, heh. It, and D&D in general, also inspired me to add some extra formatting BBCode such as indentations, reverse indentations, and text/object floating.

Dimers
2016-01-19, 08:58 PM
Just that. I'm interested in it but I don't know how it works at all. Do characters hold any real back-and-forth conversations? Do people just post when they can or does everyone have a day to post or what? What's it like?

Back-and-forth conversation is difficult for most players and most game systems. Few campaigns that I've seen encourage posting more often than once a day, and it could take weeks to hold a normal dialogue at that rate. If you trust your fellow players not to abuse your character, and the game system doesn't interfere, then you can let somebody else speak through your character's mouth in their posts. That's exceedingly rare (possibly because people don't know each other too well before signing up for a game) ... but it's theoretically possible.

Since there's also a lot of interaction between combatants, running combats in PbP tends to be pretty slow too. And in a similar way, the more control you're willing to give up, the easier it gets.

PbP excels for roleplaying in the sense that you can consider, then fully and artistically express, your character's actions and emotions in a way that realtime games just don't support.

A given group or GM might decide on a minimum time between posts before someone loses a combat turn, gets run by another person, or simply gets dropped from the game. It varies widely.

Maintaining a strong out-of-character thread alongside the in-character thread is a good way to keep a PbP game alive and keep people interested, whether they talk about the game or just whatever happens to be going on in their lives.

Faily
2016-01-19, 10:50 PM
I realise that my opinion comes from a very skewed viewpoint, but take it as you wish:

My experience with PbP has only been with Legend of the Five Rings, specifically the games that a fan-based community host on Fallen Ash (http://www.fallenash.com/). Each game is like a mini-campaign, that tells the specific story surrounding one event, but with many players (sometimes up to 60!) contributing their own drama and the stories that come from player interaction and the motivation and agendas of those characters.

A specific game might last for about two months (the most common schedule is 1 In-character day to 3 Real-Life days), and things happen on a schedule.

There is a majority of what happens that is actually just... roleplay, while the GMs often provide more mechanical challenges that require dicerolling. Dicerolling for certain challenges must usually be finished before a new In-Character Day, to avoid possible problems that could occur (like people dying in a combat), while the roleplay can just go on and on really, as long as both players keep in mind that once a new In-Character Day has started, it's best to avoid causing conflict in an interaction as it will affect future interactions and could lead to aforementioned problems of people dying in combat.

Personally, I find Play-by-Post in those games to be some of the most rewarding experiences in terms of pure Roleplay. I almost never get into the same depth of roleplay in tabletop as I have in those play-by-posts. Especially since some of them can be very rewarding in terms of creating your own story, and following your character's goals.

While I've found that L5R works very well for this, because its setting is very strongly bent towards social interaction and niceties, I can think of a number of other games that could fit the criteria; like Vampire or a number of other WoD (and WW basically) games.