Have people tried running in-universe, literal play-by-post?

[Trekkin]

I've been thinking about ways to run a game in a play-by-post style, by which I mean that the players have a set (long) period of real-world time to get their actions in, after which the world reacts to them and the cycle repeats.

My experience with these games has been that they tend to drag on, especially in combat; thankfully, the group I have in mind doesn't like combat. What they want is a game focused on social interaction and scheming, which led me to thinking of how to run conversations that don't take lots of time-consuming cycles of player-GM exchange. Letters come to mind.

I could see it working like this: the PCs are somehow restrained from acting directly/locally on some plot-important matter and therefore communicate by post with some assortment of agents who can, with the round-trip message lag being reflected in the real time between when they write their letter and I have to come up with a response (not at 1:1, but some fuzzy attempt at proportionality). It seems to me that this conceit would let everyone game as their schedules permit and also make their individual exchanges contain more stuff, avoiding the problem of turns wasted drawing swords and suchlike.

Has this been done before? Are there any glaring flaws with it?

[Ninja_Prawn]

I've been thinking about ways to run a game in a play-by-post style, by which I mean that the players have a set (long) period of real-world time to get their actions in, after which the world reacts to them and the cycle repeats.

My experience with these games has been that they tend to drag on, especially in combat; thankfully, the group I have in mind doesn't like combat. What they want is a game focused on social interaction and scheming, which led me to thinking of how to run conversations that don't take lots of time-consuming cycles of player-GM exchange. Letters come to mind.

I could see it working like this: the PCs are somehow restrained from acting directly/locally on some plot-important matter and therefore communicate by post with some assortment of agents who can, with the round-trip message lag being reflected in the real time between when they write their letter and I have to come up with a response (not at 1:1, but some fuzzy attempt at proportionality). It seems to me that this conceit would let everyone game as their schedules permit and also make their individual exchanges contain more stuff, avoiding the problem of turns wasted drawing swords and suchlike.

Has this been done before? Are there any glaring flaws with it?

So, let me get this straight... everyone posts a letter with their actions to you, then you resolve them and post letters back to each of them. Is that it? As someone with half a dozen active penpals, I can see some potential flaws...

You need to share addresses. Okay with pre-existing friends, but strangers may not go for that. Possibly something like Postable could help.
Each of the players can't see what the others are writing. How are they supposed to co-ordinate actions?
It will take ages to do anything. I average about 6 letters a year to my most active penpals, maybe 1 or 2 to the slower ones.
You will get hand cramps writing the same letter to each player once you've resolved the actions.
People will forget what they wrote two letters ago.

In short, it's going to take a very specific kind of campaign to make this work.

[Trekkin]

So, let me get this straight... everyone posts a letter with their actions to you, then you resolve them and post letters back to each of them. Is that it? As someone with half a dozen active penpals, I can see some potential flaws...

You need to share addresses. Okay with pre-existing friends, but strangers may not go for that. Possibly something like Postable could help.
Each of the players can't see what the others are writing. How are they supposed to co-ordinate actions?
It will take ages to do anything. I average about 6 letters a year to my most active penpals, maybe 1 or 2 to the slower ones.
You will get hand cramps writing the same letter to each player once you've resolved the actions.
People will forget what they wrote two letters ago.

In short, it's going to take a very specific kind of campaign to make this work.

The characters are the ones writing letters in-universe. The players will be using, at a bare minimum, email.

[Ninja_Prawn]

The characters are the ones writing letters in-universe. The players will be using, at a bare minimum, email.

Oh, ok. Guess I misunderstood. I... don't have anything else helpful to add.

[GuzWaatensen]

I think that is a really great idea, and if there isn't already a system to support this playstyle there should be one made.

I imagine it something like this: IC the players are noble men and women sitting in their feudal strongholds and writing letters to each other, their generals and maybe their agents and merchants. Of course the platform for this cannot be a message board because information has to be highly compartmentalized. I imagine the GM would give all players periodic updates in the form of letter correspondence, one from the general, one from the treasury etc. And of course correspondence from the other players, maybe a short report from the guard captain about rumors among the traveling merchants and so on. You would write letters with orders, inquires or just formal invitations for banquets with your fellow players.

There could also be some metagame, you might receive letters written in code from your agents, intercept other letters and try to decipher them and in return find the sigils on some of your letters damaged.

I think if done right (which admittedly means a lot of work for the GM) this could create a really immersive Platos Cave kind of situation for the players. I for one would really enjoy playing such a setting....

[JeenLeen]

At first I was worried about this negating the benefit of PbP of having time to respond to things, but you mention a set and long period of time for players to respond, so that should solve any such issues.

Would the number of letters/agents be limited per turn, something like a limited number of Action Points? I think such would be useful to keep more-prolific writers from getting more done than other players. Players should be awarded for participating more, but not so much they can overpower others (or give the DM a ton extra reading to do).
I could see also see something like having some amount of each turn's AP be able to roll over to the next turn. OOC, this could be giving a break to a player if some real-life stuff interrupts them for a week. IC, this could reflect letting your minions/contacts/whatever rest or have free time, in order to raise morale so you can accomplish more next week.
Maybe something like if you have AP unspent, half of that AP goes to the next turn (and expires then if unspent). That way you can't accumulate a ton and you still always lose some AP, giving players an incentive to post actively each cycle.

I agree it would take a special sort of campaign, but you have that intended. Sounds interesting. I could see feudal lords, spymasters, or even gods interacting with the material plane.

[cobaltstarfire]

Something like this is really common in freeform forum based role playing. (or even collaborative story writing, where players take turns writing or drawing parts of action for their character(s))

Players will often collaborate via PM's to write a "scene" which one of them then posts in the IC thread. Though not every post is or needs to be a collaboration, often players also make shorter posts. There isn't really any need for "rules" to moderate anything not even in combat. These games often don't even really have a GM in the traditional sense (often the creator of the game themselves are also players in the game too, they just happen to have more responsibilities for moving the story and such forward)

God-modding can be a problem, but I've not seen it be a common one. OOC thread is also often used to do more "planning" as well.


There really is no need for the players to be restrained from interacting directly with the world and such either.

[Trekkin]

I could see feudal lords, spymasters, or even gods interacting with the material plane.

I was going to go with functionaries trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare version of an economic planning committee, but yeah, I guess gods could work too.

[goto124]

There really is no need for the players to be restrained from interacting directly with the world and such either.

Doesn't that defeat the point of literal play-by-post though? We're back to regular PbP.

[erikun]

Play-by-mail (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play-by-mail_game) has been a thing for over half a century, most likely longer, and probably predates the internet itself. You could certainly play a game or a RPG through mail or e-mail, although you'd want to be careful about which system you have in mind for such a thing. I would think that something freeform would be most practical, since the Game Master would be the one making the decisions and they want to have the world react "realistically" rather than randomly determined by some dice.

I recall visiting a RPG forum a long time ago which would easily handle what you have in mind. It was a simple posting forum, but each game had their own separate section, players and the GM could hide posts from other players, and could easily message each other directly. It was all kept rather neat, but I don't recall the name of it.

You might want to consider making it a bit boardgame-like in its design, to keep things consistent and stable. As JeenLeen mentioned, something like a set number of Action Points could make sense: each player can only issue so many commands to their regions in what to do, so as to limit the number of things each player could do each "season" before turns progress. And, for that matter, direct "letters" between players should probably pass through the GM. Both to ensure it gets delivered properly - there are always reasons for postage potentially getting lost - and so the GM is aware of what is going on.

[JeenLeen]

I like working on game systems in my free time, so I might try to think of some draft rules for something like this that could be used as a springboard. I don't see it working well for any existing systems I know of, at least without major, major adaptations.

Some basic ideas.

To keep the crunch low, only the PCs have full stats. This includes things like being able to tell a letter you received is a forgery, how diplomatic you can be, your understanding of economics/crime/etc. Such influences how well you can command some of your followers and how much you have to rely on their expertise. Also, probably stats that reflect the overall status of their nation/domain/whatever.
The NPCs have a set of stats, but they are specialized. Loyalty is probably an important (and hidden to the PCs) stat. It could be interesting if two people 'own' the same NPC.
AP is determined by your level. So something like a king or greater god would have more influence and thus more AP than a lowly duke or minor god.
Character generation likely includes two sets of point-buy: one to build your PC, and another to build your NPC followers. For balance, the level (minor god; duke; etc) is dictated by the GM and starts equal for all players.
It takes so much AP to issue orders to an NPC. This could be flat rate, regardless of the NPC; a variable rate, depending on the power of the NPC (more powerful followers take more of your influence/power to get to act, but they can do more in the world); or perhaps a rate depending on what the order is (cheaper to ask a spymaster to gather intel than to order him to hire assassins against a dude).
Letters between PCs take no action, to allow the equivalent of in-character discussion.
Letters can be intercepted, so I like erikun's idea of them going through the GM. One thing I like about PbP, though, is being able to read what others do; it's fun and lets me enjoy the overall narrative flow. One should think about if the game would be just the DM posting and players e-mailing/PMing him, the DM posting and players posting everything, or some combination. It's hard for some folk to limit using OOC info, such as if they know PC B posted a friendly letter but they received a threat because Villain X intercepted and rewrote the letter.

[Friv]

I play tested a game once (Microbloggers of the Lost Island) where all player posts took the form of updates made to the characters' blogs about what had been going on recently.

There were rolls to make if your character had an idea that clashed with someone else, or if you wanted to get xp by taking a risk.

Mostly it worked well, but it lagged badly when two players met up, because there was an urge to do normal conversation at that point.

[Trekkin]

Interestingly, I've hit a snag in actually realizing this campaign: my players, having initially suggested an intrigue campaign set in a fictional analogue of the Cold War*, realized that this meant sending emails filled with things that, upon automated analysis, might be of potential concern to real-life intelligence services. Probably not going to get anyone in any trouble, but given our home countries it's a risk we're collectively unwilling to take.

So now we're trying to find a less worrisome setting to play spy-vs-spy in, and someone suggested "why not set the Cold War in the Pokemon 'verse and make it about sustaining the wierdly Pokecentric nature of their society instead of milking international tensions for increases to the defense budget?"

My players, man...just...:smallbiggrin:

*with many more factions and no real relation to real-world events, but still the threat of mutually assured destruction and so forth

[JeenLeen]

In my spare time, I've been thinking of a system for a game like this. Are you using a pre-existing system or did you make something from scratch?


Interestingly, I've hit a snag in actually realizing this campaign: my players, having initially suggested an intrigue campaign set in a fictional analogue of the Cold War*, realized that this meant sending emails filled with things that, upon automated analysis, might be of potential concern to real-life intelligence services. Probably not going to get anyone in any trouble, but given our home countries it's a risk we're collectively unwilling to take.

So now we're trying to find a less worrisome setting to play spy-vs-spy in, and someone suggested "why not set the Cold War in the Pokemon 'verse and make it about sustaining the wierdly Pokecentric nature of their society instead of milking international tensions for increases to the defense budget?"



Sounds wise. I was in a Mage: The Ascension game where we were planning some very nation-impacting stuff, and we all agreed not to mention any of it via e-mail lest it trigger some keyword check. We did use code words sometimes, but even that we did rarely and we made to mention mages or magic. Using Pokemon sounds safe.
I also heard of some folk discussing Shadowrun in a diner, and some cops in a nearby booth came over to question them (or something like that.)

[Don nadie]

I would be 100% behind the bureocrats trapped in a kafkaeske planning commitee.

The concept of playing by letter is interesting, and does allow for a lot of interaction and long-term events. I could just as easily be done in a forum, just using an individual thread for each player and so on.