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View Full Version : Player Help People who have been in/are in very active Play-by-Posts, how are you so successful?



Linken
2017-01-08, 07:39 PM
I play a bunch of PbP games, or I try to, at least. I try to make my characters fun and engaging while being useful to the party. I'm pretty sure everyone does. However, usually, after about 30 posts or even up to 4 pages in, people stop responding and the game dies. I look at the IC page, and I see playbyposts that are over 20 pages long. So much story, so much everything in them.

How can I make sure that games don't die?

J-H
2017-01-08, 08:25 PM
1) Speed of play. A daily-post game keeps everyone engaged. Plot & battles move quickly enough that everyone can keep track of what's going on, and something else interesting is always just around the corner. Characters actually get to level up in only a few months! If we go 48 hours without a player posting, that player gets a PM and his/her turn is skipped so that combat keeps moving along. (If someone says they'll be out, and how they want to be NPC'd while out, I have no problem with that).

2) DM commitment. Does the DM enjoy doing this at a daily rate, and is he/she someone persistent, or someone who quits easily or can't manage time well? I find DMing to be at least as fun as playing, and I get to try out new character builds in battle regularly! I work from home with a flexible job; when the last player posts, I often can get the turn up in an hour or two, unless it's in the middle of the night.
As a player, I do not join games run by DMs who I have seen drop games or vanish repeatedly. It's a waste of my time.

3) Player commitment. When choosing players I look for:
-Evidence (via forum history) of consistently posting AT LEAST once per day, preferably two to three different times per day.
-Good English vocabulary & grammar, and a complete and easy-to read character sheet. It's a time-sucking and fun-sucking exercise to spend 5 minutes trying to figure out what someone's character is actually doing mechanically. It already takes me 10-20 minutes to run a turn.
-Party balance doesn't matter much. Time zones don't matter. Across two games, I have several players in the US, one in NZ, one in Finland, and one in Germany. We've still had a few instances where 5 players have posted their turns in a 3-hour timespan!

4) Group initiative. All players go, then all monsters go. Actions are resolved (for both sides of the battle) in the most favorable order (the wizard casts fireball before the barbarian charges, not after). Nobody has to sit around waiting for anyone else to post their turn. The fast posting rate required also means that tactical discussions OOC are usually resolved in a dozen hours or less, instead of causing days of waiting.

5) I find that a map every turn helps eliminate uncertainty as to where everything is, both for the players when moving, and for myself when adjudicating their actions.

6) Have an overall vision and plan for the game and the map, but let your players tell most of the story. If they want to go left, maybe there's something to the left (or maybe there's not; use dice). I don't know exactly what my players will run into in 3 days' time, but I either know what custom encounter table I'll roll on, or I know the general terrain and what the dominant species are. With a general idea like that, it's easy to build an encounter in 10-20 minutes using MM monsters, templates, etc. Class-level enemies are a bit more time consuming, but I enjoy character-building.

I have one daily-post game that's over 6 months old, and has 35 pages OOC and 29 pages IC. The group (currently 5 players) has leveled up once; I have lost two players to random vanishing (one has suddenly reappeared and is ignoring his participation in the game), and added one replacement player.

I have one game that's supposed to be twice-a-day, but is turning into once-per-day because a couple of players are having trouble posting in time. It's about 5 months old, the players have leveled up once, almost been TPK'd once by a 27-round battle with a horde of undead that was over-built, and they're close to leveling up again. 30 pages IC, 53 pages OOC.

I avoid long social encounters, as they usually result in most players sitting around and waiting for someone else to post. I have also learned that shopping or dividing large amounts of loot can kill progress; it takes longer to do that than it does to post a turn in battle.

thirdkingdom
2017-01-08, 09:13 PM
1. Choose your players/DMs. I don't game with people I don't know, anymore. If someone asks to join a game I'm running, or I'm interested as a player, I'll typically ask for links to games they've participated in.

2. Quick recruitment. You want to begin play with plenty of momentum, and recruitment that drags on and on saps some momentum..I shoot for a week at most from when I post recruitment to the first IC post.

3. Posting. As a DM I post to push things forward. I work on a majority rules, usually. As soon as a majority of players reach consensus I move things forward. Player's posts should also be concrete actions that move the game forward. I discourage posts like "my character does what everyone else wants" or "I don't know what to do".

4. There's some good advice in this thread, on rpg.net, regarding pbp games: https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?123898-Merged-X3-PBP-Tips-amp-Tricks-Megathread , spanning over a decade.

5. I prefer it when the DM makes all the rolls.

Recherché
2017-01-09, 02:56 AM
Pardon my insomnia driven ramblings. Block initiative is crucial to making sure that people don't need to post in a strict order and we don't hit bottlenecks waiting for one person. Combat in PbP is generally slow and low combat, high intrigue or puzzle solving games go much faster.

I haven't found prioritizing posting speeds yo be helpful at all. My most successful PbP game (one that's been running 3 years or so now) is actually not terribly fast. I've found the pressure to post quickly can actually make people feel guilty when life events interfere and they can't post. Then once they start feeling guilty over not posting they don't want to come back and face everyone else's censure for being slow. I think we'd have lost 5 out of 6 players if we'd tried to force rapid posting.

Having the right group of people is crucial though. We generally don't recruit strangers and when we are looking for people we ask around about they're reputation and look through old games they've been in before to see if we think they'd fit and make sure they don't abandon game when the going gets rough. With this restricted recruitment from a pool of trusted people we form a closely interconnected group. I think at this point we have 6 different games going on with different GMs and overlapping vendors diagrams of players most of which have been going on for years.

Having a group that are actually friends also helps a ton. When something goes wrong as it inevitably does having people reach out and tall you what's going on/ask for help means that while the game slows it doesn't die. Meanwhile if this was a bunch of strangers it would be much easier to abandon them and abandon the game. The fact that we're constantly chatting anyways also helps keep things going, it reminds us that we might want to post. OOC conversations about the game keep people's enthusiasm up.

Having a Skype chat for the OOC is kinda crucial to how my group works because it's much faster and less formal than the forum. Questions to other players and the DM get answered in minutes. Sometimes we do miss things in the chat because there's a 200 message long backlog discussing elven population dynamics but repeating a question isn't the worst thing ever.

I don't know if my group's methods will work for everyone but they've kept our games alive for years and multiple threads.

TheOneHawk
2017-01-09, 03:18 AM
As Recherché said, I've found little merit to forced pace. Life happens, people get writers block, whatever. It's a game, and pressure to post when you're not feeling up to it for whatever reason can turn the fun into stress and then into a drop.

The biggest, most impactful thing I've found for success is an OOC skype chat (or google hangouts, discord, whatever). I've been in The Broken Land, as an example, for a year and a half now. There have been times where the game has had to stall for days or in one case even a couple of weeks. You know why it survived that, when most games wouldn't? Because through that skype chat the players and GM all became friends, we were there for each other when **** hit the fan and we didn't pressure each other to keep posting when it wasn't feasible. That one game has turned into five others I'm in with the sameish group, now, because we know we can count on each other to stick through the rough patches and keep playing.

Mr Blobby
2017-01-09, 05:12 AM
I'd agree with the above, though would add:

- You don't have to Skype. Players / GM talking is the critical thing, not the medium of it.

- Player-GM trust is key. The GM has to trust the player won't metagame, flake out etc. Player has to trust the GM won't unduly railroad, wreck their concept etc. The day a player is starting to avoid telling GM's issues because they don't trust their reaction... that's not a healthy situation.

Ninja_Prawn
2017-01-09, 08:13 AM
I look at the IC page, and I see playbyposts that are over 20 pages long. So much story, so much everything in them.

I would also like to point out that there is a strong selection bias at work here. There are literally (maybe, I haven't actually been counting) dozens of PbPs started every day on this forum every day, but there are only a handful of them become long-runners - which are of course the ones you see in the forum index. I also love that Year of the Yuri Harem is one of the longest!

As the DM of A Faerie Affair (which is well over a year old and onto page 107 IC) and a player in Ansalonian Adventures (also over a year old but only 38 pages), I would have to agree with the above posters. Frequency but moreover consistency are important. Building a relationship between players and DM is important. Commitment is important. Choosing the right players is important (but not always easy).

As it goes, neither of the above-mentioned games use block initiative. That may be because they're both 5e, and block initiative doesn't work that well in 5e.

Desril
2017-01-09, 08:55 AM
Basically everything that everyone here has already said is accurate.

The only thing I have to add really is that as far as posting speed goes, it's not about setting a hard rule where everyone has to post once a day. It's about finding a group that wants to post at least once per day. You don't need a rule for it if everyone is invested and wants to move things along. That being said it's not required, and some times things will slow down, life will get in the way, and so on. Just hopefully that doesn't happen until after everyone involved is invested enough to want to keep the game going in spite of the speed bumps, and Skype as an OOC where you just talk and get to know each other as if you were all sitting around a table goes a long way toward that.

Fri
2017-01-09, 08:59 AM
Only one advice I guess. Play with friends, or be very lucky. There's nothing else about it.

DataNinja
2017-01-09, 11:24 AM
I'll second (fifth) the motion to have some sort of real-time OOC chat (I use Skype, but I know not everyone likes it). I've noticed a marked improvement in the longevity of games in the PTU PbP community ever since the 'core group' of players and admins have been popularizing Skype Chats, so, from personal experience I can tell you that getting to know people is really helpful.

And, really, I think that's what it comes down to. Having some sort of connection to the game and the other people, however tenuous, can go a long way to making people feel invested in the game. I've found it's a lot easier when you talk to everyone every day to be able to have the game go a month without posts in it, and then suddenly have it get back like nothing ever changed.

cobaltstarfire
2017-01-09, 12:24 PM
In my experience most games die because the DM's disappear, or they halt the game for personal reasons and never come back. This has happened even with good well established DM's.

Though I'm probably also a bad element in them, I will leave a game fairly early on if I feel that I'm not working well with the other players, or the GM just conducts things in a way that I don't enjoy.


I've felt the best games I've played in had a very active OOC, but that has usually been in other places. Most of the games I've been in here the other players don't care about being active in OOC at all. So I suspect the idea of having a chat for everyone would definitely help. Though I don't really like skype, having learned about Discord recently I find them nicer place to use for chat and potential voip purposes.

Recherché
2017-01-09, 01:06 PM
Having players leave isn't always a disaster especially if they tell the group they're leaving and its for peaceful reasons. People rage quitting, leaving after arguments or just disappearing are often fatal though.

thirdkingdom
2017-01-09, 02:03 PM
Having players leave isn't always a disaster especially if they tell the group they're leaving and its for peaceful reasons. People rage quitting, leaving after arguments or just disappearing are often fatal though.

In my experience this forum is about the worst for "ghosting" (i.e. when a player or DM vanishes without a trace) that I've seen. The forum where I do most of my gaming instituted a "Blacklist" several years ago, that compiles a list of participants who a) vanish from a game without notice *and* b) continue to post elsewhere on the forums. The Blacklist has drastically improved the longevity and quality of games on that site and made it a much more polite environment, as well. The list, although it is run by a Mod, does not have any official bearing on the rest of the forum as a whole (i.e. getting a Blacklist warning isn't like getting an official Mod warning), and these days serves more a gentle reminder to post to your game.

Darth Ultron
2017-01-09, 07:09 PM
The only thing I have to add really is that as far as posting speed goes, it's not about setting a hard rule where everyone has to post once a day. It's about finding a group that wants to post at least once per day. You don't need a rule for it if everyone is invested and wants to move things along. That being said it's not required, and some times things will slow down, life will get in the way, and so on.

I'll add a bit to this: Finding people that want to play and want to post. You can say that ''life happens'', but anything short of your house exploding should not really stop you from posting. After all, we are really only talking about getting online for five minutes. And even with the ''most busy life every'' you will have a couple blocks of free time. So it is all about how the person chooses to use that time.

DigoDragon
2017-01-09, 08:57 PM
Finding people that want to play and want to post. You can say that ''life happens'', but anything short of your house exploding should not really stop you from posting. After all, we are really only talking about getting online for five minutes. And even with the ''most busy life every'' you will have a couple blocks of free time. So it is all about how the person chooses to use that time.

Having spent a weekend on an island with no internet access at all last month, I'd like to add that if you find yourself knowing in advance that you're going to be unable to post for a couple days, do at minimum let the GM know about it. That way they won't worry you disappeared on them suddenly, and they can plan around your absence so the other players can still participate. Good communication tip.

TheOneHawk
2017-01-10, 03:14 AM
I'll add a bit to this: Finding people that want to play and want to post. You can say that ''life happens'', but anything short of your house exploding should not really stop you from posting. After all, we are really only talking about getting online for five minutes. And even with the ''most busy life every'' you will have a couple blocks of free time. So it is all about how the person chooses to use that time.

Can you post when you're busy? Sure. I work 90-100 hours a week and manage to play in... 6 games currently.

Slightly harder is posting when you're dealing with suicidal depression and can barely even get yourself out of bed. I've never had that problem myself, but I know some who have. Doesn't mean they don't want to play, or don't want to post, they simply -can't-.

Plus, not everyone can crank out a post in five minutes, especially if it's a difficult one or when you're struggling with writers block.

Eldan
2017-01-10, 03:35 AM
I've only played successful PbP on other forums, none of mine here survived. The key, absolutely, was speed of play. We were all in the same time zone and all students with lunch breaks and evenings at about the same time. This meant that we sometimes had return times between players and DMs of about five minutes and managed a dozen or more posts per day. That's how people keep being interested.

Darth Ultron
2017-01-10, 07:43 AM
Can you post when you're busy? Sure. I work 90-100 hours a week and manage to play in... 6 games currently.

Slightly harder is posting when you're dealing with suicidal depression and can barely even get yourself out of bed. I've never had that problem myself, but I know some who have. Doesn't mean they don't want to play, or don't want to post, they simply -can't-.

Plus, not everyone can crank out a post in five minutes, especially if it's a difficult one or when you're struggling with writers block.

True, but if you ''can't post'' for whatever reason....then don't join a game. If your a ''can't'' person, don't pretend to be all excited and make a character and post a lot in the recumbent thread....when you know as soon as the game starts you ''can't'' post.

Mr Blobby
2017-01-10, 08:33 AM
Does this include knowing that on occasions you know you'll not be able to post?

I, for example are a shift-worker. There *will* always be a couple of days a week, perhaps three which my posting is very limited to nil. I also have periods where I just can't hack posting either - it doesn't last long, no more than 2 days and only happens every couple of months or so - but I also know this will happen. Other times I'm pretty on the ball.

Should I never play or GM because of the above issues?

Vhaidara
2017-01-10, 11:23 AM
True, but if you ''can't post'' for whatever reason....then don't join a game. If your a ''can't'' person, don't pretend to be all excited and make a character and post a lot in the recumbent thread....when you know as soon as the game starts you ''can't'' post.

That's just wrong. You can't predict that stuff. I've had people who get sick and are bedridden. I've had people who get slammed at work and don't have time to make a decent post. Ditto that with finals. I myself have taken a week off on occasion to unwind and reset my headspace. I've had a GM take off two weeks because of life, and when they came back, because we all enjoyed that game, we just picked up where we left off.

Things happen that can prevent posting. And I'm going to be honest, your tone comes off as very dismissive of people who are dealing with mental disorders such as depression. Those quotes around can't I find particularly insulting, since the tone that implies is that you're saying they're faking.

EDIT: it occurs to me I didn't actually address the OP

Most of what I have to say has been said by Desril, Rechere, and Hawk. Which makes sense, since I play with them in a number of successful PbP games. You also need to make sure everyone is looking for the same kind of game. Nothing sucks more than going into a game expecting epic anime heroism and getting dark realism.

Dimers
2017-01-10, 10:44 PM
Luck and making connections between players.

I've only been in one game of much length. In that one, I offered my personal contact info to let people poke me if I'm behind in posting, because I get distracted and depressed. The DM and one fellow player took me up on it, and even chatted via text about non-game stuff occasionally. Now, years later, one of them has flown hundreds of miles to attend my wedding, and we all coo over photos of the DM's super-adorable kids.

That game was not the first or last where I offered people my phone number, but it's the only one where anyone used it. The game is still going ... coincidence? Doubtful.

But the selection was random at that point. I got lucky in one game and not in others. Luck is definitely a factor.

My $0.02 -- as a DM, try to have the initial scenario flexible enough that players dropping out won't ruin suspension of disbelief, and don't hesitate to move ahead without the less committed players. You'll be able to tell who's "in" and who's not pretty quickly.

As a player ... maybe a prayer for Tymora's eye to fall on you and Beshaba's to overlook you. But do try to connect with other players; you definitely won't succeed if you don't try.

SubjectNeutral
2017-01-10, 11:07 PM
I'm a longtime lurker who registered just to chip in on this.

I've DM'd a play by post game that's run for the last two years, three come April. It's been a very different game compared to a lot of the other's I've seen mentioned. We started a separate free forum and created a sandboxy West Marches style game. Essentially all the players have journeyed out to the frontier, founded a guild and can now wander around the region and do what they want. There's factions they can please, a few threats or threads they can follow, but no big bad "End of the world" threat. Instead most of the players chose to try and make the region thrive.

The really important distinction is the solo mode. All players have their own solo section that only the DM and them can see. If a group of players are together in the same place, they post in a general In Character section that everyone can see. Most of the time however the players explore the wilderness on their own, in their solo sections. This means that everyone can post at their own pace. If a player is slow, or gets stuck working, it doesn't hold everyone up.

If the players have found something during their exploration that requires more muscle, they can gang up in a small party to deal with it. They then post in a shared section that they can see and work together. Generally if they've found something big enough to warrant it, then it creates a fair bit of excitement and interest that gets them all motivated. If things start to slow they can break up and go their separate ways. There's no important quest that needs to be done, so they can afford to drop something and finish it up whenever they want.

All the players are part of the same guild, which the original players founded. The NPC's reactions to the players are effected by the prestige and respect of the guild. So all the players have reasons to cooperate, share information, etc.

One of the other big things that's helped is a fairly regular recruitment when to many players dropped, but it hasn't really been needed. We had a solid 6 players for two years. In October we decided we wanted some new blood so now we're up to 15 players in the game. Due to everyone posting at different times and different amounts it actually works out as easier for me to DM. Whenever I log on to update there's always enough activity for it to be worth it, but rarely enough to be overwhelmed.

There's lots of other house rules and small effects that we've come up with. The system itself is 3.5, but a fair bit of homebrew. Especially to try and make each class not have to many problems explore. Still, this is the jist of it, and I just wanted to add it to the conversation.

Mystral
2017-01-11, 03:27 AM
Another old thread about this topic, propably the answers haven't changed:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?489888-How-do-y-all-make-play-by-post-work

Darth Ultron
2017-01-11, 01:20 PM
Things happen that can prevent posting. And I'm going to be honest, your tone comes off as very dismissive of people who are dealing with mental disorders such as depression. Those quotes around can't I find particularly insulting, since the tone that implies is that you're saying they're faking.

.

It's true that people do say, get hit by lighting bolts and ''can't post''. But even if you are hit by a lightning bolt you can take a whole minute to post ''hit by lighting bolt can't post bye''. It's just ridiculous to say if someone ''can't post'' the only thing they can do is just ''disappear from the boards''.

Is there a mental disorder that stops a person from posting in a PBP? Anti-Play-By-Post Phobia? Well, if someone did have such a disorder, they might be better to admit it up front and say ''I have this'' and ''I will do this and or act this way'' so the DM and other players know or maybe just not join a PBP in the first place.

Vhaidara
2017-01-11, 02:00 PM
Is there a mental disorder that stops a person from posting in a PBP?

Clearly you have never dealt with depression. When that strikes, it's a struggle to do ANYTHING. Anything at all. I suffer from a relatively mild case, and i have days that i cannot bring myself to get out of bed to the point of being able to even send a skype message. And yet you suggest that I'm not cut out for a Play by Post, when I'm part of a game that managed to produce over 3000 posts in a single year, clearing 2 and a half books of the Wrath of the Righteous Adventure Path? A game where every single player has, on multiple occasions, had to go "Real Life is in the way, can't post today".

Kindly don't insult people with conditions you don't remotely understand.

thirdkingdom
2017-01-11, 04:02 PM
Clearly you have never dealt with depression. When that strikes, it's a struggle to do ANYTHING. Anything at all. I suffer from a relatively mild case, and i have days that i cannot bring myself to get out of bed to the point of being able to even send a skype message. And yet you suggest that I'm not cut out for a Play by Post, when I'm part of a game that managed to produce over 3000 posts in a single year, clearing 2 and a half books of the Wrath of the Righteous Adventure Path? A game where every single player has, on multiple occasions, had to go "Real Life is in the way, can't post today".

Kindly don't insult people with conditions you don't remotely understand.

Agreed 100%.

Darth Ultron
2017-01-12, 12:03 AM
Kindly don't insult people with conditions you don't remotely understand.

Well, I sure can't understand that even if a person is hit with something they can't even take a whole minute or two to type ''sorry can't play'' and not just disappear and never post again.

Recherché
2017-01-12, 12:18 AM
Well, I sure can't understand that even if a person is hit with something they can't even take a whole minute or two to type ''sorry can't play'' and not just disappear and never post again.

I'm not talking about disappearing forever without warning. I'm talking about not being able to keep to a very fast paced posting schedule. Or about being able to say "I'm having a hell of a week. I'll probably not be able to get anything up soon."

If I can't do that without the worst being presumed of me then I'm actually less likely to come back later compared to when people are understanding.

Coretron03
2017-01-12, 12:27 AM
Well, I sure can't understand that even if a person is hit with something they can't even take a whole minute or two to type ''sorry can't play'' and not just disappear and never post again.

He's (or she)not saying hit with something, he's(she) saying if someone is depressed and doesn't feel like posting because they are depressed they aren't going to post and say "feeling depressed, can't post kthxbye". Anyway, what if someone goes somewhere without internet? Or has something like family death/ greivious injury/ Etc they should toughen up and post anyway and if they can't predict the furture they shouldn't join post by play games? Rediclous.

Darth Ultron
2017-01-12, 11:48 AM
I'm not talking about disappearing forever without warning. I'm talking about not being able to keep to a very fast paced posting schedule. Or about being able to say "I'm having a hell of a week. I'll probably not be able to get anything up soon."

If I can't do that without the worst being presumed of me then I'm actually less likely to come back later compared to when people are understanding.

Right, lets say you have a reason you can't post and you know about it before the game....well then maybe you should not join a game. Even more so when the DM says ''this game will have a fast posting rate'', why do you choose to lie and say ''ok, I can and will do that?" Why not drop out then and say ''woah, I can't post once a day, I have X or O, so I'll drop out of the game before it starts''?

Or lets say everything is normal, but then you make one post in the game and suddenly your ''life is hell'' or whatever. Why can't you take a couple seconds to post ''going through hell, can't post''?


He's (or she)not saying hit with something, he's(she) saying if someone is depressed and doesn't feel like posting because they are depressed they aren't going to post and say "feeling depressed, can't post kthxbye". Anyway, what if someone goes somewhere without internet? Or has something like family death/ greivious injury/ Etc they should toughen up and post anyway and if they can't predict the furture they shouldn't join post by play games? Rediclous.

So why can't a depressed person post again?

I guess someone might take a three hour cruse and get lost on a deserted island....but the rest of the time they might know they are, say going camping, ahead of time and can say so.

And sure some type of family etc.....but again, we are talking about maybe two minutes, not 200 hours. So, ok, the Death Star blows up your whole world and you escape on a rag tag cargo ship and you can't take two whole minutes as you..well sit in the cargo hold...to make a post?

Vhaidara
2017-01-12, 12:25 PM
Right, lets say you have a reason you can't post and you know about it before the game....well then maybe you should not join a game. Even more so when the DM says ''this game will have a fast posting rate'', why do you choose to lie and say ''ok, I can and will do that?" Why not drop out then and say ''woah, I can't post once a day, I have X or O, so I'll drop out of the game before it starts''?

Or lets say everything is normal, but then you make one post in the game and suddenly your ''life is hell'' or whatever. Why can't you take a couple seconds to post ''going through hell, can't post''?

The point that we're making is that the 1 post/day rule is BS. It doesn't actually help games survive, and can kill games that otherwise could have survived by making people who miss a day feel guilty.

I am in 2 PbP games that have survived over a year each, and am friends with multiple people, who have commented in this very thread, in games that have lasted similar lifespans. Every single person in all of the games has had days, even weeks, where they don't post. The rule we live by, that has kept the games alive and engaged, is to post when you can, but your personal and mental health comes first. If we had tried to push people for daily posts, the games would have died within a week. Easily. And without the support groups that formed out of these games, some of the players, myself included, might not still be here.


So why can't a depressed person post again?


Clearly you have never dealt with depression. When that strikes, it's a struggle to do ANYTHING. Anything at all. I suffer from a relatively mild case, and i have days that i cannot bring myself to get out of bed to the point of being able to even send a skype message

Cozzer
2017-01-13, 04:03 AM
I think this is the part where it should be pointed out that different things work for different people.

Dark Ultron has the right to demand to be in a game where everybody posts daily, and Keledrath has the right to demand to be in a game where he can miss a few days with no repercussions. Each of them will create/find a game suited to their preferences.

Dark Ultron, as a GM, would have no duty to bend his preferences to accomodate people like Keledrath, and Keledrath would have no duty to bend his preferences to accomodate people like DU.

(Sorry if I used you two as an example)

Marlowe
2017-01-13, 04:39 AM
1, Post.

2, POST SOMETHING THAT THE OTHER PLAYERS CAN RESPOND TO!!! Spending every post chatting to your familiar, having interminable internal monologues, or describing how "brooding" or "mysterious" your character is is not going to impress anyone and contributes nothing to group dynamics.

3, READ WHAT THE OTHER PLAYERS POST! Try to show some INTEREST in these other characters with whom you are sharing adventures of live and death. Ask them questions. Have CONVERSATIONS. Good players can fill three pages with dialog without the DM doing anything at all. This isn't wasting time, this is character development and team building. Bad players often don't seem to be aware there are other people around at all.

4, Focus on moving SOMETHING forward. Always try to advance the action, or group knowledge, or just explore each other's sense of humour. Do SOMETHING when you post. Ask questions, share information, ask feedback on courses of action, GIVE feedback. Show you WANT to have something happen other than the DM leading you around from encounter to encounter.

5, The last people you want to pick a fight with are the other players. In any sense. Using your internal monologue to make slighting comments about other PCs doesn't make you look clever. It makes you look like a douche.

This is a team game and a group activity. Treat it like one.

Darth Ultron
2017-01-13, 07:36 AM
The point that we're making is that the 1 post/day rule is BS. It doesn't actually help games survive,

I has worked for me....maybe some others. To make a post a day not only keeps the game moving, but keeps everyone interested. A PBP by it's very nature is SLOW. Posting once a day at least makes it slightly less then slow.

I guess some people like the ''one post of month'' post rate, and that is fine if you like it.

Malimar
2017-01-13, 05:41 PM
My PBP games' success (one set of games running with only a few hiatuses since 2011, 14 threads of IC content and 6 OOC threads) has been a bit of a microcosm of the forum itself: a ton of games started, a ton of players recruited, gradually winnowed down to a few successful games with dedicated players. Anthropic principle: you only see the games that live because the others are dead. My games primarily contain players who don't drop because everyone who dropped is gone.