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Lord Tataraus
2007-09-04, 05:37 PM
Well, the title says it all. I've heard about Play by Post and looked at a few, but I think it would be best for someone to just explain it to me. What do you do? RP all of it? How does combat work? And any other info I might need if I were to DM or play in PbP.

Thanks in advance.

CasESenSITItiVE
2007-09-04, 05:41 PM
i haven't played any PbPs, but from what I've heard, combat is done. but imagine everything you say during a regular game put in posts, after waiting for someone else's post, its supposed to be very slow

Fishies
2007-09-04, 05:42 PM
It works... slowly...

psychoticbarber
2007-09-04, 05:42 PM
How does combat work?
Very slowly, if you play it out according to most crunchy systems. Essentially you just have to wait for whoever is next in the initiative order to post.


And any other info I might need if I were to DM or play in PbP.

Just be patient :smallsmile:. It takes a long time to play these things out.

Gygaxphobia
2007-09-04, 05:46 PM
It is slow. Most games try to get one post per day off of every player, each post generally contains only brief actions.

Roleplay and conversation can be excellent, since it's more like interactive story-telling or collaborative fiction writing and players have longer to think, write and be creative.
However, in combat especially, if everyone only posts one rounds worth of actions and dice rolls (there are several methods of dice rolls, including a forum generated random number) it can take a few weeks. it's high pressure for a DM/ref/GM etc to run one round of combat per day, that can be quite a schedule.

Different styles of games suit different people, and you definitely have to take the medium into account as well.

Quietus
2007-09-04, 05:54 PM
Just for kicks, if you want to see how it plays out in practice, check out these forums :

http://vethedar.proboards25.com/


For an example of how combat works specifically :

http://vethedar.proboards25.com/index.cgi?board=quests&action=display&thread=1187059606&page=1

That one combat scene took us a week or so worth of posting to complete.

Sornas
2007-09-04, 05:55 PM
Well, for one, RP tends to be more in-depth. More like you are writing a short story, as opposed to "I go to the weapon shop, what do I see?"

Combat is done normally, but goes VERY slowly, so you may want to look for alternate ways of doing things.

Other than that, it's really like any other game. Just be careful of slow combat, the possibility of people dropping out, and try to find one that matches your prefered level of writing intensity. ^^

I'm sure there's more, but that's all I can think of...

Zincorium
2007-09-04, 09:36 PM
Hm, slightly off topic, but since I feel incredibly silly not knowing:

The forum roller, whats up with that? More specifically, is it actually an automatic thing, and if so how do you format it?

It seems rather irresponsible joinging PbP games without this crucial piece of information, but I can't find a guide or anything (if there is something official, please point me to it. Low wisdom may be affecting my spot checks.)

Dhavaer
2007-09-04, 09:39 PM
Dice roller formatting is {roll}1d12+437{/roll}, I think. The guide thread is in the Board Issues forum, IIRC.

I'll just check the formatting: 1d12+437

Edit: Nope, doesn't work. Or, it might be disabled on this part of the forum. I'm not sure which.

Roland St. Jude
2007-09-04, 09:44 PM
Here is a thread on using the dice roller (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27768).

Notes:
1. Dice roller is disabled in all but the PbP forum.
2. You can't preview your post with dice rolling code (or if you do it ruins the roll).
3. Once rolled, the code converts to text like this: [roll0]. You can edit your post, but if you edit that text, you'll mess up the roll and get a little red "post count does not match database" warning.
4. You can't add rolls to a post already made.

Zincorium
2007-09-05, 02:57 AM
Thanks, explains why when I was trying to test it out it didn't function.

Kiero
2007-09-05, 05:04 AM
PbP is a different medium to tabletop (or IRC/chat) and thus works differently. System makes a big difference to how fast the game flows, especially in combat. If you're using something highly regimented and crunchy (eg D&D), combat will be much slower than the "RP" sections of the game. Many lighter systems lend themselves well to PbP for that very reason of much swifter resolution.

Essentially the main options for speeding things up are 1) the GM makes all the dice rolls, after the players have explained what they want to do or 2) you use a much simpler system.

Bender
2007-09-05, 06:41 AM
Very slowly, if you play it out according to most crunchy systems. Essentially you just have to wait for whoever is next in the initiative order to post.

It's best not to try to post in initiative order, with different schedules and time zones, that can take days for one round. It's fastest when the DM just determines the initiative order, every player posts his PC's action and when everyone has posted the DM makes a bigger post with the result of everyone's actions and the actions of the monsters. One round/day is possible like this, but any faster is unlikely.
It's good to have a deal about what happens when someone doesn't post for a few days. To move things forward, some DM's like to decide what is a likely action for the PC.

A lot of games die very fast, due to technical problems, work, time issues, or sometimes due to lack of DM or player commitment or a difference in playing styles. Of 8 games I started in, only 2 lasted after the first encounter.

As mentioned before, you have plenty of time to prepare each action. This means you can decide what your character would do, take your time to act it out, look up complicated rules, or rules you haven't had a chance to try out before... And when you're more busy, just a short post to move things along suffices.

Kurald Galain
2007-09-05, 08:09 AM
I'd say screw initiative (you can play perfectly well without that rule) and focus less on combat, more on exploration or character play.