Has anybody tried a part-email, part ftf game?

[ken-do-nim]

I've been thinking that what I can fit into my schedule is a very occasional live D&D game (maybe 6 sessions a year) supplemented by an email game. Basically, the emails will pick up right where we left off in person so that the game never goes "dormant". Has anybody ever tried this, and how did it go?

[Prometheus]

I've never tried this, but my guess would be you'd end up feeling like you want to "save" certain parts of your campaign for the in-person experience and run into a problem with what content to run over email. For one, you'd encourage PCs to do all their magic items and leveling-up, as much as possible, over emails. You have to decide what other parts of the story you are willing to do over the email, though. If you are clever enough and have a flexible enough play schedule, you can set it up so that the parts that are over email are better suited for it - but you'd have to accept the fact that it would be near impossible to always get it right.

One possibility, if you don't mind the extra work, is to give each player a personal side quest that they pursue over email, in-between sessions. So the rogue takes some time that night to rob a house or two without the other players knowing, the cleric/druid gathers herbs and rare material components to cure a friend's powerful magical disease, the monk aspires to win the local martial arts tournament, the barbarian wrangles monsters alive for the local gladiator stadium, and the wizard consults experts in the art of magic around the world for researching a special spell. Of course not every session would end in an opportunity to pursue the special quest, but inevitably it would for someone and you would let that person know over email. You would also be able to control how many people's events trigger because you would be the one sending the emails. The only drawback is players might be tempted to pursue their special quest during the live session, and would run into problems of making the other players wait.

[Skjaldbakka]

Prometheus hit the proverbial hammer on the head with that comment. Run solo adventures through e-mail. Solo escapades can bog down a tabletop game, but they are perfect for e-mail or forum roleplay.

[ken-do-nim]

Thanks for the feedback. I might give it a try; we'll see.

[LibraryOgre]

They said about what I would. I regularly use e-mail to communicate with my GMs things about my character that are important, but not germane to the entire party. With fewer sessions, more actions can get moved to that.

[SimperingToad]

Not quite what you were asking, but a related scenario.

My current DM runs a game where the players are simultaneously running armies by email (the DM determining casualties with his homebrew method), and doing the usual FTF for special missions with the heroes of the various armies. Usually capturing leaders, rescuing important NPC, finding special items, etc.

So, the big events are handled through email, the minor issues FTF.