As much as I love DMing my current 4E campaign, I’ve really been wanting to play in a game since the release of D&D’s latest edition. I don’t have time for another scheduled, live game, so I decided to take a chance with play-by-post (PbP).
My experience with PbP as a player has been less than optimal to this point. I’ve run one game as a DM, primarily with friends who lived too far away to allow for a tabletop game. I had fun, but the slow pace eventually killed the game. After playing for a year, we hadn’t even finished the first module (The Sunless Citadel).
That said, there is an appeal to PbP that keeps drawing me back. PbP games are creative writing exercises disguised as RPGs, and I like writing fantasy fiction.
I read a post on writing a successful PbP game ad that got me thinking about what a well-organized PbP game looks like. It’s one thing to write a great ad that will hook quality players; it’s another to set up a game so that the players know where to go to look for information and what’s expected from them.
Get your own forum
Play-by-post games are typically run on an internet forum or message board. Where you chose to host your game is your choice, but I highly recommend somewhere that will give you control over a forum, as opposed to a single thread. A well-organized PbP is going to need more than one thread to help separate information, and you want all your game-related threads collected in one place.
Setting up the forum
Resist the urge to create sub-forums. They are unnecessary, and force your players to click through more links than necessary, which is a web design 101 no-no. Keep everything on the same hierarchical level using threads. You will want at least one thread for each of the following:
- Setting information
- Game Rules
- Characters
- Combat
- In-character gameplay
- Out-of-character discussions
Setting Information
Even if you are using a published campaign, you will want to provide players with pertinent information about the game world, as some or all may not have access to the material. Try to keep the information small in scope to begin with, just enough for the players to immerse themselves in the immediate environs. They don’t need to know the capitol of the neighboring empire, or the last thousand years of history. Additional details can be posted to the thread as necessary when the game progresses. Attach images of maps or provide a link so the players can get an idea of distances and travel time.
Game Rules
Game rules cover any house rules you use as well as rules for posting. Posting rules include things like frequency, narrative perspective (most PbP games use third person past tense), and formatting. It’s probably a good idea to provide a sample IC post that players can use as a guide.
I’m not a big fan of the whole “different colored text for different languages.” Some colors make the fonts hard to read, and for those of us without doctorates in linguistics, making up elvish or dwarven words just comes across as silly. If you want your players to not know what someone is saying, just say, “Mr. NPC said something in a language you don’t understand,” and send PMs to the players that do understand the language.
Character Thread
Players will likely have sent you a link to their character sheet during the application process, but it is still a good idea to have a thread in the game forum with links to the sheets, or the character information itself written out in a post.
Combat
I strongly advocate maintaining a thread for each encounter. The first post should be the encounter map and combat tracker (initiative, conditions, etc.). The players then post their actions in-character, out-of-character (i.e., mechanics), and dice rolls for each round. Having the players post their in-character actions allows the DM to then copy and paste them into a summary post for the round in the IC thread.
In-character
All in-character gameplay should be posted in its own thread. It is a good idea to break the game into chapters, and have one thread per chapter. How you determine a chapter is up to you.
Out-of-charater
You should have an out-of-character thread for each in-character thread. A single OOC thread will become too long and unmanageable. The OOC thread is where players can discuss strategy, make non-combat related dice rolls, or just chat. This is also a good place for people to announce upcoming absences.
I’ve identified these components of a play-by-post game based on those I’ve played in and run as a DM, but it is by no means the only method of setting up a PbP game. What are some other ways you’ve seen successful PbP games organized?
Myth-Weavers.com gives you your own forum and practically does all the organizing work for you with its built-in folder structure.
Wyatt´s last blog ..The Clouded Palace: Part 1
I just recently discovered Myth-Weavers. I’ve played games at dndonlinegames.com and online-roleplaying.com, and DM’d games with my own ezboard and phpbb forum. In all those environments, the DM was the forum owner and built the folder structure. Does Myth-Weavers allow you to change their structure?
All you have to do is click “new folder”, give it a name, and post threads there. Then you can make another folder, and now that you have two, you can choose which order they are in.
Wyatt´s last blog ..Monsters of Eden: Antagonists
I second the suggestion of Myth-weavers. It is by far the best PbP website I’ve used (plothook rponline are some others). It is well-organized and has a great advertisement system for new games.
In my opinion, the biggest factor in the success of a PbP game is the ability of all participants to tell a story, particularly the DM. In a tabletop game, even a mediocre DM can run a fun game as long as everyone is intentional about helping the game along. But with PbP, the players cannot as easily compensate for a poor DM.
As a side note, I feel that 4E combat is fundamentally ill-suited for PbP because you have to use a battle grid and that makes for very slow and tedious combats in the PbP medium. Too many powers are directly tied to tactical movement around the battle grid. Conversely, I’ve played many PbP games with the 3.5 ruleset (and no grids) and it works wonderfully.
The best thing about PbP is that roleplaying truly takes center stage and combats can become highly cinematic.