What Makes A Play-By-Post Game Last?

[Archmage_Cowl]

I feel like i should add something here, but i don't know that i really need to. Almost everything i have read here (indeed maybe everything) has been well thought out and totally has good points behind it. My play by post game ran fairly well (I would say), until technical difficulties left me without a computer for a while. Which as I was GM just kinda beat the game down badly :/ . I would say some things i have found help with the pbp games
1.) Talk to your players outside of the game to see what they like and put what interests them in. This works and is important for almost any game, pbp or not, but it is critically essential for play by posts (i feel at least) because it keeps players interested and eager to find out what happened, which keeps them coming back.
2.) (I believe this one has been mentioned) Expect to loose players. I know it's always sad when it happens but the truth of the matter is, that as a play by post game, it's likely going to happen. So i would recommend being prepared for it. The specific preparation is up to you though and there are some good examples of things that can work here already.
3.) I found that be willing to compromise helped immensely but that might just be GM-ing in general rather than specifically pbp lol

Hmm... thats really all i can think of right now that i haven't directly seen posted here already.

P.S. To Sanctaphrax: I Sincerely thank you for all the awesome work you have been doing around the boards. It seems like everytime i get on these boards i see something impressive you have done. So i just figured you deserve some thanks for all of the hard work you do. So Thank You
P. S. S. sorry to derail topic with that. lol

[Sanctaphrax]

I'm kind of intrigued by all this talk of mechanic-less games. It looks as though they work very well, given admiralducksauce's site and the testimonies here.

But I'm a pretty crunch-headed guy. I actually enjoy online white-room combat in FATE. And I've never played a game without solid rules.

So, I can't really comment on such games.

Can someone who knows them a bit better say if their requirements are any different from the requirements of a mechanically-based game?

PS: Thanks, Cowl. Don't worry about the off-topic-ness, post-scripts are easily ignored.

[Ala Alba]

I'm kind of intrigued by all this talk of mechanic-less games. It looks as though they work very well, given admiralducksauce's site and the testimonies here.

But I'm a pretty crunch-headed guy. I actually enjoy online white-room combat in FATE. And I've never played a game without solid rules.

So, I can't really comment on such games.

Can someone who knows them a bit better say if their requirements are any different from the requirements of a mechanically-based game?

Actually, DFRPG is the first roleplaying I've done with rules. There was still character creation, character progression, and stats, but any actions preformed succeeded or failed based almost entirely on OOC agreement (sometimes explicit, but mostly implicit) between the two sides, whether that was between individual players or between a player and the GM.

[Falar]

Eh. It depends on your players, honestly. I played mechanic-less PbP for a long time before I got into anything with mechanics. And there's a wide range of what, exactly, that means. On the one hand you have the journal RPs, which I'd say are farther away from what PbP is from here, and then you have single-threaded forum RPs, which is basically exactly what we do here, but without as much mechanics focus, and on the third hand, you have multi-threaded forum RPs, which is basically what we have here, but each line of story is a separate thread.

From my own experience, which is limited, of course, single-threaded forum RPs can have problems keeping things clear as to what's happening where and with who. Multi-threaded forum RPs can have the problem of looking like there's not a lot going on so people don't post because not a lot's going on. Both of them can have problems with players who always think they should succeed, which is my main reason on souring on the whole mechanic-less route. This is probably more of a problem of poor admins than it is a problem of the type of game, but I prefer mechanics now.

Also, I'd say, it depends on what you're looking for in a PbP roleplay whether a mechanic-less one will suit you. Most (but I'm definitely not saying all) of the multi-threaded ones I ran into have a lot of just sitting around doing character interaction. Plot and a gripping story was not really the focus, except on rare occasions. Single-threaded PbP tended more towards the straight plot, but, without a core admin or proactive and creative players, it would devolve into traction as reactive people didn't take the story anywhere new.

As an aside, I've only actually RPed once, face-to-face, and that was in the previous year, but I've been doing tabletop online through IRC for about five or six years. Mechanic-less PbP for about five years before that. Much of my playing experience is with the fan-created Final Fantasy RPG, but I've also played a little Shadowrun and even less Fantasy Craft. I've GMed the Serenity RPG and a Cortex fantasy homebrew of my own making. Even in mechanic-less RP though, I tend towards the GM role.

[admiralducksauce]

I need mechanics in any game I'm GMing.  I feel otherwise you might as well just be making shit up.  Yes, I do realize how backwards that sounds given the hobby.  I also need to know there are mechanics present in any game I'm playing in.  You don't need to post all the dice results inline (and for years I didn't, I just rolled actual physical dice on my desk because I didn't trust online rollers) but for me at least, there needs to still be a game component to the RPG, to feel that there is, I dunno, a common ground or fairness or something?

I suppose that doesn't really help you Sanctaphrax.     I suppose I just wanted to clarify your mention of my site as a place for mechanicless games.  Except for the earliest threads on there, there have been mechanics involved.  It's just only a few of the most recent games have been posting results in-thread.  For the longest time I used real dice because I worked from home for a long while, then switched to google Wave for its dice roller, then invisible castle, and I didn't like having to type in 4d3-8 all the damn time so I wrote my own dice roller that seeds from random.org and supports ORE dice notation as well as dFs.

[Sanctaphrax]

@admiralducksauce: Oops. I assumed that because I couldn't see any mechanics, there weren't any.

@Falar and Ala Alba: So, how do you decide which actions succeed and which fail? Do players sketch out the rough competence levels of their characters beforehand so that other players know what to expect? What if there's a disagreement?

[Falar]

@Falar and Ala Alba: So, how do you decide which actions succeed and which fail? Do players sketch out the rough competence levels of their characters beforehand so that other players know what to expect? What if there's a disagreement?

Weeeeeeeeeeell, that's one of the reasons that I tend to shy away from mechanic-less roleplay now. When I played (and sort'f adminned), there was an unspoken rule of not contradicting another player or controlling another player's character ... so unless the player was cool with losing, then it devolved into a long run of posturing until either they got bored, somebody gave or an admin stepped in and said who won. There was a bit of admin bias to a certain clique of friends, so ... yeah ... didn't work out so well.

It's really hard to have any kind of meaningful rubric without a system of some sort and, without such a rubric, when a player and another player (or a player and an admin-controlled character/group) conflict, unless you're good at riding herd, it's really hard to get any kind of resolution. Which leads to points where an admin would have to pull out an overwhelmingly powerful force just so the players would back down. And, even then, some players wouldn't play ball and still say their character ran through a hail of crossbow bolts and decapitated the enemy commander.

Yeah. You get the picture. I don't really do plotty mechanic-less RP anymore. With the right players, I would, but I find it safer to just go with a system.

[Katarn]

A new idea I'm trying I don't love but I'm curious to see if it works:

I'm calling it default actions, to be used as a supplement to the aforementioned delay action.  To give you some context on why I came up with this, consider the following:

*I leave for a long vacation in a week, which will be the death of my game unless I conclude the chapter before then.
*Some of my players have IRL conflicts that won't let them post at a speed that will resolve conflict that well.

As such, I'm having each of them create a default action their character will do in the event they cannot post for a combat round at all in that day/time period.  Even if they aren't there, their character will contribute.  For example, inciting emotion or making a GUN/WEAPON roll could be your default action.  If you could not post your turn in a rotation, I would make the roll using your skill abilities.  You can also specify how to use Fate Points.

EXAMPLE:  Count Robespierre of the Red Court:
If a mortal being, make a addictive saliva attack.
If a magical construct, make a weapons roll.
Spend a Fate Point only when the character is in dire straits, and on defensive rolls.


It's not the best solution by far and takes a chuck of the fun out of it, but I'm curious to see if it works.

[Falar]

I'm calling it default actions, to be used as a supplement to the aforementioned delay action.  To give you some context on why I came up with this, consider the following:

Have you ever played FFXII or Dragon Age? It's basically like Gambits from the former or Tactics from the latter and it can be a very powerful tool. I hadn't thought of using it in an RPG environment, but it would serve to help out a lot with combat - or really with anything when the player's not there.

[Sanctaphrax]

@Falar: I was afraid that it would be like that.

@Katarn: Worth a shot, I suppose. But I have a bad feeling about it somehow.

[Katarn]

@Katarn: Worth a shot, I suppose. But I have a bad feeling about it somehow.

I feel the same way; ordinarily, I would never use it, if not for a quickly approaching deadline.  I'll post the results of how well it works in this thread in a few weeks.

[Falar]

@Falar: I was afraid that it would be like that.

With a bunch of mature people that don't play to win, and play for a story, it could work out really well. One of the main places where I played could have had some amazing truth and betrayal and redemption story arcs for characters, but people weren't willing for their characters to "lose", so it never could really work out.

Sigh. Ah, the Imperium.

[Rafaella]

With a bunch of mature people that don't play to win, and play for a story, it could work out really well. One of the main places where I played could have had some amazing truth and betrayal and redemption story arcs for characters, but people weren't willing for their characters to "lose", so it never could really work out.

Sigh. Ah, the Imperium.

That's the thing with Team8Mum's game. There have been some spectacular failures but they're sometimes even created by the players when they make a better story. My character made a huge mistake, more or less ended up selling her cousin to the devil. I could never quite believe she'd been that stupid. It was tied into a huge story arc - more like two story arcs I suppose - and several years later it made perfect sense.

No mechanics, we seem to do fine without them. There's been the odd occasion when I've decided my character's going to do something utterly outrageous. She normally gets to do whatever it is but I've learned that the backlash is very rarely worth it.

[SoulCatcher78]

Houston game stopped when our GM moved for a different job.  Haven't heard from him since so I hope all is well.  It was fun while it lasted but I wish it could have run it's course.

Seoul was a lot of fun (esp the research part...always good to learn new things) and going back to look at it I'm not sure why it didn't continue.  Missed my cue to do something and that possibly derailed the game (if so, my apologies).  I know there was a lot of tension where the GM lived (Seoul) between N and S Korea at the time.  Looks like Bosh was on back in April (now I feel all stalkerish).

[Sanctaphrax]

It sounds like mechaniclessness just requires a higher level of maturity.

And sometimes games die because everyone is waiting on someone else to post until the game is forgotten. At least, I think that that can happen. Maybe Seoul suffered from something like that.