On PbPs - another basic primer

Over at Paizo, threads pop up fairly regularly asking how to run a PbP and I'm jotting down some thoughts about that here.

There are many more potential players than potential GMs.
GM dropout or burnout is responsible for the vast majority of PbP deaths.

So, how do you start one, how to you keep it running and how do you keep your own interest going?

Planning

However much you want to run a whole adventure path bringing the players from novice wet-behind-the-ears adventurers to super-charged world changers, accept right now that you can't.

Plan one adventure at a time. You can build from one adventure to the next and create a campaign that way, but if you set out to run all six modules of The Curse of the Crimson Throne you are setting yourself up for a world of heartbreak.

PbP is slow. In a three-hour live gaming session you can reasonably expect to get through at least one combat encounter and a certain amount of plot, negotiation and rambling around. In a PbP you may well be looking at 3 months.

Look at your material right now and prune it. Be ruthless. Read the adventure with a critical eye and ask yourself which encounters further the plot. Look at the maps and ask yourself which ones are necessary. On average, you will need to trim out at least one third of a pre-written module. If it doesn't progress the story, ditch it.

If you are running a homebrew, it's easier to make those cuts. However, it's your heart that breaks when all your carefully crafted subplots have to vanish. Trust me. They do have to vanish. You may be able to work some of them back in, but don't count on it. Running a homebrew requires a bigger investment from players and unless you live online, you can't possibly hope to answer all the questions that would take 10 seconds at the table and may eat a week of PbP time.

While this may seem like brutal railroading, be aware that the timescale of PbP means that a lot of plot points will be missed. If something is important, you need to say it loud and clear. And then say it again. Your players aren't stupid, but something mentioned in passing five pages ago can easily be missed. You will do yourself and your players a huge favour if you condense and telescope down to the essentials. If it matters, tell them.

16 archers may seem like a very cool encounter.  Just be aware before you run it that updating those 16 archers is going to take a lot of your time.  Maybe a couple of hours of it until the players start killing them.  Consider reducing it to 6 rather more awesome archers.

Brutal pruning makes room for your players to build their own bits of plot. More on that below.

You will get player attrition. The chance of the same party existing in 6 months time is negligible. Keep that in mind and have ways of getting new players into the game without breaking the flow. Easy in urban settings, not so straightforward in the middle of a dungeon.

Run something you like or can turn into something you like. You will be looking at this baby for a very, very long time. Starting a game you're only half-invested in is doom before you even ask for players.


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You've got your adventure. Now get your players.

At risk of stating the obvious, be clear from the outset. Include the following information as a minimum.

System - is it OSR, 4e, 3.5, Pathfinder, whacky thing you knocked up on the fly one drunken evening.

Starting level and character creation rules - self-evident, but important.

Setting - delving through the pygmy infested jungles of Rythortan is not going to require the same players as your high level diplomacy game negotiating with Grazz't. Players keen to build cavalier types will be justifiably unhappy if you don't warn them that they'll be spending a lot of time on boats. In an ideal world, any PC should be able to operate in any setting, but the reality tends to be that PbP PCs may only get the one adventure to show their chops. Don't let someone build a character they can't have fun with in your game.

Your own expectations - this is important. You need to state clearly what you want from your players. Posting once a day, 24 hour deadline or you get GMPCed in combat, notice of absence if possible. Whatever it is, get it out there. Corollary to this: stick to it. If you say you expect people to post within 24 hours of their combat turn coming up, make sure you do act on their behalf. (This is one of my rules and the one I try hardest to stick to).

If your game is something with obscure rules, can the potential players get easy access to them? If there's an online resource, post a link. Make it easy for people to find out about your game.


Tips to make your life easier

Ask your players to keep track of their own hp and conditions and to make sure that they have a complete character sheet available and up to date where you can see it. If you need to run that character, you need that information.

Consider asking your players if they will let you roll init on their behalf. Time zones being what they are, it can take two days to get into combat if you have to wait for everyone to check in and post. Nearly every player I've ever met would rather post a set of cool things they've done than an init roll.

If you provide maps, keep them updated. Players need to know where they are in a battle. I use Flickr which occasionally refuses to update properly. It's my biggest bugbear.

Try to post all the information the players need in some easy to read format. If 16 archers all attack, you are going to have to make sure that each of those attacks is posted clearly. If any of those attacks have fancy effects, you need to say so. Let the players know if they're injured or blinded, or drowning in toxic mud without making them wade through an incomprehensible paragraph.   Like this one.


Running the game and troubleshooting

Assume everyone is an adult and wants to have fun.

Your primary job as the GM of a PbP is to be available and to keep nudging. Let the players know if you're too tired to post. Tell them you're going to be without internet for three days. Post regularly. You have to. If you keep checking in to see what the players are doing, they will keep checking in to see what's happened to their characters. It also means that if your internet does fry for some inexplicable reason and you can't get a message to them, they tend to know something is wrong and you haven't just abandoned them.

If you are burning out, losing interest or don't have time to run the game properly, let people know.  If it's a temporary issue, ask the players if they're happy to accept a change of pace for a while - even putting the game on hiatus if you need to.  However terrible it feels to make those posts, it is far, far better to do so than to jump ship without warning.

Be prepared to be ruthless. If you have a group of four or five great players and everyone is constantly waiting on a single laggard, you may well have to boot the offending player. You don't have to be rude about it, but you need to deal with the issue. Some players just need a different pace or a different game. You are not going to be the ideal match up for every player every time. Accept it and don't berate yourself.

You will make mistakes, so be up front about them. In general unless the mistake is completely game-breaking, don't try to revise it. Just suck it up and move on, implementing whatever it was you got wrong from now on. Similarly, if players make mistakes, sort out the issue as quickly as you can and move on.

One of the wonderful things about PbP is that you and the players can develop characters much more organically and improvisationally than at the gaming table. Suspension of belief is easier when you can't see the large bearded gent playing the tiny girly halfling. This works both ways. Players give you a lot of clues about their PCs through their posts. Read them. Use them. It's game material on a plate. It is free plot. Pick up on their randomly expressed thoughts, file them away and use them. Make it personal.

Enjoy what your players bring to the table and let your own imagination roll.  You have time to look up the rules and world-build, so use it.

Dynamic battles

I love it when a battle comes to life.  I wish it always happened, but more often than not a battle becomes a slog fest of dice rolls with little character.  For me as a player or a GM that isn't fun.  I'm a drama professional (for want of a better description) and I think a battle should be as much of an opportunity to develop character and story as the downtimes. 

This is far from a new or original thought.  There is a ream of good advice on how to help this happen, so I am really treading old ground here.  Still, a few thoughts:-

Villains - the party are fighting somebody or something.  Try and make those someone or somethings compelling.  My NPCs are notoriously mouthy.  They insult the party, pick holes in their technique, philosophise and try and get under their skin.  I try to make them deliberately provocative for two reasons:

• It is much more satisfying to bring an end to a tormented soul longing for true release or a gloating badass than a bunch of numbers.

• It is always possible the characters will be provoked and take actions they wouldn't have thought of taking without that stimulus.

The downside is that I feel the battles I run with unintelligent opponents are much less interesting and atmospheric.

Situations - this covers a multitude of sins, although I'm thinking here of the "where" and "why" of the battle.  The honest answer is, of course, you're playing an RPG and heroic last stands, distracting ambushes and cunning assaults are all part of the territory.  I don't doubt that there are GMs out there capable of making a trip to Tescos into a rivetting adventure, but let's just assume that most of us are going with the standard fantasy trophes and have certain expectations.  Those expectations should include:

•  Terrain - an open room may be what the players think they want, but it should not be what they get.  In an ideal world, a simple room should ring huge alarm bells.  Terrain can offer cover, unusual battle tactics, traps for the unwary, places to hide for a moment, stuff to use.  If it's outdoors, there can be insects, mud, venomous bushes, irritating flocks of birds, pollen that makes you sneeze, elemental pools of fire inexplicably appearing, flowers that eat your soul and the strong possibility of attracting other things to the scene.  Indoors offer most of the same options, but with a different skin on them.  A room full of parrots who all shout for help, a kitchen has herbs, spices and knives the party can improvise with, a beautifully adorned sitting room is packed with breakable treasure and so on.

• Reason - what is the purpose of this particular battle?  Mechanically it is because you want your players to earn XP and advance.  Creatively, it needs to be part of the story and preferably related to something the characters have said or done.  PCs need to feel as if their actions change the world around them.  There should, therefore, be consequences to the ways in which they behave.

Open Design's Courts of the Shadow Fey offered some fantastic examples of this.  Here, the players could only interact with certain NPCs after they had earned enough status to do so.  Their ability to interact with the world of the Shadow Court directly impacted on whether they could finish the adventure at all.  Earning status could be accomplished in several ways - diplomatically, by undertaking quests, by dueling other courtiers, seducing courtesans and so on.  The status system was organic and elegant and I'm planning to use a similar mechanic in The Lost City.

However - all of this takes work.  It also requires that the players and GM all buy into the world and care about it enough to want to win through.  I think in some ways, this kind of immersion is easier in a PbP.   Because of the lag between posts, players have time to respond in character.  This is great, because it lets me take cues from them, feed them back and enlarge the process as we go along.

To return (finally) to the issue of dynamic battles.  I have two combats running at the moment that feel particularly vibrant and interesting to me for different reasons.

Halls is coming to the final rounds now.  The characters are really fighting for their lives.  They're down a lot of surges and healing is shortly going to be useless unless they have powers that bestow temporary hp.  The enemies are fewer, but can't be reasoned with and are also aware that if they go down, so does their Archdevil master.  A corrupted mountain spirit is bashing holes in the floor and making the terrain horrible as lava pours up from below.  The PCs are depending heavily on each other and as they've been together a long time, are making a good job of it.

Tombs I have been using their current watery battle to explore some interesting group dynamics.  Their optimistically lecherous wizard has been making eyes at both the tiefling warlord and the newly arrived paladin beauty.  He's desperate to impress one or preferably both of them without letting on that he already has a succubus girlfriend.  It's noticeable that he hasn't summoned her recently.  The remainder of the party are rolling their eyes at this silly triangle and trying to get everyone to concentrate on the job in hand.

It's nice when it works like that.

Gaming update - possible spoilers for players - be warned.

I mentioned I have four campaigns running.  That's a little  misleading, as one of them is the same campaign with two different groups, but that's still a lot of updating and dice rolling.  Anyway, this is what is happening to them all right now.  Note that PbP time is not time as we know it.  Halls has been running for nearly two years, Tombs I and II just over a year and Rune Stones for three and a half years.  In game time, mere weeks have passed, if that.  Oh, except for Rune Stones where a trip to the Feywild took twelve years. 

Halls of the Mountain King - the party have just started their climactic final battle with Mammon and his forces.  They have been exploring a mountain full of cursed gold and done rather well so far. They've even managed not to get cursed themselves, despite being in the presence of more gold than any of them have ever seen.  To put this in perspective, adventurers everywhere ALWAYS need gold.  They need it to to buy cool stuff, which is a way of keeping score - since in RPGs you don't really win, you just don't die.  For this group to pass up the chance of acquiring enough gold to buy pretty much any magic thingbob they could ever want is nothing short of amazing.

That said, the battle is not going that well for them and they may yet die horribly, if heroically.  I'm hoping my team (the monsters) continue to roll well and make them suffer for their victory.  Or preferably wipe them out and leave Mammon grinning as he starts to take over the known world from his new base in Mount Rygar.

Tomb of Horrors (I and II)
Group I have been behind Group 2 for a while but both are now in Skull City.  Group I came under serious fire and came as close as they've ever been to a TPK (Total party kill).  They're recovering and hunting for a safe place to rest for a while.  Such will be difficult to find, given that they're in the middle of a city full of fractious undead factions.  Group II are finding out about the undead up close and personal elsewhere.  One of them has contracted a nasty disease in the process. 

Rune Stones
This has been evolving for a long time and the plot is multi-layered.  Due to player loss, the group are meeting their new front line fighter and making plans to invade a mine infested with crazed giants. 

All in a days work for RPGs.  The only place on earth you'll hear someone say something like "Akahale searches the squalid bedding for bones" and it will make sense rather than assuming a psychiatrist is needed immediately.

Play by Post - some thoughts

Gaming is an ongoing thing. 

I run four online games at the moment, all using the 4e rules for D&D.  All four campaigns have been running well over a year.  I play in a few games myself, usually between 3-5, so you could say I'm slightly addicted.

All of these are PbP (Play by Post) and my games are run on the Paizo forums - which is slightly surprising, given that Paizo is the home of Pathfinder and Pathfinder and 4e are not particularly compatible.  Both systems tend to have rabid adherents who are reluctant to find any good in the other system.  Having said that, most of the players I know are more pragmatic than that.  If they find a game they enjoy, they'll play it and hang the system.

PbP is a special animal.  The timescale is very different to a tabletop game and that has some interesting effects.  One of the biggest is that in general the standard of roleplay is much, much higher.  It requires some suspension of belief to accept that the very large bloke with a beard is a tiny halfling druid if you can see him sitting right there.  If, on the other hand, all you can see is an appropriate avatar and the written word, the character is instantly much more believeable. 

Tied into this is that the responses need not be immediate.  There is time to think about what a character would say.  In a table game, chances are that in any party of more than five, half of them will be wondering if the kettle has boiled yet and the other half will be scouring their character sheets working out how they can fit in an extra attack with bonus damage.  Few of them will be paying much attention to the lovingly crafted characterisations of their fellows.

The response time is good for a GM as well.  You have time to sort out rules quibbles behind the scenes.  You have time to check any more bizarre powers players or monsters use.  You have time, in short, to make informed decisions.  Those hair-pulling moments of "Ark - how does that work???" can all happen offstage.

There is a downside to all this joy, of course.  The timescale issue works both ways.  I am in the UK.  I have players who are in Australia and various parts of the US as well as a couple in the UK.  Different time zones in other words.  In a nutshell, this means that any kind of combat or social interaction can be paralysingly slow.  It can easily take a week to get through an entire round of a fight and much longer to decide on a plan of action.  Some players only really post during combat rounds, others will happily chat for days to the NPCs.  A balance must be found.

My own take on this is to be brutal.  During combat, I give any player 24 hours to post an action and if they don't I'll either delay them or post on their behalf.  Planning and social stuff I am more lenient, but in a PbP it behoves the GM to be pushy.  Very pushy.  Force them to make a choice.  You have to.  If you don't you're left with a bunch of characters stranded in the middle of nowhere unable to choose the left or right hand path.  This is how PbP games die.