Hey guys, I've recently been doing some recruiting from various roleplaying connection sites, and there's something I've run into.
People in some places have an extreme hatred of Play by Post as a medium in general, but this seems doubly so for diceless PbP's.
You see, I run a role playing game (NOT a campaign, this uses an entirely different format) via Play by Post, and I've playing and running them for about 11 years now, and I don't really understand the hatred.
So... can anybody shine a light on that perspective? (If there's interest I'll set up a recruitment thread in gamer connection to let you guys check out the details on Masaru)
Patrick Curtin(Pathfinder Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Roleplaying Game, Campaign Setting, Companion, Battles Case Subscriber)
I don't know why anyone would hate a game someone was having fun playing (oh yeah, nevermind ..) There is a similar diceless homegrown PbP on these boards. It is all improv freeform, and is spread over about a dozen different threads in the PbP game forum. They were originally formed from the Off Topic Discussion Forum, so its unoffical name is the OTD game.
I think it has something to do with the lack of objective restriction. When there are no dice, either everything is flat numbers or there are no numbers, and more often than not (at least in my experience) it's usually the latter. In that case it kind of lends itself to "My character can do X Y and Z", and only the player's common sense and his/her fellow players' willingness to call them on when they're going overboard keep the game from devolving into "I do something that beats you" "No, I do something that blocks that and beats you" back and forth, or the relative equivalent thereof.
This is of course only applicable if you mean what I think you mean by "freeform diceless PbP roleplay".
Heh, I left the question without any details concerning my game because most of the opposition I ran into was people who hated the format and refused to even look at my game.
But, since it seems discussion on Masaru is going to become part of this thread, I may as well give a brief overview. (There aren't any spoilers in terms of story in the bit that follows, it's just spoilered to look better and keep all that data out of the view of those that aren't interested in reading it)
Spoiler:
Each player controls their own character, who is an independent entity. There's no party format, your free to do whatever you choose, within the bounds and limits of the game.
Which is set at a school for gifted students, sort of a hybrid between Harry Potter, the X men, and various anime, an accademy where magic and martial skill are both taught and embraced, hidden away on a magically concealed and protected island off the cost of Japan.
Combat is handled turn by turn, with no stats except HP. However, realism in terms of the character's size and build is maintained within the frame of the game. (Aka characters are accepted to be somewhat more agile than in real life etc, but the scale to one another is maintained)
Aside from basic physical combat, which is roleplayed through (each successful hit deals 2 damage out of a fairly large pool) each character has their own special abilities.
Each character begins play with 2 starter abilities, and a small suite of Path abilities (with the exception of the Mutant Path that comes with 3 starters) These abilities can be nearly anything under the sun, but are brought into balance compared to all the others by the staff during character creation.
Students have a list of classes that the characters attend, though roleplay in them isn't required and seldom used. These classes, such as Offensive Spellcasting, or Ninjutsu, or Weapon Mastery, each bestow a single small basic ability (such as the ability to walk/run on water, walls, ceilings etc for Ninjutsu) and are the foundation of custom skills.
These custom abilities are learned over time, as a player posts, those posts are reviewed, rated, and advice on improvement given, and the player gets a number of points for their posting.
These points are spent learning abilities that are based on their classes, anything that makes sense coming from a given class goes, with the amount of power (damage, utility, combat applications, etc etc) it bestows matching the amount of points spent on the ability.
Let me rephrase, that's the mechanical basis in a nutshell.
In terms of story, the players are encouraged to develop their own storylines in the game, to roleplay through their characters as they go through conflicts and such.
Occasionally myself and the rest of the staff interject site events that invoke a broader storyline to the game, tying things together.
I'd have to agree with Orthos: people are worried about the power-trip.
I've been doing freeform, diceless roleplaying for years now. And the group I play with takes it a step further: characters are not exclusive to one person. Everyone describes their own characters' actions, plus the actions of any NPCs and other PCs needed to have an interaction. You might think it would get doubly-crazy because not only do a player's own characters have no restrictions but now other players' characters and the entire world is at your mercy. It requires a certain kind of person to realize you can have a lot of fun coming up with ways your character can't get out of trouble.
I also think there might be some fear of not having a system to fall back on: there aren't any dice to do some of the work for you. It can be hard enough to roleplay when you have dice.
Okay, wow, that's even worse. In the games I described there's usually a storyline going on anyway that everyone can join to give what they're doing direction. No storyline? It's up to the player to figure out what their character wants to do. I've tried to write stories, and figuring out what to have the characters do has always been the hardest part for me. I'd say that's a major turn-off for some people.
Okay, wow, that's even worse. In the games I described there's usually a storyline going on anyway that everyone can join to give what they're doing direction. No storyline? It's up to the player to figure out what their character wants to do. I've tried to write stories, and figuring out what to have the characters do has always been the hardest part for me. I'd say that's a major turn-off for some people.
Myself, I fail to understand how people can even play a normal campaign without knowing what their character wants to do. My characters are always very independent, invidualized with their own ideals and goals and purposes.
And for what its worth, myself and the rest of the staff are always there to help the players come up with a character, and get them started expanding the character into something deeper.
Would you like an example of one of the characters and how they're story's developed so far?
Also, in reference to your post that I didn't quote, players are welcome to use NPC's, they can use fellow students/other npc's however they wish, unless those are NPC's that others came up with or are the teacher NPC's, in which case they need to hold to that character's established personality and style.
Myself, I fail to understand how people can even play a normal campaign without knowing what their character wants to do.
Because in a normal campaign someone gives you a goal to work towards. Then you don't have to know anything about what your character thinks, just know you have to accomplish the goal.
Some people can find making their own decisions to be very hard. Whether or not they have something they want to accomplish they may just not be self-aware enough to recognize and apply it.
kyrt-ryder wrote:
Also, in reference to your post that I didn't quote, players are welcome to use NPC's, they can use fellow students/other npc's however they wish, unless those are NPC's that others came up with or are the teacher NPC's, in which case they need to hold to that character's established personality and style.
So they can pose all NPCs they want so long as they stick to the established characterization? That's what I was talking about, though my group also allows adding to someone else's established NPC with the same restriction. Multiple people contributing to a character can make for diversity you wouldn't normally get.
There usually is room to expand on an NPC if you wish, the point is to strive to avoid contradicting the work someone else has done, and try not to break (although a little bending is ok) their vision of the npc.
A lot of times you get problems with something the people I used to Freeform RP with referred to as "Puppetting" or "Domining": where a player controls another character in their turn, which inevitably leads to either a grudging acceptance of the action taken without their consent on the part of the second player, or a long derailing discussion about "I wouldn't have done that". It helps a bit if there's some sort of "OOC thread" to go along with the campaign, but it's still derailing and time consuming.
@kyrt - That's a bit less Freeform than I'm used to, we usually not only were diceless but also completely statless, pretty much restricted to "this is a basic list of what my character can do" and go from there. It only worked for us because we kind of self-policed and tended to chew out players who tried to break the game. That said, it's been several years since I've participated in anything like that, and chances are I wouldn't be able to get back into it now that I'm used to dice/stat systems.
@therealthom - amusing as it is to read I would probably get a headache trying to keep track of what I'd done before to make sure I never repeated it. My short-term memory and recall are terrible.
A lot of times you get problems with something the people I used to Freeform RP with referred to as "Puppetting" or "Domining": where a player controls another character in their turn, which inevitably leads to either a grudging acceptance of the action taken without their consent on the part of the second player, or a long derailing discussion about "I wouldn't have done that". It helps a bit if there's some sort of "OOC thread" to go along with the campaign, but it's still derailing and time consuming.
@kyrt - That's a bit less Freeform than I'm used to, we usually not only were diceless but also completely statless, pretty much restricted to "this is a basic list of what my character can do" and go from there. It only worked for us because we kind of self-policed and tended to chew out players who tried to break the game. That said, it's been several years since I've participated in anything like that, and chances are I wouldn't be able to get back into it now that I'm used to dice/stat systems.
Yeah, that kind of controlling is expressly prohibited.
As for having an OOC thread, the game contains a large forum, with maybe 20 separate boards for the different areas of the school where players run their threads. There is an OOC sub-forum, a PM system, and Instant Message communication between players is encouraged.
The only time a player can control another is if a properly paid ability expressly allows it.
Probably one of the more powerful (although potentially worthless, since the orders are literal and can be subverted) starter abilities is Marino's. (She's a half-succubus) I'm abreviating it here since I don't feel like digging it up right now, but this will give you the basic idea.
Seduce: With any target that is interested in women (straight/bi males, bi/lesbian women) Marino is capable of tapping into their emotional needs and commanding them to do as she desires. For the two turns after using this ability, the target character must do exactly as Marino commands, following the letter of her orders expressly, although the interpretation of those orders are fluid and variable depending on the individual. (For example one time she told a demon npc enemy she was fighting to 'come show her what he could do' and she took some damage for it)
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Patrick Curtin
(Pathfinder Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Roleplaying Game, Campaign Setting, Companion, Battles Case Subscriber)
