what's the easiest way to handle combat? i've always played with a battle mat, but between building some minutia in areas and figuring out how on my own how to do one online, I am getting a tad discouraged. so, any advice on combat stuffs?
surely someone knows how to do PbP combat...>.>
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This is what I do.
1- Change initiative so that you only have 2 sides, the players and everyone else.
2- Don't require everyone to post turns in order. Allow them to post in any order and use commonsense to put them into the correct order.
3- If someone posts an action that would be invalidated by someone else, again use commonsense to pick another target for them.
4- If the characters need to roll dice (like save or perception), you roll it for them.
5- Make a time limit and if they don't post in that time limit, you choose their characters actions.
ok, not thiought of some of those, but how do you figure out where anyone is?
As far as initiative and reactive die rolls (perception, saves, etc.) goes, Valandil has the right of it — roll those when the PCs enter a room, get hit by a spell, when combat is about to start etc. If you make players roll these themselves, you'll never get anywhere.
Likewise, for initiative tracking, after the surprise round has been resolved, I also simply take turns between allies vs enemies. This way, people can post when they have time without combat being dragged out for any longer than necessary. My Initiative rules.
In terms of keeping track of character positioning, as GM you'll need to run a program such as MapTool and manually update the positions of characters after each round. For some example of how this looks in-game, check out some of my maps and the corresponding gameplay:
- Purging a Monster Den: Map, Gameplay (possible Serpent's Skull spoilers)
- Defending a Shrine: Map, Gameplay
- Ship Infiltration: Map, Gameplay
Now in each of those maps, you'll notice we have a historical view of how the encounter progressed with the very first round of combat/exploration at the bottom, and the final round at the very top. Furthermore, each time I post a map update during the course of gameplay, I make certain to link to the both the map's page itself (which will always display the most recent update), as well as to that specific round's update (for instance like this when someone wants to see how the battle developed over time).
Also, I would recommend reading thru some of the following threads for additional tips on how to speed-up and optimize PbP:
- Running a PbP Faster
- Automating PbP die rolls (check my profile for links to various tools you can download)
- Mapping Tips and Tricks
- DH's Guide to Play by Post Gaming
Hope this helps. Let us know if you have any other questions after you've done a bit of reading. :)
never thought about using maptools for just simple images. was thinking of using rpg20... upside of maptools, alot of features that would be useful, downside, have to install and carry between multiple computers >.>
How do you get the grid numbers, just text?
View Menu-> Show Coordinates
dont suppose you have just the map i want already predone...>.> XD been a while since i've seen this program... looks the same... thanks.
Happy to help. BTW, what map were you looking for?
a spiral forest :P just have to remember how to do a couple things. but now that i found a couple map things, it should be a little easier on me. just have to add a couple encounters to one, and should be golden, well enough i wont worry about being overrun