As a long-time Dragon/Dungeon fan and a shorter-but-still-significant-time lurker around the Paizo community, I was intrigued by the recent development of demand for a Paizo play-by-post venue. I am also a staff member over at Myth-Weavers, a play-by-post site, and I thought I'd offer an idea to make gaming online for Paizo community members easier: Cooperation.
There are a number of hassles associated with online play. Stuff like coordinating character sheets, dice rolls, in-character versus out-of-character talk, managing the creation, editing, and archival of game forums and threads, and so on into the night. Solutions to these hassles take time and effort, on both the parts of a site's webmasters and the players and GMs who run the games. Myth-Weavers has taken the time and effort to produce a series of solutions to play-by-post problems and to also generate new opportunities out of the web setting. Cool stuff like built-in cheatproof dice rolling, online character sheet storage, an OOC text option that makes story-posts flow smoothly, SRD data reference tags, and the ability to make dice rolls that automatically use the right modifiers from your sheet for whatever roll you want to make. In short, stuff that makes Play-by-Post not just do-able, but easy.
It seems a shame the the PostMonster General and the enthusiastic Paizo community at large would have to bear through the growing pains, wheel-re-inventings, and sundry organizational and programming issues when the solutions are not only readily available, but aggregated into a single, similarly-enthusiastic, sympathetic, and open site.
I understand that many people probably don't want to venture outside of their established community here to play on "some other site." That said, I believe that there can be creative solutions to make the gaming experience afforded by the tools and ideas at Myth-Weavers not only easily accessible by the Paizo community, but accessible in a manner that maintains the positive creative and community spirit of the people here. Exactly what those solutions turn out to be depends on how the nitty-gritty details of programming and organization settle out, but speaking for the Myth-Weavers team, we're both willing and capable of giving it a go.
Some examples of possible solutions could be as follows.
- We could arrange for some sort of automatic account creation program, where Paizo members interested in play-by-post can have accounts automatically made for them at Myth-Weavers to save them the hassle of registration.
- There could be an RSS exchange set up so that Paizo-people games played at Myth-Weavers with all the neat functionality there could have the game/story posts sent over as automatic campaign journals to be read here. Paizo staff wouldn't have to reinvent all the tools and tricks ... just be able to display the important story-stuff.
- We could establish pre-production-specific "playtesting game forums" which are private, in that viewable only to selected Paizo members seeking to try out their latest module before submitting it. This time, perhaps the out-of-character comments of playtesters could be aggregated and returned to the Paizo site, for review by either the community at large or the staff.
- To cement the relationship, select Paizo staff could be offered Moderator status at Myth-Weavers to ensure that the games connected to the Paizo community continue to reflect the spirit and quality of contributions it is known for.
These are just a few of many, many possible forms of cooperation that are possible between the Paizo community and Myth-Weavers. I humbly submit these thoughts, and moreover, the spirit of mutual effort for the easing of the path for Play-By-Post gaming they represent, to the consideration of the Paizo staff and community.
Thank you,
WeaveWarden (a.k.a. LordofProcrastination)