(moved and bumped from Second Darkness forum)
I'm just wrapping up my first play by post game, ch 1 of RotRL, and the darned thing took over a year to complete! I've been trying to figure out a way to make my next stab at pbp run much faster yet still tell an epic, meaningful story, and I think my answer might lie in the Second Darkness AP.
If I split the path into three seperate arcs, with three seperate mini-groups I can theoretically move through the path at three times the speed.
I'm thinking group one would be a couple of urban adventurers running through chps 1&2, group 2 would be played by Crying Leaf elves (possibly the leaders) running chps 3&5. The third group gets to play some Drow infiltrators trying to take down the opposition. They would play through chp 4. All three groups would then move to chapter 6 and start exploring there concurrently, crossing each other's paths and hopefully allying up in time for the dramatic conclusion.
What do you think? Too ambitious? Too much plot revision required? Obvoiously I'm struggling a bit with how to keep the leveling fair too.
Also, any general advice any PbP veterans out there can give me on how to keep these things running smoothly would be greatly appreciated!
One suggestion I have: You might try having fewer, harder combat encounters instead of lots of weak encounters. I find that dungeon-crawling tends to bog down the game a little bit (unless you have a proactive party leader to make decisions like "left or right?"), so I'm trying to limit that in my PbP version of Shackled City.
Your suggestion sounds too ambitious for me, but then again I'm a lazy guy. :-)
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PbP is slow - about a year to do RotRL frankly sounds about right. Splitting up the action into minigroups sounds odd and I wonder if the players will get the same level of satisfaction if they are hurried through only sections of the AP. Also, running three PbPs at a time is very hard - I tried it and failed, as the time and energy commitmment was too intense. Personally, I would enjoy the pace as it gives you time to prepare and the players can get into and enjoy their characters for a long time. Honestly, if you don't want to spend a long time doing PbP, maybe doing one-shot scenarios instead of the APs are the answer.
Contributor
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I agree with Aubrey. I'm currently running three PbP campaigns in Golarion, and keeping up with all three (to do them justice), is tough. Aside from my own posting requirements, there's also the fact that not everyone can post at the same rate. I have several players who frequently have their actions decided by me, because they haven't posted in several days and I don't want to hold up the story for those who are more faithful about posting.
Even with that kind of accelerant, it took almost a year just to run "Hollow's Last Hope" for one game and it's taken almost that long to run "Into the Haunted Forest". We're well over a year into RotRL and still aren't even halfway through "Burnt Offerings".
Granted, I did a lot of in-character setup and spent a long time focusing on character actions in town (and had a couple of pauses that lasted a few weeks), but the more involved a plot is, the longer it will take to manage via PbP.
I think a series of shorter, but connected, scenarios is a good way to do a faster PbP campaign. It would certainly allow players to get a greater sense of accomplishment, since goals would be achieved more frequently.
Thanks all for the advice. Basically what I'm hearing is keep things simple, and year long or longer campaigns are just par for the course with PbP.
Any suggestions on how to keep players engaged for extended periods of time like that? At around the 8 month mark I had players asking "So why are we wandering around these catcombs again?"
Thanks all for the advice. Basically what I'm hearing is keep things simple, and year long or longer campaigns are just par for the course with PbP.
The last time I ran a non-face-to-face game was by email, which we managed to keep going for around 2.5 years, 1999-2001, before lack of free time on my part brought it to an end. That made some decent inroads into, but was far from completing, the first book of the Night Below boxed set.
So eight months for a single AP volume seems pretty reasonable to me.
Any suggestions on how to keep players engaged for extended periods of time like that? At around the 8 month mark I had players asking "So why are we wandering around these catcombs again?"
NPC dialogue that reminds the party what they're up to is a win for me in any kind of extended game. Smart players will realise it's an in-game re-cap, but unless they also have perfect recall, they'll tend to be grateful.
One thing I did find kept the momentum was to push the players for options in their posts, especially in combat. So not just to react round by round, but to present me with an "if... if... if... else..." plan, so I could (hopefully) run a few rounds of combat off-line and present in a single reply.
Obviously that stops if something drastic happens and the players need a chance to re-evaluate. I did find it much better, once everyone got the hang of it, than waiting for every player every combat round. On the down side it can get quite involved for the person running it...
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I am far far far from an expert on pbp but here is what I have learned since I started my first pbp RotR game 10 months ago.
1. Big Groups
I started the game with 9 players. One left for personal issues. I asked another to leave do to issues posting in a timely matter. This left me with 7. I engaged the party to split up, modifying encounters to compensate. This has accelerated progress. I do have them do some things as a big group though.
2. Group XP
Rather than dish out individual XP, the group has one big xp counter that is kept current on another post. This counter is split among the characters equally. For individual awards, I give out luck points, bits of treasure, npc boons, etc.
3. I enjoy 3.5/PRPG combat.
I use battlemaps via pictures and have the players post their actions during combat. The map is updated only on the NPC turn. To speed up play, initiative only matters on the first round of combat. After the first round the initiative is basically, NPC's then players, NPC's then players. The players can go in any order. This has worked well for us.
Cut out some of the unnecessary combats. They don't serve much purpose in the long run. I usually roll xp for these combats into RP xp or combine smaller combats to make it more challenging.
For treasure, it all gets dumped into another thread that is updated occasionally. If someone wants something, they just post they want it and write it down on their sheet. If it turns out contested, I allow them to discuss the issue. When I update the list, I remove all claimed items and delete those posts. So far we haven't had any issues here though we all know each other so circumstances may be different.'
Any suggestions on how to keep players engaged for extended periods of time like that? At around the 8 month mark I had players asking "So why are we wandering around these catcombs again?"
That's why I suggested retooling the adventure to minimize dungeon-crawling. A few big fights are much easier to follow than a whole bunch of minor encounters.
Have you already tried combing through the PbP advice thread stickied at the top of the discussion forum for tips? *link*
Thanks, somehow I missed that.
In my experience, d20-based systems are generally pretty slow to run over a message board (at least, slow in comparison to alternative systems like WoD).
My recommendation for online D&D would actually be a mixed chatroom-messageboard environment - have a regular time when everyone's online and you can chew through a couple of combat encounters, and use the message board to handle non-combat stuff between fights.
In my experience, d20-based systems are generally pretty slow to run over a message board (at least, slow in comparison to alternative systems like WoD).
My recommendation for online D&D would actually be a mixed chatroom-messageboard environment - have a regular time when everyone's online and you can chew through a couple of combat encounters, and use the message board to handle non-combat stuff between fights.
I've notices that too: The WoD game that I play in is moving along at a much faster clip than the PFRPG that I GM. Combats there are less frequent, and tend to be more organic, usually not lasting more than two or three rounds of posting. In comparison, the battle w/ Erylium lasted over three months!
I'm starting prep on Skinsaw Murders today, and I'll look for places to combine or eliminate encouters. Thinking I might remove Habe's Sanatorium completey.
Question on Forum etiquette: would it be okay to post a link to my game in this thread - I'd welocme any firsthand feedback.
I've been running and playing in PBP's for the last several years. By their nature PBP's are slow. Players who are looking for a fast paced PBP are inevitably disappointed and drop from said PBP. My profile for a good and reliable PBP player:
Long time gamer who is now married with kids, has a job, would love to game regularly but can't for 100 other reasons. They enjoy roleplay vs roll play. They relish the opportunity to take the time to 'write' a coherent and colorful character story within the PBP. They don't mind the pace as long as it is steady and consistent. They make a serious contribution to crafting a story based campaign that just happens to be set around some game rules.
Bottom line is this: If you have a group of happy PBP'ers, then don't mess with your formula. A PBP is really for folks who are not in a hurry, are looking forward to years of playing in a written environment, and enjoy your writing style and game approach. I've so far only stumbled on one such combination and it has been great to date. It is Rise of the Runelords. It is every 5 days or so and over 1,000 posts strong now. I'm very happy with my players and they seem to be happy with me.
Best advice, communicate with your players regularly. Adjust to circumstances and really enjoy running your PBP as it is a long term commitment that will result in YEARS of pleasure for you.