For years my only connection to gaming was sitting at a table with other charming deviants, eating Cheetos and wondering where the Mountain Dew was; it was a complete culture shock to end up in the world of PBeM/PBP.
I had moved far away from anyone that I would admit I roleplayed with (my dirty little secret), but I still had the bug to wander through the magical forest hitting on other guys pretending they were girls.
Some of the things that I have learned:
- Yahoo Groups is a great platform to play, but goes absolutely squirrely a few times a year where it will eat posts, the site will go down and messages will take forever to land.
- Google Groups is a much more stable platform to play upon. Why no edit button Google? You know I can't handle typos.
- Players that never visit the actual website of the group, and only play by e-mail will be lost more often then not. They will need hugs and for you to send them private messages to let them know that everything is alright.
- Myth Weavers is an absolute home run for keeping on-line reference sheets for everyone to access on the run.
- Once per day posting expectations are the only way to keep people consistently having their energy flowing in the game. Though a psychotic expectation for any other gamer, those that come from the tabletop world will still be complaining it is too slow.
- The pace is slow, compared to tabletop, but the roleplaying opportunities more than make up for it.
Those are just off the top of my head. I will add more as they come to me.