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I am currently in seven Play-by-Post campaigns on the Paizo boards.
I didn't intend to be in that many. I thougt two or three, tops.
I kept adding new campaigns for two reasons:
1.) OOO OOO OOO that sounds cool, I wanna play!
2.) My other play-by-post is moving pretty slow, so...it will give me something else to do between posts.
Here's the thing, though. Even with 7 campaigns, it's feast or famine. Either I wake up the next morning, check the boards and it seems like there are 2 or 3 new posts in every thread, or a wake up the next morning, check the boards and....nothing. Not a single post in any of the threads. Sometimes the post-famine can go on for days, or even a week.
Does anyone else have this problem?
This is why I don't like pbp. I tried it way back in 2004, and it moved so slowly. It's why I prefer either face-to-face or over virtual tabletop. Yes, 4 hours once a week isn't much better, but you have 4 continuous hours.
VTT has its terrible flaws, such as people who flake out after 1 or 2 sessions (if they even make it to the first session at all). But I vastly prefer that over pbp. Back 10 years ago, I had the same problems as EldonG.
Now if only I could find a local group that fit what I look for.
I am sort of growing found of PbP, here particularly (I had tried it once before at a site called DNDonLineGames, that has since gone the way of the Dodo, that never seemed to pan out for me).
My biggest fears at first, were that one, the new generation of players would find me to be a terrible Dungeon Master, and second, that if I had a lapse of a day or two, people would flood me with complaints.
But I am happy to say that with only a few exceptions I’ve not run up against these fears. Sure, I had one game fail when the players got angry because I asked them to make not one, but two saves versus paralyzation and was accused of trying to capture the PCs against their will, which was exactly what I was trying to do but did not realize that this group, well one PC in particular, thought that trying to capture the PCs was a horrible thing for the DM to do. And though I have had several lapses in posting, most of my current games are still going and I appear to have some really great, patient, and forgiving Players.
So, yeah, I’m happy with the ebb and flow.
I've had a few failed attempts at starting some (usually due to my own depression), but my current PbP (Divinity Forge) is going strong. It's more strategy game than RPG, though.
I have never played in a PbP where the GM saw it to completion, and I have played in a lot. Most don't even make it through the first quest. Maybe I'm just unlucky.
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Two of my PBPs have been running for at least three years. The other four are relatively new.
I've had four pbps die early deaths:
Two were Skulls and Shackles campaigns where the GM in each case just vanished. In both cases, it was right when we were about to
One was a Rise of the Runelords campaign where the GM pleaded real-life issues, and stopped the campaign. That character also got on with another Rise of the Runelords campaign that is still running.
The last was a We Be Goblins campaign where almost all of the players stopped posting right about the same time, and the GM just had to resign himself to the fact that it was dead. Honestly, We Be Goblins is fun for a one-off, but playing a goblin as a true goblin with a party of goblins can get tedious in its over-the-top silliness.
I've had a lot of GM vanishment.
Worse is when the GM stops updating the game, remains active on the other areas of the same forums, and refuses to acknowledge the players at all.
Yes, this has happened.
Happens pretty regularly, as a matter of fact. And it's infuriating. Especially when they keep recruiting for new games while ignoring the old games they've dumped.
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Happens pretty regularly, as a matter of fact. And it's infuriating. Especially when they keep recruiting for new games while ignoring the old games they've dumped.
This is very frustrating but also serves to highlight the importance of vetting your potential GM. There is a fairly reliable regular crowd of serial PbPer's hidden amongst the player base.
I'd disagree random pick ups are a crapshoot. All the games I DM are primarily made up of random pick ups or invited from other games I am in (also PbP). My long-running Kingmaker PbP is going to hit Book 4 this year with random pick ups. I find theres something of a trial by fire period when you first start PbPing where you'll find lots of GM's bailing and lots of games failing. But you meet some regulars and start to end up in the same games together. Player and GM attrition still happens but usually at a vastly slower rate.
Generally, the more selective a recruitment process is the better the game fares; in my experience. YMMV. Its rare to see a "first come first served" play-by-post mesh well and go on to become a great game.
I am very likely to be in a minority but I actually prefer play-by-post to a real life game, as I find it is a richer medium.
Running a good PbP is usually far more work than the new PbP GM realises and this often leads to them underestimating it, setting up a game and quickly becoming overwhelmed. I am running Kingmaker, Slumbering Tsar and a homebrew game and honestly, i'm not certain i'll be able to maintain daily(ish) updates once I land a job.
I second all that Alexander's said!
I used to be involved in a Yahoo PBEmail game. The guy who ran the game was great. He kept a website and the game was active daily. He encouraged crossposting. The game ran for about 10 years. I have never found another game run as well as his (IMHO).
Running a good PbP is usually far more work than the new PbP GM realises and this often leads to them underestimating it, setting up a game and quickly becoming overwhelmed.
I'll second that. I had plenty of time when I started dabbling in PbP DMing and figured it would be easy to run three or four games at once - I initially had one going but it felt like a couple of others would help keep me occupied when the first stagnated.
What I underestimated was the creative drain. Face-to-face, I find the game basically driven by the players. I feel like I'm struggling to keep up with all that they want to do and dont have any pressure on me to keep things moving. In my experience, the PbP format was the exact opposite - I really felt a sense of responsibility to keep the game moving and that meant fussing over prose, anticipating actions and striking that balance between moving things along without riding roughshod over the players without the luxury of as much posting time as I have.
It was all too hard in the end! :(