So in this time of social distancing and shelter in place orders, my group and I have shelved our face to face game days. In lieu of that we have decided to try our hands at a Discord run Play by Post game. I will start by saying that while setting something like this up, including deciding what rules you want to enforce so far as timing and reactions go, takes a lot of work it has been very worth while. I highly encourage groups that have to postpone their face to face games to try out this style of game.
While our group has used virtual table tops, Roll20 most notably, in the past to enhance our games we decided to go with a simpler play by post style of game using PF2 and Discord as the medium. This allows us to basically check in throughout the day and run the game as we go. We simply added a dice roller (we used SideKick which has been fantastic btw) and set our house rules then started like any other campaign.
Our "house rules" in effect for the game are pretty simple. We decided to forgo person by person initiative, instead doing initiative by "side". This means that at the beginning of an encounter, everyone rolls initiative, then we average out the total for the players and the enemies. Each side then takes their turn all at once. This helps the play by post format immensely, as the game doesn't bog down as much as you wait for that one guy to log on and take his turn to decide your turn. Reactions were tricky to figure out. We ended up with a "standard" trigger system where the player with the given reaction lays out what they are waiting for generally, then if the player isn't online while the GM takes the enemies turn the GM or another player online makes a good faith effort to apply the reaction properly. It works for us, since we know each other so well.
Other than that everything runs smoothly as is. The GM keeps a simple map updated with the latest rounds movements.
We are just wrapping up our first combat which was a Moderate encounter (lvl 5 character start) and took 3 rounds over 2 days. That sounds like a lot of time, but in all reality with a play by post game a lot happened in those 3 rounds!
All in all, I feel like my group may keep a play by post game going even after we return to face to face game days. Again, I encourage those who are having issues playing at the moment to try out a format like this. No having to be online at particular times, or dealing with Roll20 or a similar VTT's quarks.
Anyone else trying out something like this? If so, how do you like it?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
An updated map was the biggest hurdle for me when I tried this. It was very annoying as the GM to have to repost it multiple times per day. And players had to use Chessboard movement (Fighter to F8!) to position properly.
Grid combat may not be the best fit for Play-By-Post unless there's a better solution out there.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Do you have any special rules to "collapse" the attack sequence to handle powers like exacting strike or does the GM just handle that on his end?
Generally, if the player is online, they make decisions like that. If not, then either another online player or the GM makes the call if they don't show up to make the call. This doesn't really apply to a power like exacting strike, since that happens while a player is in theory still posting their turn, so they would naturally be online to make that decision.
Unless I didn't quite get your question.
Edit: Generally when you post your turn, you do it action by action, especially if the GM is online. If the GM is off, then you still post action by action, then the GM applies what you did and let's you know if a situation changed. Like if you had Exacting Strike, and rolled it as your 2nd attack with a questionable result, close enough it "could" hit but you aren't sure, then the GM would just let you know after the fact and either have you reroll it or adjudicate it otherwise.
So if you had already rolled a third attack and applied the full -10 MAP, but missed that exacting strike, the GM would just add the difference to the total of your third attack.
If circumstances change drastically, like a monster uses an escape ability like Dim Door or something leaving you without a target, the GM will just throw out the remainder of your turn and let you know you have new choices to make. This could bog down the game, but in practice hasn't yet.
An updated map was the biggest hurdle for me when I tried this. It was very annoying as the GM to have to repost it multiple times per day. And players had to use Chessboard movement (Fighter to F8!) to position properly.
Grid combat may not be the best fit for Play-By-Post unless there's a better solution out there.
Our current GM was adamant about trying grid movement with the map. It is working out so far, they haven't fallen behind in making the maps yet, and aren't really complaining about the work, but it is very early in the campaign so we'll see how things develop.
The usual solution is a google doc with a map copy-pasted into it and pictures for the PCs/monsters, that way all the players can just drag themselves around.
That is such an obvious solution that I hate myself for not thinking of it! I'll have to drop that to the group and see what they think.
|
Edit: Generally when you post your turn, you do it action by action, especially if the GM is online. If the GM is off, then you still post action by action, then the GM applies what you did and let's you know if a situation changed. Like if you had Exacting Strike, and rolled it as your 2nd attack with a questionable result, close enough it "could" hit but you aren't sure, then the GM would just let you know after the fact and either have you reroll it or adjudicate it otherwise.
So if you had already rolled a third attack and applied the full -10 MAP, but missed that exacting strike, the GM would just add the difference to the total of your third attack.
Thanks for the response, clears up some things.
I assumed it would be easy to just post "here's my 3 attacks at 18, 16, & 12 for 8, 5, and 12 damage respectively but didn't know how it would work if you need to know prior results.
I guess if the GM didn't want the back and forth then he could post the AC as well and have the player do more of the math.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Edit: Generally when you post your turn, you do it action by action, especially if the GM is online. If the GM is off, then you still post action by action, then the GM applies what you did and let's you know if a situation changed. Like if you had Exacting Strike, and rolled it as your 2nd attack with a questionable result, close enough it "could" hit but you aren't sure, then the GM would just let you know after the fact and either have you reroll it or adjudicate it otherwise.
So if you had already rolled a third attack and applied the full -10 MAP, but missed that exacting strike, the GM would just add the difference to the total of your third attack.
Thanks for the response, clears up some things.
I assumed it would be easy to just post "here's my 3 attacks at 18, 16, & 12 for 8, 5, and 12 damage respectively but didn't know how it would work if you need to know prior results.
I guess if the GM didn't want the back and forth then he could post the AC as well and have the player do more of the math.
It's pretty simple in practice. We use a dice roller that uses bot commands to roll for us, so nobody is rolling real dice but the GM. This seemed like the most fair compromise to the group.
So for instance, you would post:
"Action 1: Attack (insert monster here) with XXX attack.
/r 1d20+16 #Attack with Weapon. (example of the bot command we use)
The bot would kick out your Roll here.
Action 2: Attack..."
And so on in different posts. The GM would then apply what you did, and let you know success and failure as he goes.
If something went wonky, or if the circumstances changed, like the monster died or ran somehow, then the GM would let the player know that they need to redo whatever actions weren't valid.
An updated map was the biggest hurdle for me when I tried this. It was very annoying as the GM to have to repost it multiple times per day. And players had to use Chessboard movement (Fighter to F8!) to position properly.
Grid combat may not be the best fit for Play-By-Post unless there's a better solution out there.
This may just be me, but treating grid combat like a chessboard for a PbP sounds amazing.
Ran a few Starfinder sessions where i gave a picture of the map and ran it more theater of the mind style. Distances tend to get fudged, but it was kind of a neat mental exercise.
An updated map was the biggest hurdle for me when I tried this. It was very annoying as the GM to have to repost it multiple times per day. And players had to use Chessboard movement (Fighter to F8!) to position properly.
Grid combat may not be the best fit for Play-By-Post unless there's a better solution out there.
This may just be me, but treating grid combat like a chessboard for a PbP sounds amazing.
Ran a few Starfinder sessions where i gave a picture of the map and ran it more theater of the mind style. Distances tend to get fudged, but it was kind of a neat mental exercise.
So far it has worked out pretty well. Generally the GM has kept up on the map, so everything has been clear-ish. But we did run into an issue when the "player" side did all of our turns while the GM was asleep.
With 5 players, even if we kept the information we posted at the absolute minimum, it's just a lot of stuff to sift through, and the GM missed a few movements, which had him pming us asking how we were doing what we were doing.
It was easily resolved, but just due to having to stop and read all of the action kinda makes Grid movement tedious, especially when you have to go back to a previous round and determine why X happened. But we are learning how to format our posts for maximum clarity.
We have 10 different threads for the game, for posting different information. A few aren't going to be used going forward, they were used for character building or discussing the "general rules" we would be using in the game, but that leaves 8 different threads, and they have virtually all been necessary to keep things organized.