Mar 19, 2024 4:39 pm
MID-LEVEL TIPS FOR PbP GMs:
1. Establish a default "This is what my PC will do in my absence" set of turns/actions from each player. That way, when they are unable to post on the game's schedule, their PCs don't suddenly go catatonic in combat. Instead, you can take their turn for them according to their established wishes.
2. Use periods in your life when you have time to prepare material in advance. If you're posting once a day, don't wait until that day to start writing the post for that day. Instead, use your downtime to prepare some turns in advance, to the extent that it's possible to do so. Obviously, you can't anticipate everything that the characters are going to do or say, but you can know what the villain's goals are, and what they will do if they aren't thwarted by the PCs. Write a couple of turns in advance.
The reason to do this should be obvious, but in case it isn't: you, too, will have occasions where you're pressed for time and can't spend half an hour creating and posting the next turn. The amount of stuff you've prepared in advance - maps, actions, area descriptions, clues that PCs find - can greatly decrease the amount of time you need to post in a hurry.
3. Incorporate other media as appropriate. Drawing a picture or a map and including that in a post goes a long way toward engaging players with sight. Just remember to archive master versions of those maps in your reference thread!
Linked audio files can both set the mood for a scene, and provide key sound effects. Video can enhance your description of a scene or a character. Just check with your players to make sure that this works for them, as players in different regions may have limited access to the third-party sites you use for audio/video.
4. Establish a place on each player's character sheet where you can add notes/key information. Often it isn't clear to the players what the key information is, or they understand it but don't capture it for future reference when it appears in the game. Having an explicit section on their character sheet gives them a specific place to look weeks later when they're looking for it...and it gives them some reassurance that you aren't going in and randomly editing any part of their character sheet.
5. In your reference threads, start the thread with a "table of contents" post, and have the entries in that table of contents be links that point to specific sections. Then create a post for each category of reference. Say you're running a time travel campaign, and the game moves between 1000 BC Greece and 1880 Chicago: you'd make a post titled "Ancient Greek Characters" that lists all of the major NPCs the PCs have met in that time/location, and another post titled "19th Century Chicago Characters" that lists all of those NPCs. Update these threads regularly; they will help you at least as much as they help the players. Basically, any world-building details you add to the game in the course of play should go into your reference threads. In one of my games, I recently had to refer to the names of coins the players and I invented; I knew we had named them, but I was kicking myself because I didn't put the names in the reference thread. I ended up having to search through hundreds of posts across dozens of threads trying to find the one place where we'd discussed it. Learn from my mistake!
6. Don't neglect yourself! Work with the players to incorporate their feedback and to do the stuff that you find fun. Consider how you can provide them a means (and incentive) to contribute to the stuff that they enjoy/want to see more of, so that it's not all on you as the GM. It's very important - key, even - to get players to buy-in to contributing to their own fun in any RPG, but this is particularly true of play-by-post because anything provided by the GM alone is going to be more sporadic/intermittent than if all the players are taking part. If you have a 5-player game that posts three times a week, and the game relies on the GM to provide the content alone, everybody's going to get just three opportunities to react and enjoy. But if all five players are also empowered/encouraged to contribute, then each player has up to 15 opportunities.
Take role-playing, for example. If your players say they want to do more in-character role-play and you like that, follow up with each player with "Here are some ideas of how we could do that." Draw upon the character background that the player has created, or make suggestions on how they could flesh out their PC's background...particularly as it connects to other PCs' backgrounds. If your players say they want to do more in-character role-play and you don't like that, follow up with the players with some ways that they can look to each other to support that impulse. I like role-play, but I also have a rule in some of my games that characters earn character advancement points when they engage in interludes of in-character conversation with other PCs.
But do look to what you enjoy, too. GMing is a responsibility, but it is not just a responsibility: it should be fun for you, too! As often as you are soliciting feedback from your players, check in with yourself: what did I enjoy about this part of the game? What am I looking forward to next? What can I do to make the other parts more fun for me? GMing is a big job, but it should always be fun enough so that it never feels like a burden. When it starts to feel like a burden is one way that GMs burn out and quit play-by-post.
1. Establish a default "This is what my PC will do in my absence" set of turns/actions from each player. That way, when they are unable to post on the game's schedule, their PCs don't suddenly go catatonic in combat. Instead, you can take their turn for them according to their established wishes.
2. Use periods in your life when you have time to prepare material in advance. If you're posting once a day, don't wait until that day to start writing the post for that day. Instead, use your downtime to prepare some turns in advance, to the extent that it's possible to do so. Obviously, you can't anticipate everything that the characters are going to do or say, but you can know what the villain's goals are, and what they will do if they aren't thwarted by the PCs. Write a couple of turns in advance.
The reason to do this should be obvious, but in case it isn't: you, too, will have occasions where you're pressed for time and can't spend half an hour creating and posting the next turn. The amount of stuff you've prepared in advance - maps, actions, area descriptions, clues that PCs find - can greatly decrease the amount of time you need to post in a hurry.
3. Incorporate other media as appropriate. Drawing a picture or a map and including that in a post goes a long way toward engaging players with sight. Just remember to archive master versions of those maps in your reference thread!
Linked audio files can both set the mood for a scene, and provide key sound effects. Video can enhance your description of a scene or a character. Just check with your players to make sure that this works for them, as players in different regions may have limited access to the third-party sites you use for audio/video.
4. Establish a place on each player's character sheet where you can add notes/key information. Often it isn't clear to the players what the key information is, or they understand it but don't capture it for future reference when it appears in the game. Having an explicit section on their character sheet gives them a specific place to look weeks later when they're looking for it...and it gives them some reassurance that you aren't going in and randomly editing any part of their character sheet.
5. In your reference threads, start the thread with a "table of contents" post, and have the entries in that table of contents be links that point to specific sections. Then create a post for each category of reference. Say you're running a time travel campaign, and the game moves between 1000 BC Greece and 1880 Chicago: you'd make a post titled "Ancient Greek Characters" that lists all of the major NPCs the PCs have met in that time/location, and another post titled "19th Century Chicago Characters" that lists all of those NPCs. Update these threads regularly; they will help you at least as much as they help the players. Basically, any world-building details you add to the game in the course of play should go into your reference threads. In one of my games, I recently had to refer to the names of coins the players and I invented; I knew we had named them, but I was kicking myself because I didn't put the names in the reference thread. I ended up having to search through hundreds of posts across dozens of threads trying to find the one place where we'd discussed it. Learn from my mistake!
6. Don't neglect yourself! Work with the players to incorporate their feedback and to do the stuff that you find fun. Consider how you can provide them a means (and incentive) to contribute to the stuff that they enjoy/want to see more of, so that it's not all on you as the GM. It's very important - key, even - to get players to buy-in to contributing to their own fun in any RPG, but this is particularly true of play-by-post because anything provided by the GM alone is going to be more sporadic/intermittent than if all the players are taking part. If you have a 5-player game that posts three times a week, and the game relies on the GM to provide the content alone, everybody's going to get just three opportunities to react and enjoy. But if all five players are also empowered/encouraged to contribute, then each player has up to 15 opportunities.
Take role-playing, for example. If your players say they want to do more in-character role-play and you like that, follow up with each player with "Here are some ideas of how we could do that." Draw upon the character background that the player has created, or make suggestions on how they could flesh out their PC's background...particularly as it connects to other PCs' backgrounds. If your players say they want to do more in-character role-play and you don't like that, follow up with the players with some ways that they can look to each other to support that impulse. I like role-play, but I also have a rule in some of my games that characters earn character advancement points when they engage in interludes of in-character conversation with other PCs.
But do look to what you enjoy, too. GMing is a responsibility, but it is not just a responsibility: it should be fun for you, too! As often as you are soliciting feedback from your players, check in with yourself: what did I enjoy about this part of the game? What am I looking forward to next? What can I do to make the other parts more fun for me? GMing is a big job, but it should always be fun enough so that it never feels like a burden. When it starts to feel like a burden is one way that GMs burn out and quit play-by-post.