PbP Equivalent of Streaming?

My husband was talking about an interesting idea earlier: If D&D games are now being watched more and more as a form of entertainment to consume and not even participate in, is there a 'market' per se for a play-by-post equivalent? Due to the nature of PbP, I imagine nothing would really change about the play-by-post game, except that the group knows it has an audience.

With the way roleplaying games as a hobby and industry are changing lately I thought it was a pretty interesting idea. As a long time web comics reader and enjoyer of live streamed games, I think I could potentially enjoy reading other peoples PbP games.

What do you think? Do you read and keep up on any play-by-post games that you don't participate in, just for fun? If not, would you be interested in doing so? What would draw you to coming regularly to a PbP game as a consumer, rather than a player? Is this already kind of A Thing and we are just ignorant beans?

This would be interesting. It has been mentioned in passing but I felt not many people thought it could compete with the life stream but I think blogs about campaigns are common

Lastly, on a Saint Seiya RPG forum, the game was running as a mmorpg more than few separated tables.

Given my character wasn't in that place, It was still excellent to be able to read the RP between Hades and Athena (her companion at that time was a Gold Saint, and bastard son of Hades, which Persephone hated most), especially when Persephone finally came home to find both Athena and Hades' son tchating with her husband.

That was the start of the Holy War, by the way.

Like CESN mentioned, there was discussion of something like this for a sort of charity event at some point.
For an actual live stream, PBP gameplay would probably have to be condensed to have people online at the same time for faster moving gameplay.
Alternatively, it could be something that viewers/readers just check in periodically, in which case not much would change for the actual players. Maybe a stricter posting frequency to keep it going at a good speed. And of course the awareness of everyone playing that people would be watching

true... probably still have the dead server available with the list of possible stuff to consider. I liked the e-book or periodical reading ideas for PbP. A web comic could work but we'd need someone with both time and drawing skills, which may be a mythological creature... Another idea was to have a pbp game where reader would chip in on the story: instead of a mmorpg we'd have a mmoGMg ;)

Oh, I remember that idea. That the viewers can influence what happens. I liked that

Several times, I have joined private games specifically to spectate. And then there are the public games. Sadly, I have rarely found the time to actually keep up. I've seen others do the same -- I hope they have had better luck. All this to say, I think there is definitely an audience. Maybe there is a better way to "package" or present it off-site, or if that's even a good idea. A web-comic sounds great, but that's a lot of work, not to mention the challenge of crossing media formats. Perhaps a blog would be less ambitious? Just random thoughts here.

I also remember CESN's idea for doing this for charity (can't find the thread right now). I thought it was a worthwhile idea, but as far as I know, it didn't gain enough traction to come to fruition.

Well as a PbP you can write it like a book -- collect a series of posts and put them into a formatted flow for easier reading -- I was in a group once that the intent was to turn the game into an actual book to be published but I cannot recall if it did get published.

I think it was mostly on discord. People joined the server he made for it but then the discussion died quickly. I think someone with a vision was needed to push everything along xD

That's interesting you should mention blogs. We had a really successful (as in high post frequency, rich story and characters, actually completed story) game that we finished a while ago and my husband- who ran it- was considering going back and writing summaries and things of the various chapters and story beats as blog posts or similar. Both to reminisce about the story and as a sort of study of PbP in general to help him be more successful in the next big game he plans on running.

"This is what happened in the story, this is how the characters grew, we tried this method of running combat and this is how we felt about it." That kind of thing. The idea made me think of some of the YouTube videos and podcasts he listens to about gaming advice- but in text with a PbP focus. He wondered if anyone else besides himself and the players in the game would ever be interested in reading it.

It would have to be high quality with good writing and ideally drawings of scenes or moments. And as mentioned before, reader involvement would be good as well.
But if those things are given, why not? There are whole subreddits for telling stories from people's rpg campaigns

There have been a few goes so far, from transcribing a PbP game into a radio-drama style podcast, to using a PbP game to setup a video-cast. I created the idea of games being public for the very idea of being able to read along like a weekly blog or picture-less comic. I can definitely do more there, but I also don't see someone advertising it, and so less likely to become big. That said, with v2, I'll be bringing back the public games section (but not like we had previously, thus crashing the site at every turn), so maybe we can have our own internal version (up votes? likes? something to make a public game more popular/easier to find?).

That would be very cool. I'd definitely enjoy taking advantage of a system like that to find good games to follow along with. Unfortunately I don't have any suggestions on how to implement that. Not a strong suit of mine Im afraid.

Be more than willing to help with coding but I have already offered that help to seemingly no avail thus far will put it out one more time just in case -- you do know Keleth that I am a senior software engineer by trade? And while some folks do not like me socially software and I get along famously... it loves to dance and sing for me.

Oh, not to no avail DeJoker, I'm just not yet in a position where I'm doing much on the v2, besides some basics, due to a lot of stuff going on IRL. That said, I know I had pointed you at the GP v1 GitHub, and I'd be glad to get a hand to help fix up some of the lingering bugs and get a second opinion on some of the architecture, to get an idea of when v2 gets along if it's going in the right direction.

I do admit, to some degree, it's also that GP has been my pet project for a long time, and I'm having a hard time letting go enough to get another coder to help (not to mention the previous volunteers kinda disappeared after starting to help on tasks :p).

No I do not recall you sending that to me did you send that in a PM? Regardless I do not have that can you PM that Link to me or point me to where you provided it either would be fine and my apologies for not seeing that as otherwise I would not have made the comment I did. Also I as I said I am a senior software engineer by trade have worked on numerous collaborative projects and I know how to follow someone else's lead and this would be just another situation where the client (you) has dominion over all things.

I will keep an eye out for the Link

I think this is an interesting and relevant question actually... Anyone out there checking (dare I ask...following) any of the public games? Is that a thing that actually happens frequently?

Even as caretaker for the list, I don't follow the public games. I probably should once in a while if only to update games on the list that finish.

However, there are a few game systems in there that I'm interested in learning, so I think I'll start reading those.

I followed along a public game on GP before. Until I forgot about it. If GP had a feature to follow other people's games, I would have probably observed that one for longer

I'd definitely like to follow public games. The main issue for me is weeding through for a good one. 'Good' defined as interesting to me personally, decent writing (typos etc kept down enough that it doesn't affect legibility), fun characters and story, and updated frequently. If there were a system of upvotes or something to help find something I'd totally spend (probably too much) time lurking in other people's games.