Posting Rates as Expectations

User @KCC posted this excellent question on the Discord server: "How important is abiding by the advertised posting rate for everyone?"

@Keleth responded with: "I always intended for the rate to just be a guideline, a way to set expectations without being strict."

Design intentions aside, how do you feel when a game deviates wildly from the advertised posting rate?

The keyword here is wildly. I will get annoyed if there is a consistent deviate without reason. Sickness, getting drunk in the woods, anything is fine, as long as we have been informed.

+1

When I create a game I leave it at the default and let the game find its own rate. Apologies to anyone who’s been misled by my ads.

In theory I start to follow up with players after things have stalled for more than the expected length of time.

I generally use this as a guideline for for when to tell players that they should wait for input from a slow player.

I usually read posting rates in games as one of two things: Either "around daily" or "around weekly". I'm not interested in the second group. Also, if I don't reply right away, I forget replying, so I usually open all red threads immediately and then try to work my way through and only then close the tab. So regardless of posting rate, I will always just reply "when I can"

It's a social contract. People need to put in an effort to meet the agreed-upon rate. They might fall behind but that's fine as long as all members of the group are making an effort. If you're going to be unavailable, you can give notice. If someyhing unexpected comes up you can apologize when you return. If somebody is legit struggling then renegotiate. Even if you're ready but it's not your turn, you can still post in OOC. You can often tell when someone is trying and when someone is not.

It's just manners, plain and simple.

Echoing my own Discordian contribution, to which Jabes had likely alluded:

There is a PBP force at hand.

Consider: Five participants, five posts per week. Everyone can be ready for your one post per day, but when you're ready, maybe you are not up in the order, or you're still waiting for a response. So because of relative timing of availability, even if everyone can post once per day, they're not always available to make that post as soon as they are up, so the asynchonous nature of the beast means that it quickly spread's out into a longer waits.

I also feel like before COVID it was different. I'm not sure, but it seems like we were less aware of things happening to people and so there was less impetus to allow deviation. Nowdays, it seems like something is happening to someone every week, and it's hard to enforce a rate when you know you could be the one it happens to next.

Personally, I try to post whenever I can - even if it's ahead of rate - because I'm on call for work pretty much 24/7. Some weeks I get nothing, other weeks I have no free time at all.

Copied from my Discord post:

I’ll skip applying to games where the rate is either too slow/fast for what I’m looking for. In games that I’m running I expect the players to at least make an effort to keep up with the advertised rate, but realize things happen, and that’s fine - no issue at all there.

One of my frustrations right now is that most of the games I’m playing in are well under the advertised rate. Not an issue when one or two get that way, but when they all hit a lull at the same time I tend to apply to more games and then BAM, all the slow games pick back up and I struggle to keep up. 😀

Exactly this.

I guess I'm less concerned with the actual rate as I am with the attitude towards it. For me, absolutely yes, it is an expectation just like everything else stated on the game details page. Can/should it be enforced? No, maybe not. Things happen. And it's not a dictatorship. But common courtesy demands everyone put in best effort. I may have RL things going on but so does everyone else. I have too much respect for everyone else's time to just shrug at the agreed-upon posting rate.

I know I've been an offender in this regard, but why not give my two cents from the perspective of when I've been my best self.

I almost always make my games 5 times a week. I feel like daily is unrealistic (particularly weekends) and anything less than daily-ish has always fallen apart.

I'm less concerned with the rate of posting as the rate of checking in. Echoing Qralloq: Sometimes nothing's happening with your character and it's okay to not post, but stay vigilant. I know I try to bring the spotlight back around to other players when they haven't had a chance to participate for a bit.

That being said it's a delicate balance because, if they haven't been posting, I may assume they are starting to disappear and i don't want to stall a scene by having an npc engage with an inactive player.

Unfortunately we can't really track "checking in" so perhaps a an ooc post would be the best way to do that. I suppose now it's easier to ping people on discord if they haven't posted, but I assume we're not requiring that.

I'm with Adam on this one. It'll take a while, but as players settle in, they then begin to understand what everyone's degree of commitment ends up being. (This doesn't include players who begin to ghost and eventually bow out for whatever reason.)

I usually treat the expectation stated in the initial game ad as aspirational, and have played in successful games which have both exceeded as well as fallen short of that expectation.

I think it's all about the social contract part of it for me.

I may want, and hope, and ask, that we shoot for 5 posts a week (particularly at the beginning of a game, when you're trying to establish it), but I also recognize that such a pace is rarely (never?) achievable consistently, indefinitely, for everyone.

Games ebb and flow.

What's important to me is that you're putting in the same amount of effort as the other players.

I tend to also let games find their own pace, but I've found in recent years it's difficult to keep most games going if they are not daily or near-daily check-ins. I run some notably different games elsewhere, and those sometimes go days, weeks, even months between posts. One game I run has been napping since 2018, and I'm about to rekindle it. That's with a select group of people, however, whom I've played with for a long time, and it's absolutely the exception rather than the rule.

The "PbP Force" that Qralloq mentions above -- very real, in my experience, and also why slower / in-order initiative systems and in-the-moment character-specific checks that halt the narrative until they are resolved can be so rough on a game. It's why I dig platforms that support @mentions.

Perhaps most problematic of all, I've found it challenging over the years to manage games where the players have wildly differing post rates. I've tried to cross this particular snake pit a few different ways, but I don't know if I've ever found an elegant and really effective solution.

I agree with many of the sentiments expressed so far, including the social contract idea, and the ebb-and-flow idea. However, I do get pretty paranoid when the posting rate falls below that advertised at the beginning of a game. If a player is falling quiet for more than three "cycles" (so, three non-weekend days in a 5-post-per-week game, say), I'll PM them. (I don't have time to do Discord, sorry.) I also encourage my players to post even when it's not their "turn," just to keep the threads fresh and to indicate that they're still paying attention and invested. Serious, I would prefer a player post, "Jackogia shuffles his feet in anticipation" than to not post for several days while other PCs take turns or whatever.

So, Tl;dr: Lack of posting kills games, so I get paranoid about it and try to mitigate it, albeit not always successfully.

Ah yes, forgot to chime in on that -- WarDomo mentioned pinging people on Discord, and I find that works really well... if everyone is on Discord. Since I started backing virtually every PbP game I run with a dedicated Discord channel, this technique has really helped keep pace in the games. Mostly. ;)

It definitely helps and the banter often adds even more fun to the game.

It’s a tricky thing. In the past, I’ve tried to be loose about posting rate and let games "find their own flow". After all, the last thing I want to be doing is chasing people down to make a post. It’s supposed to be fun, not a chore.

Frequent posting, however, helps to maintain momentum. The problem that I’ve repeatedly encountered over the years is that PbP games can quickly grind to a halt if posting becomes too infrequent or inconsistent. And once a game begins to lose momentum, it can be damn near impossible to get it back. So for that reason, I tend to treat the posting rate expectation as a solid requirement rather than a guideline. Not for the sake of courtesy, per se, but because I know the game’s success is potentially at stake (don’t mean to sound dramatic, lol).

That said, I echo what WarDomo and Jabes have mentioned. For me, the attitude toward posting and taking the time to check in is what matters most. As long as a player actively communicates with me, I’m fine with someone not always meeting the posting minimum. Hell, I’ve been very guilty of this myself.

This is why I also tend to like having a decently sized group of players, usually 4-7. More players means more regular posting, which serves to keep up the momentum. For me, having less than four players is a risky proposition, as posting will likely get too slow. That’s just been my experience. The ideal number for me is between 5 and 7; that ensures that the player count doesn’t fall too low if someone ghosts or has to unexpectedly drop the game.

Granted, we all have times that hitting that posting frequency in our games can be difficult. I think we all understand that. Life throws you for a loop sometimes and it happens to everyone.

Its the habitual player that agrees to a 1/day game and shows up to post anything at most 2/week, posts less than a line that reads something along the lines of 'Uh...I shoot it.', and then complains that all the other players and the GM's posts are too long and they're loosing interest in the game, that really bothers me. If you honestly can't make more of an effort, bow out.

Interesting. I feel the opposite. I always get the feeling that larger groups encourage everyone to just sit back and observe and not post themselves. Anything above 4 feels like a risk to me and I'll only as an acception accept a fifth player into a game

Different people are able to post at different rates. I can usually post fairly frequently but hold back to give other posters a chance to get a post in before I have another go at it to avoid dominating the conversation. It slows things down for me waiting another player but it's the fair thing to do given that not everyone can post at the same rates. Every player deserves a voice at the table without being overrun.

That said, players just checking in infrequently with little to no real contribution to the flow of the game is frustrating. Maybe the game isn't what they expected, maybe their character isn't preforming as designed, maybe the plot is in an area they don't have much interest in...but sticking to a posting minimum is part of the price of admission to the game. If that's an issue, communication can usually resolve it even if it's just to bow out of the game.

Yep, and this is how I've found myself playing in 7 games and running 3 others!

Not currently, but in the past...

My sweet spot is definitely 3-4. Sologames / duos with one GM and one player can be great too, provided the player is proactive. Have had nothing but bad experiences with big groups over the years, especially in single scenes where every PC is present.

Yeah bowl, I’ve heard others say that, too. Not sure why my experience has been so different. Most of my games with large groups have been quite good, unless it’s too many people. I could see a group of more than seven or eight players being chaotic. In the games I joined where there was less than four people, the game always ended within a month or two. Probably just bad luck on my part.

Might also be a difference in style. I prefer more character focused games, rather than plot focused. And those get more difficult with too many players

I haven't DMed here. I find that changing which initiative systems are being used can changed how the game feels. Normally, I'd want to stick to a typical initaitive roll, but I'm starting to come around to group initative (PCs then Monsters) or (Monsters first)

Curious - is there a preferred way to say.' yeah I'm here, but there's nothing for my character to do', or 'yeah I'm lurking, but don't know what to do'? I don't want to fill up the thread with ooc post

Just say that.
Sometimes is it appropriate to do that in the RP, sometimes it is better in the OOC. Sometimes it is 'until this scene resolves, assume I am standing in the corner looking awkward' sometimes it is only for a single reply.

Basically: Communicate. Don't hesitate to fill up the OOC.

I think there's always something for the character to do. It may not be something that the player feels contributes to the task at hand, but it could be a simple description of them awaiting the result. People are usually thinking about something, looking at something, or doing something small, even while waiting for something else to happen.

George fidgeted with the hem of his shirt while the others spoke to the bartender. He had no idea whether his friends would succeed in obtaining permission to put their fundraising jar on the counter, but he hoped it would become another source of revenue for Paul's younger cousin.

This is too true.

Me: Maybe if I refresh the page one more time someone will post!

^^THIS! Some of the most interesting RP I have ever seen happened in the background, away from the spotlight.
^^But also THIS! So much this!

It can also lead to problems, though. I was in a game a long time ago, in my early GP days back in the far off past of 2019 where another player and I were far more active than most of the rest of the group so we kept getting into small RP bubbles with each other that, as I realized later on, derailed the overall game

Moderation is important. A player should only be sitting their character out occasionally and only when it makes sense that they are not actively involved in the scene right now.

If this keeps happening then the GM needs to do something.

I heartily second (third) VagueGM's suggestion that players who aren't in the immediate action communicate and not sit idly by. I also get bowlofspinach's reservation, but it sounds like that was a situation where two players were heeding the social contract to communicate, while the others were not. Ideally, ALL of the players in that game should have been forming RP bubbles (or just RPing, or just posting OOC "I'm sitting back until my turn" kinds of messages.)

The bottom line for me is that PbP lives or dies by player activity. If the players stop posting, the game loses momentum, and the game dies. I would even call it the Golden Rule of Play-by-Post: When in doubt, post something.

I find that posting rates, sort of help me with a guideline on adding OOC, "still here guys" and the likes but it can also make me feel like I am excluding others if I go above and beyond that rate or excluded myself when I can't keep up with others.

Sure, occasionally I can post every day all day long but when the post rate is 3-4 times a week and I am gone for 1 day and I come back to 2 pages of thread to go over before I can post. It is intimidating to get anything up and takes more prep work to follow what is happening. So there is always some fluidness needed and I try and keep others in mind when exceeding posting rates just as much as I am at trying to just match them.

I just got my hands on a data dump, (thx adam), and thought I would share numbers of games started pr year showing these games posting frequencies. There are a lot of games that started in 2020 where the posting frequencies were set to 1 pr day.

Interesting!

How about a comparison of stated posting frequency vs. the game's survival. There are many other factors, obviously, but you can't deny there's some correlation there worth scrutinizing.

It’s a good idea, but that data isn’t available to us.

The post frequency of a pbp game tends to slow down to the post frequency of the slowest user. It's just the entropy of play by post - systems tend toward chaos.

One cause for the slow down can be that somebody in your group begins experience some IRL difficulties which impacts their ability to post. A second cause can be the game bogs down at some decision point or some transaction-heavy game mechanics, typically combat. A third is that a player might feel uncomfortable or realize the game doesn't match their expectations, and start to disengage. The first is inevitable, the second can be smoothed out to a degree, and the third can be partially addressed with safety tools and setting clear expectations from the start.

People tend to slow down as other people slow down for sequential and social reasons. Because actions happen in sequence, they might be waiting on the response from other players before they can proceed (ie: a conversation between two PCs). Faster posters might also feel social pressure to slow down. Maybe they want to be inclusive and wait to make sure other users are getting their fun, or maybe they feel guilty like are hogging the action. They might also just have missed something by accident and are holding up the game without knowing.

A GM can help reduce pressures to slow down (but never eliminate them). A GM can be like a good manager, vigilantly watching for bottlenecks. They might ping players on discord when they're needed to post. They might have an ooc or private conversations with players that are struggling to keep up. They can use safety tools to address discomfort when it occurs. They can foster an environment where people feel comfortable enough to talk openly about their likes and dislikes of the game. This can feel like a lot of work, however, and grinds GMs down and erodes their willingness to manage things.

Players can also reduce pressures to slow down. They can check the game daily (or at whatever freq. is expected) on their own volition without being prompted. They can build characters that use fewer transaction-heavy mechanics. They can clearly communicate when life's difficulties impact their ability to post (ie: being sick) and give permission to everyone to move forward and automate or ignore their character's actions. They can also be proactive in their communication about what they do and do not like in the game rather than passively disengage. And, they can be supportive and express gratitude to their GM for tirelessly keeping the ship afloat.

And the more everyone slows down the less social pressure the slow player feels to try to keep up.

Many of these are inevitable, but in light of the the original question:
Players should check the expected posting rate and not join games they know they will not be able to keep up with. I check and don't join games with too slow a post rate, and don't think it is fair when others ignore the '1 per day' and thereby make my decision making process invalid.

This is part of the social contract, the game advertises that it is expecting a particular rate, and players join based on that, it should not change without good reason. In the same location the game also advertises that it is using a particular ruleset, it would be no less rude to change that after the players join... not without significant discussion.

Does anyone here have experience with co-op / co-gm play instead of the traditional gm moderated? Seems like there is potential there to smooth over when a player goes through periods of inactivity. I also suspect the same of PbtA style games, where players drive a major amount of the narrative and there is less emphasis on turn order. I don't have much experience with PbtA games nor with co-op games yet tho, so I can't speak from experience.

I have only co-oped with select players I already know, so I think that is a bigger factor on how well the posts and post rate management went than the fact it was co-op.
When I play regular games with people I know well there is very little trouble with this, it is mainly 'strangers on the internet' that are a problem. If we have an existing --possibly outside of the game-- relationship (and dialogue) then slowdowns are more easily handled and worked around.

Another factor here is that co-op games tend to be smaller, and, as mentioned by a few above, the size of the game can really affect the regularity of the posting (lowest common denominator and all that).
The lack of turn order (called 'initiative' by some games for silly historic reasons:) does make PbP a lot easier.
Though the GM does now have an extra burden to make sure everyone gets their turn in the spotlight since the order no longer does that for them, but it is worth it and they have to do that anyway outside of 'combat' --or wherever the turn order is enforced.

Though, I have also seen games where the enforced turn order kept things going, and games where the lack thereof meant everyone stood back and waited for everyone else to act.

Proper communications helps.

Many good points made all throughout this discussion. Many, many factors in play. But I think everyone agrees communication is key. Unless somehow unable (you have lost the use of your digits, all electronic communication has gone down in your area, etc.), one must do one's best to communicate.