The nature of pbp

Personally, I despise 'Discord' with a passion and hate being forced to use it by certain websites that can't be bothered to provide a proper community and support forum. As far as I'm concerned, it's just a social chat site and the last place to go if you actually want any help

But you are right when you say that it sucks in a lot of potential PbP players who might otherwise find a proper game.

Unfortunately, in doing so, it also distracts a lot of the Pbp community away from proper hosting sites and results in excellent purpose-built sites like Tavern Keeper being forced to shut down due to lack of support.

I certainly don't hate Discord. It's a tool, and it's good at what it does (which, as you say, is chat), but you're right, it isn't designed for PbP. I've tried running a PbP game on Discord, and, meh, it was okay, but lightyears behind what can be achieved with a platform specifically built for PbP games.

But Discord is a tool that many people are familiar with, and I can understand that people who want to get into RPGs or PbP might want to make the adoption of a new hobby less daunting by sticking with familiar tools. I wish I still had my old Discord PbP game because then I could post a compare-and-contrast to show Discord PbP players what they're missing out on.

Although, in some ways, I'm kinda glad PbP isn't that popular. It keeps our sites as quaint little hobby niches within a sea of commercialisation. Myth-Weavers and Gamers' Plane don't have adverts, require subscriptions, or that gamers buy loot boxes containing avatars.

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It might be worth mentioning that Gamers' Plane's code is open source, but running the servers costs money. I believe that Keleth has stated that voluntary donations are currently slightly higher than the monthly running costs, but if anyone has been an active user of GP for a while, AND can afford to kick over a few quid every month to Keleth's PayPal account, AND has made playing on GP part of their daily life, then there's a "Support Us" button in the footer. I only mention it because I think Keleth is too shy to ask for help.

Like a lot of things what you get out of Discord is what you put in. It's a handy way to form a community, but shouldn't be used as a replacement for forum interactions as well.

I had a go at a discord game. I did not like it!
The game itself was fine, but it was the red-discord-dot that demanded my attention all the time.

I remember back in the 3.5 days, there was an article by someone -- the name Warren is in my head -- that talked about the main types of RPG players, and I think it's relevant here.

They were, to the best of my recollection, Storytellers, Power Gamers, Casual Players, and Completionists.

Storytellers, it should be obvious just want a good story, and they want to help with that. TTRPG and PBP both satisfy this.

Power Gamers can likewise be satisfied with PBP. In fact, they're probably more satisfied, because they have the time to strategize more here than in in-person settings.

Completionists like world exploration, side quests, investigation, finding lore. Again, that's probably easier here than in-person.

The Casual Player, (not my term, just the one the article used; I'd call them, social players if it were my choice) which used to be sort of a minority, just likes hanging out, tend to be lurkers, sort of. They're there to make jokes, have fun, and if the medium of that fun is an RPG, then they will do that too, but they're really there for the pizza. (I'm simplifying, of course.)

Everyone is a couple of these, usually. The thing is, if you are in the social category, you will find it very difficult to be satisfied in PBP. And while the social player used to be a minority (and maybe even a bit rare), it's a lot more common now. At the same time, a major piece of media that introduces people to the scene is the Actual Play which highlights the social aspect. That combination makes it hard to get a sizable portion of prospective players into PBP.

Discord is not really the same as PBP, as you can voice chat or have side discussions in real-time at will. That makes it friendlier for social players. That doesn't really happen in PBP.

Any game theory tends to fall apart when trying to apply it to the real world, I'd say more that people are a combination of all four, depending on the system and group you're playing with. I mean, what storyteller is not going to want to find out the lore of a setting, even if they're playing the part of setting it up, and I'm sure most power gamers play the part of casuals (who have always been the majority) when all the talky bits are going on.

You are probably spot on that the more casual you are about a game, the less likely they are to play PBP. Though I'll admit there has been times when RL has gotten me beat and I've just rolled along with a game until I have more time to commit to it again!

Sure, but I think it's fair to say that we prioritise different things and that's a decent model Falcon's offered. I have zero interest in strategy (or even rules). And I'm not a completionist at all. I play for the social aspect - a story is nice, but only as vehicle for the social side of the game.

Maybe we should use a radar charts to describe ourselves. E.g. I shouldn't play games with people who love RAW, and I've already made it a condition that I only play with people who use discord. I've also seen conflict at tables where players are playing for very different reasons (e.g. storytellers and power gamers).

I've never really understood that logic.

The whole point of Pbp and its main advantage, in my opinion, is that it doesn't rely on everyone being online and available at the same time.

I have players from North America, Europe and the UK, most of us are in different time zones, so we are never going to be online at the same time.

If everyone has to be online at the same time, then you might as well use a VTT, and you are not really gaining any advantage from Pbp at all.

It's just evolving. There are many ways to play text-based RPGs, and many of us here prefer the classic forum style. Loads of people not only use Discord, but arrange a time to all be online (without going for voice / video), and I even know people who used Roll20 every Friday night to *play by chat*, essentially. I love the asynchronous bit myself -- it was the only way I could play for -decades-, but I don't mind that others are digging these faster, less literary, more synchronous styles.

Yes! My sons DnD group does this. They use Roll20 as a platform for text-based roleplay. So, they still have all the problems of trying to arrange a mutually suitable time to be online, but when they are playing they post their character actions as text posts in the Roll20 text function and use Discord for background chat and playing music etc.

But I don't think they consider that PbP, I suspect they would call it text-based roleplay. It just keeps a clear record of what their characters are saying and doing as opposed to social chit-chat.

For me anyway, the nature of Pbp is that the players don't need to meet either in person or online. That's the benefit one gains in return for all the negatives of Pbp.

My main group has been doing 2hr sessions for awhile and one of my players suggested we do an asynchronous type of play between sessions to give more room for deeper role play. Longer thinking about decisions and more cohesive story tellings.

Ironically he basically described PbP for me. We are going to try a hybrid PbP and play in person group for a bit but I think all the advantages you mentioned were what made them like the idea. We will see how it goes.

Same. I had an experience on Discord that I don’t want to experience twice. The platform itself is not to blame, but still… moderated sites and no real-time chat is the only way I’ll play PbP. (At least until my major trust issues subside…)

I would say the thing I love most about PbP is the opportunity to perform without the pressure to perform. I like to look at other players and the GM (when it’s not me) as my audience, and I’m also theirs. I see the responsibility for keeping others entertained and invested in the game/story/characters as shared, with the GM having more responsibility on the story end and players on the character end.

We experimented with a hybrid format too, and one of the biggest hurdles we ran into was how to register our live sessions in a digital format that made sense for the PbP side of the game. Unlike pure PbP, where everything is already written out as you go, summarizing a live session turned out to be way more time-consuming than I expected.

I really underestimated the "byproduct" of PbP—how it naturally records everything: what the PCs did, the rolls, the dialogue, etc., all as part of the play process. Trying to replicate that after the fact, even in a summarized way, took a lot more effort than a typical PbP post. With PbP you write in manageable, piecemeal chunks—live sessions don’t break down that neatly.

Being able to search, scroll back, re-read -- Gold, Jerry!

I record my live games and run the transcripts through NotebookLM. This basically makes a podcast of the live gameplay for people.
Example

I also recently tried getting copying a game thread on Gamersplane and doing the same thing...and it worked fairly well.

There are some "inaccuracies" but nothing game breaking or worth nitpicking on for my group at least

Great ideia. Thanks for sharing. =)