PbP Optimised RPG

I have been thinking recently about the sort of tweaks we need to do to make the usual tabletop RPGs work better in the PbP format and I wondered; do you think we could look at the aspects of other published RPGs which work well in this format and amalgamate them into some Super-PbP Sytem? So, for example, the character building and narrative elements tend to work well, so if the system was designed to promote long posts and allow the player to determine the results of their own rolls immediately instead of waiting for input from the GM it would allow the game to flow better. If you're waiting a week to make your next post, it's good if you're able to do more than just a couple of lines.

So do you think a system where a player can decide to take a particular action, then you can follow a pre-set formula to determine the difficulty without any GM input would be possible? Is there anything which does this?

What other aspects of the PbP experience would benefit from being baked into the rules from the outset?

This is very much already a thing! The PbtA system is built on the idea that the person rolling the dice interprets the result with minimal input from the GM. The engine also does seem to support PCs in being able to generate a large amount of fiction on their own...

Something that I think needs to be supported by the rules that often isn’t in RPGs is fluidity in who is present in the fiction. In pbp often we loose players and then need to add in new ones but it’s ofteb hard work to drop characters in and out. I’m not sure how our rule system will support this though...

I haven't played PbtA yet but that sounds fantastic!

Good point about player turnover. I can imagine a setting where that can be managed; something along the lines of a plane where a capricious god randomly moves people around for example, but it would be really good to have rules which are setting agnostic which can do the same thing. If it was a story of a large group of people all facing a common challenge, like a whole town, the crew of a ship, an army on the march, then each player could just be one of the characters and during their turn the action is just shown from their point of view. That way any new players would just be somebody who had been in the group all along, we just hadn't focused on them yet.

I don’t really believe in "setting agnostic systems" as no matter what the system informs the tone of the game and not every setting is appropriate to every tone.

But I do like the idea that the player is only relevant while they post... there has to be a cleaner way of pulling that off without implying that there are a large enough group of people following your story around that you don’t know who all of them are...

You could have an everyone is John scenario, where there are some fixed characters in the story who are co trolled by one or more players. To tie it in with PbtA, the different characters in the story could be playbooks, and the different ways the PCs fill out that sheet could represent different personalities or modes of that character. That’s reasonably setting agnostic, but it does require the setting to allow for its main characters to be a bit indescicive...

I have been thinking a lot about this as I’ve been driving around and realised I’m going a bit off the rails. I was ready to just throw out PC Interaction because it’s hard to do in PbP unless the players are all online at the same time, but when it works it can be the best part of the game (I’m thinking about marithyme’s Moofsalot’s Character Chemistry post here). So what I intend to do is go right back to the beginning and identify the main game elements which make up an RPG, then I’ll ask people to help me rank them from most fun/important to least, and also how good PbP format games are at handling it. I could then plot the results out and we should be able to see what needs the most work (I imagine the things we’ve already mentioned will be right up there). So far the elements I’ve identified are:
-PC Creation
-PC Development (e.g. personality)
-PC Advancement (e.g. levelling)
-PC Interaction
-Story/Plot Development
-NPC Interaction
-PC Turnover

The problem is how would somebody rate that last one as fun/important? It doesn’t really make any sense in that context. Does PC Turnover fit into some other category that can work? Also, what am I missing?

I would like to throw it out there that I've never found a system to be prohibitive to PBP, in and of itself. But rather a lack of system knowledge by the players prohibiting smooth play. Which is to say, so long as the players (and GM of course) know how the system flows, and communicate clearly in advance of play how any required back-and-forth needs to occur, then pretty much any system can work fine. And two of the systems I've played most in PBP are high back and forth games: FFG Star Wars and Burning Wheel.

It's really all about constant and clear OOC communication in PBP. Difficulties are about the players, not the system. You can have a system built entirely around PbP, but if your people are flakes, it's not gonna work. And you can have an extremely complex system, with high levels of back and forth, and if you have interested dedicated players, it's gonna go fine.

That said, a system that doesn't require a large amount of back and forth may require less system familiarity and up front communication, which is good for certain purposes (ppl new to the system and/or PbP).

To get to flug's question(s) here's how I see it:

The most important elements of PBP are PC and NPC Interaction. We're here to play with people right? I feel like the PC Development and Story/Plot Development aspects just happen if you have good PC/NPC Interaction.

PC Creation and PC Advancement are very subjective. But I think it's generally important to players to have a system/mechanics that facilitate "advancement" alongside "development". Most ppl I think see those going hand-in-hand, IME. And most ppl I think - for extended play (non-one shots) - like a level of granularity in the mechanics sufficient to clearly differentiate different character/play-style types. Whatever that means for the system. Magic needs to feel different than melee, and so on. This all may be less true for the PBP community, with its different expectations, but with D&D being the most popular PBP system still, I don't think so.

Now for PC Turnover, certainly some systems support this better from a "setting concept" point of view (it's easier to switch out PCs from a in-game continuity perspective if the game takes place in the context of a setting that could be expected to have a "changing cast of characters", like an adventurers guild, or gang setting, or something, but generally this is more a "group" issue. That said, the perhaps only system I know of that supports Turniver explicitly through its mechanics is Blades in the Dark. Where the real only consistent "character" in the game is assumed to be "the Crew". And it's assumed that PCs will come and go, and the mechanics are built around that. Generally I don't think this is an important thing to work into anststem desogn, but rather something to be clearly communicated between group members.

All that said, it's all about finding and BEING reliable, considerate, and communicative members of the community/game. In my opinion.

Yes! I haven't played a ton of games here, but the best ones have had very strong and well-used OOC chat threads. I think that is one thing a player can do to boost the health of a game is to comment OOC on things. Even if your character isn't in a scene, comment on how bad-ass that other player's dialogue or how epic this battle is that your DM set up. It is the glue that binds the game together.

That said, I still think there are system changes that can make things easier. I think combat needs the most reworking. PC / NPC interactions don't need a huge amount of rules, just good roleplaying. Combat, especially D&D style games that are grid-bound, can get messy in PbP.

For example, the stock D&D initiative system is PAINFUL in PbP, especially if you have players in different time zones. A round can take a week! Side-based initiative allows for players to act whenever they sign on and makes sure you can get that round done in a day. Yes, it makes the combat more swingy but its a small price to pay for tense and exciting combats (Thanks to the Isle of Dread crew who suffered through me trying multiple initiative systems only to end up doing what everyone told me was probably best in the first place!).

In general, solid Theatre of the Mind guidelines for combat help a lot too. If you go with D&D's 5ft measurements, there's going to be a lot of questions. "Do I need to disengage here? Can I make to that orc?" Ugh, I want to toss all that. Something like 13th Age's abstract distances should work a lot better and I want to build that into my future D&D games.

There's a balance you want to strike: crunchy combat with interesting tactical decisions and smooth combat with no hangups. It's easy to make combat smooth and boring, but its hard to make it smooth and full of interesting decisions and tension. If anyone figures out how to do that optimally, let me know!

Having read through these comments I thought I’d go and take a look at the PbP guide and it does seem that a whole system being built just for PbP isn’t really necessary. The most important things that you could fix could be fixed the same way in any system, you’d just be baking into the rules the things that good GMs here do anyway. I think that from now on, whenever somebody posts a new thread in the Introductions board I will point them to the PbP guide.

In the world of tabletop gaming, most of the modern RPG rulesets allow for a minimum of four players, and in many cases, you can get along very well with just the minimum number of players. More than six players and the game begins to get bogged down; especially when you are engaged in combat. It’s a pain to wait fifteen minutes to tell the DM which bugbear you are going to attack.

However, in my experience, the size of a Play-by-Post adventuring party needs to be larger; I have found that six to eight players is more ideal. A larger party size ensures plenty of rich character dialogue and interaction. Furthermore, it helps to increase the flow of a healthy posting rate. Posting rate matters very much in PbP as it ensures that people are not waiting days to receive some interesting player posts to read.

It is important to know how and when to recruit. I would say that recruitment should be an ongoing effort that moves from game promotion and then becomes player recruitment; preferably before the critical mass is lost. Find ways to promote your game to other players and referees. Tell them about your story. Tell them about the great players. Tell them about your enjoyment as the referee. Invite them to ‘lurk’ or provide them with an interesting synopsis or dilemma that your players were forced to deal with recently. Build your party up by inviting others to join. Do not wait until the roster has depleted to three or four players before looking for new blood. By then, it may already be too late – especially if you have lost the steady posting pace.

I would argue again that whole heartedly. The best pbps I’ve had are between like 2-3 poeple (including gms). Thus it’s important to be able to swap out players easily.

I would clump together and generalize PC/NPC Interaction to be just Rich Dialogue.

I would also add Descriptive, Exciting, and Timely Combat. Combat should not overwhelm the story, but when it happens, it should be satisfying, challenging, realistic, descriptive and should end within a reasonable amount of time. It is the timeliness of combat, I would argue, sets some game systems apart from others. Ever play 3.5 one week and then 2e or 5e with another group another week? The time it takes to complete a single combat in these systems is grossly different. I would argue 3.5 (and PF to a slightly lesser extent) take too long by times when resolving combat in PbP.

I would ask, "how long will that conversation and banter last?" Will it sustain a campaign and for how long? At some point, there will be a lull in the conversation, someone will go missing, or it will get stale. New blood will be needed, eventually. More new blood is insurance. The challenge is more good new blood insurance.

Yes! Recruiting is HUGE.

As someone who has sat on the waiting list for months, I know how frustrating it can be. But I've also GMed enough games to realize that I've never participated in a game that hasn't had at least 1 player drop/flake/ghost, etc. And accordingly, if you wait, you'll probably get into that game. Because in my experience the reality is more like an average of 3 players are gonna drop (out of every 5-6 maybe?) if the game lasts more than a few months. Would be interested to hear if other ppl have had similar experiences...

I try to cultivate a waiting list, but if that's not possible due to (lack of) interest - or ppls understandable dislike of sitting on the waiting list - then I start looking for someone about a week before I plan on booting the delinquent player. Either in the Introductions forum or from the original interest thread.

More important than recruiting though, to me, is player retention. And towards that end, I would like to point out how important it is to - as Cruvis mentions - recognize those great players, thank them, and recognize their continued participation and dedication when demonstrated, and for bringing the game to life. All comes back to that OOC Communication.

It could be interesting if the game mechanics include recruiting as part of the game.

How about this as a game concept? The players take on the role of self-replicating machines which have been sent to explore, secure and then construct a base on a planet for human colonists to follow. These machines start out very basic, but they discover resources as they explore and can use them to build new robots or upgrade themselves. If one character is killed they can be recycled to return resources to the group.

I imagine each character would start as a blank slate, a completely innocent ingenue, but their personality develops through their experiences (which could be part of the game mechanics). Also, initially their only motivation would be to do what the humans have sent them to do, but as their personalities develop they might pick up "hobbies", and eventually those hobbies might become more important to them than the actual mission.

The reason I thought about this is because it would solve the recruitment issue because the players would be in control, they could choose whether to use their resources to get more help, to upgrade themselves, or to build some kind of infrastructure (there could even be a store of spare bodies which the players can take if their current body dies). I can also potentially see this as a GMless game with random tables to determine encounters and exploration results.

Anyway, sorry for the stream of consciousness. What does everybody think? Could it be done? Would it be fun?

Does it need to be long? My most satisfying pbp game was a one on one game of Reflections, a game of duelling samuirai. The game probably lasted a month, and finished exactly because the the two characters had nothing left to say...

I’m running a Darksouls game (which could be going faster if not for the fact that I the GM is a bit itermitent due to personal reasons), which is also a one on one (well multiple one on ones at once) game. Each character who leaves can be replaced and those that fell, or were abandoned, they’re part of everyone else’s story now.

@ flug, that sounds like a fun game, but again we’re fixibg the issues with setting not system...

Yeah, I realise that. I was trying to think of a way to include recruitment of new characters in the mechanics, but I can't think of any way to do that which are independent of the setting. In a traditional dungeon dive, for example, it seems a bit contrived for the group to keep coming across adventurers who just happen to have stumbled in there too, and a dungeon could take a long time on PbP so waiting until they're out wouldn't work.

I have thought of a few setting-specific ways to do it;

-In a high fantasy setting you could have a system where they teleport in reinforcements from a guild or a god sends them help or something, but it feels wrong. Too overpowered for low-level adventurers.

-You could have a Doctor Who mechanic, where when a player drops out their character undergoes a transformation which turns them into the character another player wants to play, but that's very setting specific. Niche even.

-If your game was set in a virtual reality it would be easy, with new users logging on and their avatar appearing.

One problem with all of these is it breaks immersion and takes away some of the sense of peril. Reinforcements are always just around the corner.

How about having a rule where if a player drops out their character becomes an NPC until they can get back to a base? That's something that some GMs may do already, but I think many of us would shy away from GMPCing as much as possible. If there was a rule for it we might accept it better. On the other hand it's already a lot of work for a GM to run a game, adding one, two or even three characters to run might be untenable unless the rules somehow make that easier.

It seems like the terms "recruiting mechanic" and "recruiting narrative" are being confused/conflated here.

You can't really have a recruiting mechanic, because that would mean there's something like: "You roll the dice for your Recruiting Skill and if you succeed on that check, a new player comes in." And of course it doesn't work that way, the two are fundamentally disconnected between IC and OOC barrier - or rather there's Player recruitment and then there's Character recruitment.

Player recruitment is finding the IRL human being, which can't be accomplished through a game mechanic.

In-game Character recruitment could be handled through a mechanic - once you've already found the IRL person - but that seems kind of pointless because what are you gonna do, find the person and say, "Hey come game with us, oh but I have to pass my recruitment check first." No. So you don't need a recruitment mechanic. All you need is a recruitment narrative.

All of those premises are fantastic recruitment narratives, flug.

But I don't think there can be a such thing as a recruitment mechanic.

Em, you have to think more openly about it - naturally every idea you poopooed on were bad ideas, but they aren't actual attempts at producing a mechanic that incorporates OOC player recruitment into the IC game play. I suppose that it's partially my fault for posting in a hurry on mobile and not following through with at least one suggestion to clarify the concept.

A possible mechanic:
For any PbP RPG, in addition to the normal requirements to gain a level, PCs must also have sufficient Influence Points (IP). IP is gained by posting on public forums to recruit new players (1 IP per week) and by bringing in new players (5 IP). IP may be given to other players. The required IP to advance a level is governed by the following table:

Number of Active Players | Required IP
2 - 3 | 5 IP
4 | 1 IP
5+ | 0 IP

Note that the Influence Points mechanic does not dictate how new players are introduced IC.

Is there really a need to bring in new players like this? Most games advertised in the tavern fill up within a day or two. I didn’t think finding players was an issue. Having said that I mostly play D&D 5E and FFG Star Wars, so my perspective may be skewed. I’m not against bringing new players to GP, but is that something that should be mandated in-game?