d20dad

Hi everyone, I was just griping about my IRL group disbanding for scheduling conflicts when it was suggested I do PbP. I've been registered here for a bit now, but never posted. Currently, I'm looking into converting the D&D 5th Ed campaign I was going to run into something that will work with PbP, so any suggestions to that effect would be appreciated. I've never run a game on PbP, and only played in one once for a brief period on another site. When I start my game, if you join, please be patient, as it will be a learning experience for me.

I welcome your feedback!

Hey d20dad. Thanks for joining us! Like I mentioned, I totally feel your pain; I started building this site years ago when my local group stopped playing. And I think most of us active right now have limited PbP experience, so patience is had all around! If you have any questions or concerns as you get into the site, let me know. And as you're going through setting up your game, if anything comes up that feels like a real blocker to playing, let me know and I'll do what I can.

The biggest thing I can say about PbP vs RL is pacing. PbP tends to be a lot more about roleplay and a lot less about rolls, since sometimes you have a day or two between finding out if a roll succeeded. So plan your game to be more verbose. It doesn't mean you won't have action, and specially when things get going, sometimes you'll find you've posted, refresh 2 minutes later, and a new post is waiting for you to act on. It can feel like a game is moving slower than in RL, but PbP just has a different tempo.

As a minor side note, I moved this to the Introductions forum, because neat and tidy and whatnot.

Welcome aboard we are glad to have you. I highly encourage you to start up your game as I am very interested in 5e. I am already committed to playing in one game and running one (two?) others but I would love to spectate if you make the game public. Glad to have another GM aboard. My roots are very similar, I used to play in person with a group then I got married and move. I filled the void with live skype play but adult life kept getting in the way for me or one of my players. PBP is useful to me because it is played whenever you have time. I also find it to be of a slower pace than live play but the upside is the games tend to be more narrative and characters are far more fleshed out, which appeals to me. I have done PBP before but they were always systemless collaborative story telling so PBP like this is new to me as well. So far I have adapted to it with minimal effort and I am sure you will too. Hope to see a game up soon and hope to hear your opinions on the board, please do not be shy.

While running PbP, do you find yourself letting players do things without checks for the same things that IRL you would have called for a roll?

Generally I only call for rolls if the consequence will actually matter to the story even in live play. I find in PBP I call for rolls even less and I allow my players a lot of license to add details and assume actions that are trivial, likely to succeed or have no consequence. That being said to make games interesting I encourage players to have them fail things occasionally without a roll as well. Anything with a major effect on the story will still need a roll of course. In the game I am currently playing in, Dungeons of the Dead, I had my character trip and scrape her knee in the woods, mostly as a roleplaying opportunity (though the other players did not take the bait) and also to show that she is human and she can mess up occasionally. I value players that can understand this and make a good story. Back in the day I played systemless PBP and I killed off several of my characters for the sake of the story, sometimes good story telling is about more than winning. Dungeons of the Dead is a public game, feel free to check it out and see how we are doing it. If you are interested in getting in on the action I believe there is still a slot open for that game and I am willing to open a fourth slot for my Numenera game even though it is full right now.

Welcome d20dad! Nice to see new *avatars* on the forums :)
I'm new to the whole PbP thing too really, so you shouldn't worry too much i feel.
My game group goes through scheduling conflicts regularly as well, so i figured why not try out doing this and seeing how it goes :)

What systems do you have experience with on the table, or, other tabletop games as well?

I've played World of Darkness more than anything IRL, so I'm a bit burned out on d10 system. Played mostly Vampire: the Masquerade, a bit of Werewolf, and a few sessions of Hunter. Big fan of playing Malkavians when I do play WoD. This system tends more to the storytelling, political gamer, and sometimes you just want to kick down a door and look for trouble. When you do that in WoD, you die with rare exception.

I've run a couple of one-shots for d20 Modern with my (now-defunct) group where they played themselves having woken up after being abducted by a shadowy organization. Played around a bit in a friend's GURPS Gladiators campaign.

My first D&D was a 4th Edition campaign as a Dwarf Paladin. I remember being frustrated that a whole game session would be dedicated to one or two low-threat encounters, because the combat took SO LONG. In the bit I've played so far in 5th Ed, it is much smoother.

I have the Call of Cthulhu and Dragon Age RPG corebooks, but haven't played either.