The Unseen Servant forums

ToniXX wrote:In regards to preparing for a PbP game, I'd say the best thing would be to familiarize yourself with the forum and how posting and editing works, and how to manage PMs. It's fairly straight forward, and you're free to try some example posts in this thread. I see you've added an avatar so you must be familiar with how the User Control Panel works, which is good.

dmw71 wrote:...my suggestion would simply to scan the forums of an active game:

Board index » Play-by-post campaigns
viewforum.php?f=4

A great example of a game to read would be the 'Legacy of the Unknown - Pacesetter Games Playtest (OSRIC module)' campaign, which has over 2,000 posts. The DM, rredmond, is also running the first play-by-post game ('Slave Pits of the Undercity') I've been involved in and I've been really impressed. Many of the same players are found in both referenced games.

It might also be beneficial to review an active game run by another DM. I see that 'corum' is also running two games and, while I'm not familiar with either, I can see how it would be beneficial seeing how another DM runs their game as there may be differences.

Get a feel for how the games are organized. Each DM will probably have their own system. How are their threads organized? What expectations do they have for formatting posts (e.g. spoken words by the character should be formatted blue, which can be accomplished by using the 'dialog' formatting button; any out-of-character discussion should be formatted red, by using the 'ooc' formatting button; etc...).

Also, and perhaps most importantly, read through the various threads paying attention to the date/time stamp of the posts. After joining my first (and current) game, but before the game actually started, I followed the advice I issued above and scanned through the 'Legacy of the Unknown' game which gave me a feel for how a game run by rredmond might go. What I didn't realize at the time is, while reading through the various 'action' threads felt fluid, there were gaps in time which didn't really register.

A play-by-post is slower to make progress, but once you get accustomed to the pace of a game (which I assume will vary from game-to-game dependent upon the activity of DM and the different players involved), it is a lot of fun.

Alethan wrote:The other thing big challenge to a PbP game is trying to control the pace. I'm guilty of sometimes pushing our Legacy game a little fast, I'll be the first to admit it. Sometimes it is accidental and just because I'm excited about what is going on and want to see what happens next. But other times it is most definitely on purpose and I'm doing it because the game has started to lag a little, for whatever reason, and it needs something (or someone) to push it along.