Re: Old School Goodness to Share
Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2015 9:26 pm

Play by Post RGPs and a nifty dice roller
https://www.unseenservant.us/forum/
Grognardsw wrote:
Hah! I hadn't quite thought about it that way, but I guess that's what it is! Right now we've only got 2 full time players, but room for plenty more. I'm trying a few ways to experiment with the whole conundrum of hidden moves: at the moment, I'm always putting something public about each character, even if it's a (false) rumour. Stuff that happens in public goes in the public forums, but once they leave the city or sneak into a back alley it goes private. We'll see how it moves along.Fulci wrote:I knew people (friends of my parents) who played chess by mail.
And the brother of my friend (who introduced us to RPGs in the mid 90s) played a fantasy PbM, but money was an issue, so he stopped after a couple of moves.
I'm intrigued by the concept of these PbM games, these slow-moving enterprises... Strategic, "empire building" games work best, of course. By the way, we basically have a PbM on board right now, Starbeard's Warhammer!
I'd really like to join, but I have a lot on my hands right nowStarbeard wrote:Hah! I hadn't quite thought about it that way, but I guess that's what it is! Right now we've only got 2 full time players, but room for plenty more. I'm trying a few ways to experiment with the whole conundrum of hidden moves: at the moment, I'm always putting something public about each character, even if it's a (false) rumour. Stuff that happens in public goes in the public forums, but once they leave the city or sneak into a back alley it goes private. We'll see how it moves along.Fulci wrote:I knew people (friends of my parents) who played chess by mail.
And the brother of my friend (who introduced us to RPGs in the mid 90s) played a fantasy PbM, but money was an issue, so he stopped after a couple of moves.
I'm intrigued by the concept of these PbM games, these slow-moving enterprises... Strategic, "empire building" games work best, of course. By the way, we basically have a PbM on board right now, Starbeard's Warhammer!
This is something dmw71 and I have been playing around with for some time now. I think his current sandbox game (viewforum.php?f=152) is probably the best iteration of hidden-game rules.Starbeard wrote:Hah! I hadn't quite thought about it that way, but I guess that's what it is! Right now we've only got 2 full time players, but room for plenty more. I'm trying a few ways to experiment with the whole conundrum of hidden moves: at the moment, I'm always putting something public about each character, even if it's a (false) rumour. Stuff that happens in public goes in the public forums, but once they leave the city or sneak into a back alley it goes private. We'll see how it moves along.Fulci wrote:I knew people (friends of my parents) who played chess by mail.
And the brother of my friend (who introduced us to RPGs in the mid 90s) played a fantasy PbM, but money was an issue, so he stopped after a couple of moves.
I'm intrigued by the concept of these PbM games, these slow-moving enterprises... Strategic, "empire building" games work best, of course. By the way, we basically have a PbM on board right now, Starbeard's Warhammer!
One of my ultimate dream games for this forum would be a true PbM style sandbox, where each player submits a turn privately and interacts with the world as though everyone is an NPC. It would have to be multi-DM PbM, with each DM being responsible for their own town and surrounding dungeons. It would probably have to use a system that easily allows fairly strict readings, like BECMI, so that rulings can stay fairly consistent across DMs. Realistically it would probably flop after a while, or never get enough PCs to warrant all the hoopla, but it's still a nice thought.
I've never actually had the chance to play in a professional PbM, but I've always figured that I'd fork over the dough one day and try it out, just to say I did. I believe Flying Buffalo still runs most of their PbM through e-mail now, with turns still costing about $3-$4.50. I think most of them are finite games, with a set beginning and end, which always seemed more feasible to me than those dozens of sprawling, open-ended games that seemed to have a monthly turnover rate in the magazine ads.
I've played in 1-and-a-half games run by dmw71 before, and I think the way you've all ironed out the hidden-game format is definitely working, and shows just how effective it can be for a PbP.Alethan wrote:This is something dmw71 and I have been playing around with for some time now. I think his current sandbox game (viewforum.php?f=152) is probably the best iteration of hidden-game rules.
In an earlier version, we tried to keep it where, as you say, everyone else is an NPC in a previous version of the game, but it was incredibly time-consuming for him. He was basically running a full solo game for each player, PLUS he had to cross-post conversations, editing actions to third person when necessary and filtering to make sure PCs appeared as NPCs. It was a real struggle and, ultimately, it failed as a moderate post frequency PbP game. He might be able to provide better details about what did and didn't work.
It would be feasible, I think, if your posting frequency expectations were not very high - say, once a week at the most, but more likely once every 10 days (almost the pace a true PbM game would have had).
Ways Of The Earth has a 5+ year old game on his Immersive Ink forum called Hinterlands (http://forum.immersiveink.com/viewforum.php?f=4). In that game, we've adopted a similar hidden-thread format for characters when actions split one or several people from the main party or when a character is sneaky (like my hero-level two-headed hobbet fighter/thief) and likes to do things on their own.Starbeard wrote: I've played in 1-and-a-half games run by dmw71 before, and I think the way you've all ironed out the hidden-game format is definitely working, and shows just how effective it can be for a PbP.
That post rate sounds about right. I imagine that for a true double-blind experience, the post rate would have to be a bit slower than usual (once every 7-10 days), and the turn rate would also have to be a bit longer. Players really couldn't expect to hash out lengthy conversations back and forth, but would have to adopt a more strategic style of posting. Actions would have to be more general in nature, with the trust that the results would be adjudicated by the DM in the spirit of the player's best interests.
Edit: For example, instead of searching every bit of furniture in a room, they would simply search the room (paying special attention to x or y), and let the DM figure out how long it takes and what order things go in.
I joined on 2/10/11, so about 4 1/2 years ago, and haven't regretted it once. One of the best games on the world wide web, if you ask me.hedgeknight wrote:I remember when WotE began and almost signed on...kinda wish I had now. Although, my track record for staying in games is not that great, I am optimistic that one day I will find one I can never leave.