The Unseen Servant forums

Greetings,

I'm interested in being a player for my 1st PbP game. I've played and DM'd AD&D for over 15 years; 1st edition & 2nd edition. I'm currently dabbling with Castles & Crusades and am familiar with OSRIC.

Best regards,

Norjax

The guys here are really helpful and I'm sure you'll get into a game quick enough. But I'll also be looking to run a game via Skype sometime in the future once my current game I'm involved with wraps up. I'll keep you in mind if you're intrested?

Cheers,
Lee

Norjax wrote:Greetings,

I'm interested in being a player for my 1st PbP game. I've played and DM'd AD&D for over 15 years; 1st edition & 2nd edition. I'm currently dabbling with Castles & Crusades and am familiar with OSRIC.

Best regards,

Norjax

Welcome, Norjax. Play-by-post and OSRIC were both completely foreign to me until about a month ago... and now I feel quite comfortable with both, so you should have no problems. I think the biggest obstacle will be adjusting to the slower nature of play-by-post games. That said, these boards seem pretty active and everyone has been very friendly and helpful so you're in a good place.

I've heard rumors of new games starting up soon, so hopefully your wait won't be too long.

Again, welcome aboard!

- Dave

Thanks for the welcome, Gents! I’m open to a Skype game as well.

Any recommendations on what I should do to prepare for a PbP or PbC game?

Norjax wrote:Thanks for the welcome, Gents! I’m open to a Skype game as well.

Any recommendations on what I should do to prepare for a PbP or PbC game?

Welcome to the forums.

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.

I chose to use this forum software in particular because it is widely used across the internet, and if you've used other forums, you will have likely used this same forum software elsewhere. Also, it is free!

If you have any questions, post here or in the questions section, and I'm sure someone will answer your questions quickly.

Good luck!

Norjax wrote:I’m open to a Skype game as well.

I've never played by Skype, but that sounds like it could be a lot of fun and something I might be open to trying as well.

Any recommendations on what I should do to prepare for a PbP or PbC game?

Are you looking to run a game, or simply participate in one? In either event, 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.

I'm sure you'll find out for yourself soon enough.

- Dave

Myself and a DM from Australia have just started up a game, we've played 2 days in a row now since Sunday through Skype and will either be picking it up ths evening or tomorrow. We're already bringing in another player so if you'd like to come dsicuss getting involved we'll be meeting 10pm GMT. My Skype name is lee.brown1990.

Anyone else intrested feel free to add me, if you don't get into this game we have been discussing rotating DMing duties and playing through all the classic modules so there will be plenty of oppurtunities going forward. Myself and the DM are very felxible with our times which is a big bonus.

Cheers,
Lee

Thanks for all of the advice. I'll check these references out!

I'll stick with being a player for the time being.

dmw71 wrote: 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.

Yes!

*nods sagely*

The flow LOOKS very smooth and fast if you just read through it. But if you pay attention to the dates, you'll see that an entire combat encounter may have unfolded over a period of two weeks, a round of combat happening over several days.

As long as you prepare yourself mentally for the speed change from a FtF game, you'll be ok.

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. Even if I don't make an action in the action thread, I'll start commenting in the Out Of Character (OOC) thread or the Strategy thread. Or I'll update my entries on the treasure thread (something I track in our Legacy group) and indicate that in OOC. I'll do anything to draw the other players back to the board and inject some activity back into the game.

It isn't exactly a "fine" line, but you do have to be careful about pushing the pace too fast. Sometimes other players will push back. Justified or not, ultimately we're all here to have fun. If one person in the group isn't having fun, then you have to figure out why or risk losing that person (or killing the game, even). So you don't want to push it too fast (or too often). On the other hand, I've been in several PbP games that simply die because people stop posting on them. That's always sad when it happens, because I tend to invest quite a bit of time and effort in my characters. I'm fine with one of them dying because of bad dice or a stupid action on my part. It sucks to see one die because other players aren't as active in the game as they agreed to be (posting three times/week is the standard) and the game just fades away...