Running a Forum-Based RPG

[Dr. Velocity]

I've done this before, long ago, and asked for help from some of you helpful folks, because of a couple of problems I was having, mostly with one player who acted like Patient Zero for My Guy Syndrome. If anyone remembers, I'm proud to report he does much better now and actually has played some different styles, even some comedy. Its amazing. Back then, I ran a short one-off based on Lovecraft's Cthulhu universe, which admittedly wasn't the best choice for a group of people online who didn't know each other or me very well and none of which was familiar with Lovecraft's writing - the MyGuy player had a Navy SEAL with an ATV and wanted to shoot bazookas and call in airstrikes on the monsters.

Anyway, from that game and seeing some of the other members of the little unofficial "alliance" run and play in each other's forum rp's, I have a better idea of how most people play and react and a lot of where the "admins" (as the rest of the alliance members refer to the gamemaster) could use a lot of work, on the games they run, not to mention a number of examples of what *I* was doing wrong in mine, so I am thinking of running another forum-based RP for this group (called War]-[awK, created when we all played the StarKingdoms MPOG).

My questions are what basic suggestions does anyone have, as far as general and overall advice and things to pay attention to, to do and not do, favored styles of refereeing (gamemastering) and suggested time limits, methods of resolving interactions with players without wasting a lot of time, etc.?

I know forum RPs are very hard to run with a system, yet I still need SOME form of vague framework for myself and the players to know what they can and can't do, and I'm thinking of using a combination of The Ladder system and Robin D. Laws' Feng Shui, keeping it very rules lite but having some structure. Probably going with a modern theme, not sure exactly what, might even run the introductory Feng Shui scenario.

What I'm looking for specifically is:

how do I oversee character generation easily; I'm thinking of PMs and IM's just to get everything done as quickly as possible and be able to answer questions immediately for these people, most of which who are not familiar with RPGs. How much detail and stats etc do I want? I'm thinking of using just a couple of basic stats and maybe some traits if some want to pick them, and have like a Gear rating for people who want to carry lots of stuff (so there's no bookeeping).

I can't think of any easy way for any task resolutions that might be suitable for random success or failure, so I'll just roll dice on my computer desk I guess and post results.

Next, how often would it be suggested I post, and to wait and allow them to post, before moving on? Currently, the GM posts and waits until everyone posts back, sometimes taking 1-4 days, then posts a bit more, but little progress is made at once. In 7 total real days of posting, all our characters have so far arrived at a location, went to bed, awakened and ate breakfast, and went to work in the fields, which took about 2 story days. To me, this is glass-chewingly slow for an RP to progress but they're all pretty happy with it and enjoy writing their usually fairly long literary excerpts. Does a set schedule of "everyone has to post within x days of the GM or your character moves on with the rest of the party" work?

I noticed in the forum games that are being run on the Warhawk site, the GMs post a bit then let the players freeform some but don't really give much direction or have any particular 'track' or set of goals, and usually respond to what the players write. While this is good and I've looked at this kind of game, I'm not comfortable with it myself, at least for this, and the players have in the past noted they DID like the way I ran the one RP I did (which was more to the point and dealt ONLY with their characters' actions, with me taking care of the rest of the scenes), even with all its problems, so I think they're open to trying it even if its a little more gamist and objective-oriented than what they're used to of late, being very freeform and HIGHLY narrativist, with pretty much everyone (about 6 of them) being budding fantasy and sci-fi author wanna-be's (all aged 16-22).

There's more I was kinda wanting to ask but I can't nail them down in my head so this should be a good start, for anyone that has any ideas to offer.

[TonyLB]

Oh... internet games... I shudder.

But hey, you didn't ask my opinion on whether it's a wise thing to get yourself roped into, you asked advice on how to do it.

Things I've found useful:

[*]A thread or forum specifically for people to comment OOC when they think something cool just happened in the game.  This tries to fill the vital role of body-language and facial expression in encouraging people that their contribution is valued and understood.[*]I personally like "Agenda" threads, which basically let the GM and player say "Okay, what is this scene going to be about?  What do we want from it?  Have we got what we wanted from it?  Good.  Next scene."  It helps with the glass-chewing slowness of asynchronous play.[*]You cannot possibly be too explicit or too pedantic about your social contract.[*]Don't let people join mid-way through the game... they'll have missed out on the dynamic creation of a shared social space.  Combine this with their understandable eagerness to jump into the existing world and shake things up and you have a recipe for disaster.[/list:u]Sorry if all of that sounds too terribly cynical.  I tried my best to be constructive.  Asynchronous roleplay is a very hard row to hoe.

[Dr. Velocity]

Yes it is, thank you Tony. And thank you for your thoughts - while we do have what amounts to a "comments thread" which can also be used for OOC, I hadn't considered an Agenda thread. I'll have to see what they think about that.

As I said, I've run with (and for) these people before and now that they (and I) have a little more experience, I think they'd do even better, but yeah, asynchronicity is a b...ad way to run an RPG, if you have an alternative, but this loose alliance group of people who hang out on some phpbb forums one of them set up on their own webspace aren't usually all online at one time, I and a couple of others are in the US, two are in Canada, three are in Australia, etc etc.

My main worries are:

- they will be disappointed with the gamist way I run it, with an objective/goal and much more concerned with what specifically the characters DO to move forward, rather than specifically encouraging long posts about their character's own internal turmoil etc - future authors are hard to keep on track sometimes. =)

or  (though these are effectively the same concern)

- they won't like the way I ... well I won't really discourage creative writing on their part, but I'm going to try to impart to them that the ACTIONS of their characters, and not the players' own writing ability, will be the impetus in the game, and will encourage creative and interesting but succinct and concise posts, rather than letting them write whats going on in half the world each post.

- GM control over their characters and actions may be an issue. One in particular had trouble with this when I ran the first game (and with other people too) but has since calmed down, but at the time, he had numerous fits because the GM wrote in that his character hit a wrong button or some such, which caused him to respond that his character would NOT hit the wrong button and is surgically precise, yada yada. Overall though they seem pretty open.

- the system and mechanics and resolution may be cumbersome, even as little as it will probably be used. I will be trying to keep it invisible from the players so they don't worry about it - I know to do whats good for the story first, and fudge anything that needs it, but sometimes I think a little randomness and possible failures could be interesting.

- not sure if they will like or be able to keep a set schedule, such as I will post once every 2 days and try to move the scenario forward (assuming their posts are leaning in a constructive direction - if they're not, I don't know what I'm going to do)

Thats pretty much all for now, just errant thoughts I've had.

[Lxndr]

I'd like to point out my play-by-post Sorcerer rpg, which has been going strong for more than a year now, and can be found at:

http://www.rpol.net/game.cgi?gi=1418

If you go to the earliest page, there's the "Pre-Game Roundtable", where we established ground rules, characters, etc., in a group; the entire process took about a month, but I think was worth it.  Also check out the OOC thread, which has most of the OOC comments to date.  An OOC thread is pretty much a necessity, I think.  Also, if the message board allows it, set up rules for OOC comments within threads (player = red, gm = blue is what we've got).  I wouldn't go so far as to do Agenda threads, as you can just comment on Agendas through ooc comments.  I've done several "I'm closing this scene unless you want something more; post in OOC if you do; also, where do you want the next scene to be; post in OOC."  I'd consider having just one overarcing Agenda thread.

I used the entirety of the Sorcerer rules, and usually prefer using a full rule-system.  It doesn't take that much longer.  If you're wanting to just invent a simple little system, might I suggest instead grabbing something like The Pool, which seems rather suited for the sort of rules-liteness you're wanting?

If you use rpol (a message board), it has its own die roller that you can use, which will publicly post results for anyone else to witness.  Really nice and useful.

Currently, all my characters are still in their own stories, with only crosses and weaves, and only the occasional ftf interaction; we have a "3 posts or so a week" policy that they've been mostly good about sticking to, with some exceptions when real life intervened.  I've done several party-based pbems, and the agreement that "Yes, X real days where I've done nothing means going on with the group" is one that helped the game go on.

For a play by post game, get used to the snails pace.  It's a more relaxed style of gaming, with longer entries, a turn-based format where it's pretty much impossible to interrupt others (and thus, others need to be clear on exactly what they can and can't write about your character, as well as being clear on what sorts of things should suggest a stopping point).  I've found pushing things too quickly means leaving EVERYONE behind.  Make sure everyone's signed on to the pace you want to set before trying it.  Also try to decide in advance how weekends, holidays, etc., will be handled.

I've only brought in one new person since the beginning, and I agree with Tony that it can certainly change the dynamic - we lost one person and wanted a replacement.  Luckily, the player was good, we kept the whole pre-game roundtable so he could read it, and had a mid-game roundtable specifically for him, and it was early enough in the story that we didn't have too much laid out on the table.

[DannyK]

I've run a few of these.  My thoughts, in no particular order:

--I've found it helpful to explicitly give the players some Directorial authority.  In a forum-based game, it speeds things up considerably to let the players invent minor NPC's, etc. so they don't have to get the GM's OK for every little thing.  It's also a good idea to set some limits on that authority also.

--If your forum supports it, formatting tricks can help make things clearer.  Italics for thoughts is a good example.  I don't know how to keep people from writing long tortured soliliquies, except by example.

--I like to impose some structure by defining "sessions" every so often, even though it's rather arbitrary on a forum game.  This allows for some downtime (for spending XP, changing the focus of the game, etc.) and allows any players so inclined to get the soliliquies out of their system in a socially acceptable manner.  

--Since the game can stretch out quite a bit in time, it's helpful to either have a reference thread for PC's and NPC's, or have some other online reference -- I use a Wiki for this.  

--Momentum is hard to maintain -- moving too quickly or slowly can screw things up.  I shoot for a steady, reliable pace of 1-2 day turnarounds with occasional bursts of speed.  

--Agressive scene framing is your friend.  Playing out breakfast can be fun (especially if it's a working breakfast in an interesting location), but eventually the players are likely to become frustrated with the lack of cool stuff to do.  The OOC thread is great for this -- you can say things like, "I want to jump to everybody arriving in the airplane hangar" and it speeds things up immensely.  

--In a PbP game, it's just as easy to run separate threads than group ones -- in fact, it's easier, since you don't have to wait for everybody to chime in before moving on.  When there are group scenes with everyone, I like to keep things moving along.  If someone goes silent for a week, it's often better to keep moving things along than to keep the whole game in abeyance waiting for that one guy.  

--On a related note, I think online GM's have to put a lot of energy and presence into the game just to keep things from going stale.  It's sort of like a beginner's tennis lesson: as GM, I keep serving things over the net, most of the time it gets returned, but if it falls flat I'll send another volley over pretty quickly.  Online gamers can fall into analysis paralysis, so I try to make it clear that a timely decent response is equally successful and more fun than a perfect response which takes three times longer.  

OK, I didn't realize I had so many rules of thumb to share.  Call me Polonius.

[greedo1379]

I play in two PBem/forum type games now.  I find the most frustrating thing for me, as a player, is scenes basically stalling.  The GM can't be afraid to skip ahead to the next scene.  Waiting for everyone to act just takes too much time.  Of course, the risk you take is cutting someone off when they really have a good idea, question for the NPC, etc.  Be careful to allow the party to go back and ask again or such like that.  In combat situations you probably should be more patient.

In your GM posts don't be afraid to describe more than one scene in a row if you don't think the players will have any action.  If they turn out to have an action they will say "I wanted to ...  back there."  Leading up to any sort of conflict you might want to be more careful.  If you describe the whole scene sneaking through a castle and opening up a big threatening door and end your post with "... and in front of you is the [big bad villain] " your players will say "Hey, when I saw that big threatening door I would have wanted to stop and turn on my personal shield!" or "drink my potion of strength!" or whatever.

Also, I have to second the idea of having players make their own NPCs.  For example, as a player post:

[I approach the little guard station at the front gate of the company complex.  A little grey haired man who must have worked there for the past 40 years was perched on a stool.

"Can I help you?" he asks.

"Yes, I'm here to see Mr. Dowd about the Omega Project."

The little old man's head moves slightly backward and his droopy eyelids suddenly slide back.  

"Yes, yes sir.  Please just wait for a second and I'll ring him up."]

Or something like that.  In a traditional P&P type game I would just say:

[I approach the little guard station at the front gate of the company complex. ]

And stop there.  You do that in PBEM and you are looking at a long drawn out game.

These are things that are probably obvious and really don't even need to be mentioned but... well... I'm on break. :)

[Dr. Velocity]

Thanks for your replies, they give me more ideas and things to think about. I agree that the players DO need to be able to frame and even play out scenes when possible, even creating NPCs and narrating how their characters deal with them, if its not something vital. =)