Forum-Style Play

[xiombarg]

[This all comes from the tail end of this thread]

So, it seems that more and more people are engaging in roleplaying on internet fora. These are usually pretty freeform games -- and largely ignored by the industry. But is there anything the industry can do for these gamers? I mean, it's largely freeform play.

With that in mind, here's a whacky idea: Instead of buying a game, you buy access to a web site that contains all the rules for the game (mostly background, probably) and a set of fora for playing the game in.

Has anyone tried this? Would it work?

[Ron Edwards]

See, I think this is brilliant. I know absolutely nothing about it, but I betcha tons of people are doing exactly this already, just informally spinning off of individual websites or chatrooms.

Best,
Ron

[Valamir]

You'd be right Ron.  I frequent the Age of Wonders II forum (computer turn based strategy game) at Heaven Games.  Recently announced was the addition of a forum and chatroom for online role playing in the fantasy world setting of Age of Wonders.

I quote the announcement message below.  Keep in mind this is a forum for discussing game play, cheats, AI exploits, bugs, and future patches for a computer game.

For those who aren't yet aware, Cherub Blackmane has started a new role-playing thread in the Hall of Wonders for new and old players alike. Already an impressive cast has joined in, some new and a bit shaky, others old hands. All of course are welcome, and the old hands are happilly teaching the newwer ones.

The initial plot centers around a quest for a legendary item, the Stone of Polonius, and is led by Silent Hawk [Blackmane] - a monk of a secretive order who preach Enlightenment. Joining him, or considering it, are a wide range of characters from thieves and assassins to a knight paladin, a renegade seeress turned warrior, and a druid who's just trying to sort the whole thing out.

It's still the first night, the tale is just getting started, and already we've had death, robbery, and a broken skylight. And those are the nice things. Several sub-plots are swirling around that may end up spinning off into threads of their own. Hopefully this will grow into a fully fleshed world where many such stories can be played out, rather then just this one.

The ground rules are flexible, and though influenced by AoW and AoW2, the story itself is distinct from that story line, and is not neccessarily even bound to the Blessed Continent or it's world. It should all prove very interesting for anyone who enjoys RP, whether as a participant or merely a lurker reading along. So if you count yourself among that number, by all means journey to the Hall and "Come, Let us adore him"

[Mike Holmes]

Muds, MUSHs, MOOs...yes, this sort of thing has been done in spades. Just to be clear, we are talking about PBEM speed play, not Chat speed, right?

Skotos does something sorta like this. They provide the engine, and hire people to write the worlds up for them. Then people pay to play in the worlds in question. MMORPGs are also sorta related, though mostly automated in interface (their main limitation, and advantage).

Again, this is all chat speed or realtime. The ease of doing this as PBEM means that there wouldn't be much of a market. I think you'd have to provide some sort of services in addition to just the forum. There would presumably be the aformentioned setting material, but that's easily cribbed or replaced. Perhaps a resolution model (to improve upon the standard dice server). This substitutes for the system that you usually find. It should also handle chrgen and storage of the character stats in a handy format at a minimum.

What else can be added?

Truth be told, I've been working on something like this for my own use. But I've certainly though it would be cool if it could be made into a commercial venture. Just not sure that there's a market.

Mike

[xiombarg]

I was thinking more along the lines of roleplaying on a forum not unlike the one we're currently on... I'm familiar with the MUD, MOO, etc. scene from way back.

[Mike Holmes]

I understand that, but what I'm saying is that forum space is not hard to find. That's not a valuable commodity itself. Heck, with free Yahoogroups, whereby I am playing three games online right now, I get a database, a calendar, chat if I should need it, and places to store files.

So what is this new idea going to include that I don't already get there. As I said, the only thing I can see is setting material, but that's not exactly rare. One can just use Forgotten Realms or whatever they have lying about, or make their own. If you are going to charge, you are going to have to include some other game-specific functionality, IMO.

Mike

[jburneko]

My girlfriend participates in a forum based RPG that's based on extending the Harry Potter timeline past when all the characters have already graduated from Hogwarts.  It also, most definitely, has a system.  A system that's purely organizational but a system none the less.

First of all, there's a central moderator who started the thing and players had to 'try out' for the various parts.  I think this was done by submitting a character analysis essay plus your thoughts on what the post-graduate version of that character would be like.  My girlfriend landed the part of Hermione.

Second, I believe that you must agree to post 3 times a week or more.  If you don't you'll lose your part to someone else.

Next there are two types of posts, public and private.  But those terms apply to the CHARACTERS, not the PLAYERS.  That is, anything posted as 'private' is just the player posting the character's thoughts.  The other players are expected not to act on or react in character to this information.  The public posts are actions taken that are witnessed by other characters.  Thus players are allowed to have their characters react to the content in these posts.

Finally, a lot of the players will go into a chat room prior to posting and will 'block out' a scene down to actions and dialog.  Once the 'facts' of the scene have been established each player then goes and posts their 'in character' accounts of the events.

I think that last bit is very interesting because it shows that odd blur between RPGs and collaborative writing exercises.  What the public finally sees is definitely a role-playing exercise but it's roots were a collaborative writing exercise.

Anyway, I'd call that pretty rules intensive for a forum based RPG.

Hope that was interesting.

Jesse

[xiombarg]

[Post deleted because I dunno where it came from in the first place]

[blackmanxy]

I believe Mr. Mike Holmes is correct.  I've done a bit of forum-style RP myself (in fact, I helped run it after I'd been there a while), and I just don't think there's a market for it.  There are free message boards all over the 'Net (hell, people even use Livejournal to run games) and there's not a lot to set one dedicated to RPG's apart from the rest.

While "buying" the background and rules for a game would set it apart, I just don't think that many people would spend the money - at least not for a game they don't know more about than what the blurb tells them.  Really, I'd imagine that most people would rather play a game they know on a free message board than pay to play a new game.  Myself included.

There's also some practical questions.  Do you only have access to the ruleset as long as you maintain a membership in the forum?  If so, how do you keep people from just buying a minimum membership, swiping the rules and setting, and playing elsewhere?  Alternatively, do you just charge a one-time fee for access and the rules?  If that's the case, you're essentially just selling an indie-rpg online and use of the forum is just a nice perk rather than a selling point.

About all I can think of that would really work would be to set up a forum with extra features like dice-rolling and book-keeping utilities.  But even then, it's questionable whether people would pay for it.

One other thing to consider about forum roleplay is that, in some people's eyes, it's last-resort roleplaying.  Some people may very well prefer it (and there are even some things I prefer about it to table top or chatroom RP), but for a lot of hardcore roleplayers, it's the option you take when other forms of roleplaying aren't logistically possible.  When your schedule fluctuates too much for you to meet with people, even online, and you don't like the open-endedness of rp chatrooms that aren't directed by any kind of story (WW's rp rooms, for example), then forum roleplay or PBeM roleplay is your only option.  That's another thing - forum roleplay isn't fundamentally different than PBeM, especially if you use something like Yahoo! Groups to run your PBeM.

I just don't see it being a market worth exploring, not when there's so little you can do to make a forum better for roleplay than the many, many free alternatives.

[Blake Hutchins]

We tried EXACTLY this kind of forum/BB roleplaying with Tribes Roleplaying, and I put together a set of rules intended to facilitate just this sort of play.  The rules are basically Beta, and don't discuss terminology like social contracts and premise, since I didn't have that vocabulary at the time I and my partners in crime pulled the packet together.

FWIW, you can find our rules set here.  Go to Downloads and look for the Roleplaying Rules.  The other packets are all background.

Best,

Blake

[xiombarg]

While "buying" the background and rules for a game would set it apart, I just don't think that many people would spend the money - at least not for a game they don't know more about than what the blurb tells them.  Really, I'd imagine that most people would rather play a game they know on a free message board than pay to play a new game.  Myself included.

I ain't proposing actually doing this, I'm just throwing out the idea to see what people make of it.

That said, it's a simple fact that people will write more and better material if they're paid to do it. And if someone wants a lot of high-quality material on which to base a game, you have to pay for it, if only in the form of purchasing a novel. Part of what I'm doing is wondering how DIY the fora roleplaying community is... I notice a lot of such games are based on existing novels and/or comics, which implies people interested in detailed backgrounds you pay money for... How much would one pay for something dedicated to what you're doing?

That said, if I were going to do something like I'm talking about, it'd be a one-time fee, lifetime membership sort of thing, and the background material would be a downloadable PDF as well as HTML on the site, with extensive cross-referencing and link. The price range would be in the $1-$5 range, as long as I'm pulling details out of my bum.

[xiombarg]

We tried EXACTLY this kind of forum/BB roleplaying with Tribes Roleplaying, and I put together a set of rules intended to facilitate just this sort of play.  The rules are basically Beta, and don't discuss terminology like social contracts and premise, since I didn't have that vocabulary at the time I and my partners in crime pulled the packet together.

I guess the question is: How successful has this been? Are the fora popular? Do you think the materials would be different/better if people paid for it? WOULD people pay for it?

[Ring Kichard]

I think you'd have to fight the perception that it's amateurish. Maybe if you got a good layout of well-designed cardstock flyers, sold for $1, with a password and ID number as well as the URL and some teaser text for the game, you'd be able to sell it as something different. You could also sell $3 print world books. The world book could be a nicely laid out version of whatever you'd done on the site. I picture this as the sort of thing you'd sell at cons, and to whoever signs up for your game and really enjoys it (shipping, though, would suck).

All of this would be in support for whatever online comunity you started, of course.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Between e-mail and fora, these games are immensely popular in anime fandom. Go to http://www.anipike.com and go to the Roleplaying link and you'll find hundreds of these things. We're talking a huge group of people.

The question I have is how to turn this to my advantage. I should be in an ideal position with my shoujo manga RPG to take advantage of this phenomenon, but I find myself without the slightest clue how to reach them.

And I've just launched a mailing list for my new RPG's most popular setting, Ghost Tamer Miyaki, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ghosttamer/, so we'll be seeing if anybody who visits my website decides to join the list and participate. Who knows, I may get fanac yet!

[contracycle]

Well, I'd think that main virtue of a "live" as opposed "offline" game is that the world-design agents can be present and reactive.  What I mean is, a forum as just a forum is not a step change; a forum as a front end for, say, artists who do character sketches in a consistent style, build websites fro groups of characters, realise places through art - that woyuld be sufficiently different that it might be a new model.

So, your forum establishes a relationship with HeroMachine, commissions some specialist character components, and every PC and NPC is realised in that style, all findable by players.  When a new place is brought into play, it is accompanied by art.  Perhaps players can request vignette paintings of their achievements; perhaps that is part of the reward system.

IT is of course an information technology; henced the strengths to be maximised through it are going to be info-related: background calculations, spreadsheeting, art, random encounters (?) etc etc all run on a model more detailed and sophisticated than you can realistically do with with dice and tables.