Fizzled online play (split from Year of the Rat)

[Christopher Weeks]

If anyone's keeping track, this game appears to be officially dead.  It's my second attempt to play in an online Sorcerer game that went through the character creation process and seemed ready to kick into real play then just stopped.

I wonder what the key elements to setting up a successful online game are.

Chris

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Chris,

Yeah, I'm left wondering that myself. I think if left to do it over I would do all the prep in person or over the phone. That up front time leaves a heavy toll on the game, IMO. I also think the normal gelling that takes place live is much harder to achieve in a forum setting, especially without a really dedicated core. In our case, I think a really dedicated group was lacking. We had so much lag between people's involvement that it just wasn't sustainable.

-Tim

[sirogit]

I'm not really sure how many online Sorcerer games there has beeen. I know of Razing Arizona, which seems quite successfull.

http://rpol.net/rpol/game.cgi?gi=1418&gn=Razing+Arizona+%5BSorcerer%5D&date=1068004786&wn=1

And my game, which has started about a month ago.

http://www.playbyweb.com/horror2.php?_b=7454

I'd say there's possibly a few obstacles to online Sorcerer games not related to flaking out... most paticularly, combat was designed as sort of a group creation process which is hard to synchronize with long delays behind interaction... Or maybe in my implention of it...

I think it'd be much better as something where the GM alone designs the setting, etc, are the players have a very clear an obvious avenue of participation.

What exactly would be your opinion on why it failed?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

The above posts were split from Year of the Rat.

Best,
Ron

[Lxndr]

I didn't watch the Year of the Rat game, so I can't say much in regards to it, but online play (especially non-real-time play) is rather prone to fizzling.  Having run one of two still-running Sorcerer play by post games, I'm one of the few experts in this forum.

(I know of at least three online sorcerer games: my own Razing Arizona, the other rpol Sorcerer game that was started up a while back but got cancelled when the GM lost his job and net connection, and Year of the Rat.  I didn't know about sirogit's - sirogit, why playbyweb?  I found it more cumbersome than rpol)

Some of the issues with online play are completely independent of system - Tim has it right in that you need a rather dedicated group, which paradoxically is hard to find in a lot of online play (after all, a lot of online play is from people who "don't have the time" for any other kind, and thus are continually distracted).  You really need two or three people at any one time, actively posting.  I'm really fearing the holiday season, because that's when, historically, the largest gap in posting tends to be.

In some ways, Sorcerer is better for that than other games, because it strongly eschews the "party format."  If you have four people who need to react to EACH EVENT between narrations, it's harder to move forward.  Having separate-but-interlaced storylines that touch through secondary characters and the occasional scene is a positive with Sorcerer and running games online.

I try very hard to post 2-3 times a week at Razing Arizona, and I have a number of dedicated players who post at least as often - and when someone doesn't post, the other threads are still able to move forward.  We've managed to survive the death of one player's participation, and are integrating his replacement (Tim Alexander, actually), as well as smaller things like one person needing to take a break from posting for what amounted to two weeks.

Although my "pre-game roundtable" wasn't as round-table-ish as I'd hoped (future games I might try to do at least the roundtable on IRC or some such real-time-chat network), we still managed to get stuff done and work off one another.  A strong GM participation helps.

Although right now the only combats that I've run have been with one player and NPCs, I haven't had much of an issue with the implementation.  I'm not waiting for godot before rolling dice, though - I'm under the general assumption that the player has had time to think about his response, and thus is less likely to change it than in a face-to-face game.  So far, that has not steered me wrong.

[Christopher Weeks]

Ron: thanks for the split.

Sirogit: I'm not sure about the precise details between the other three players (who all know each other in the meat) but I understand it was a time issue.  Tim was running it, so maybe he'll comment more.  I know that two of the players were serious enough to acquire copies of Sorcerer (though there was some serious delivery lag) just for this game and it seemed like we were done with the setup and ready to roll and then nothing happened for a few weeks and Tim declared it dead in response to a question I posted.

Lxnder: Interestingly, I missed any opportunity for Razing Arizona by just a bit, being a newbie, and I passed on sirogit's because I'm pretty unfamiliar with the period and had the other game going.  But I was in both of the two recent rpol games that failed.  (Geez...do I offend? :-)  I even looked at RA again when they needed a fill-in player and decided not to bite since there wa a lot of reading and my hands were full with the other game(s).

I think the largest time issue must be dealing with slow pacing.  I like the idea of Play By Post specifically because I can attend to it a little bit here and there, rather than setting aside a four or eight hour block every week.  

I'd be interested to hear from anyone who's run a game like this, how they: chose players, did the pre-game prep, addressed any special problems encountered with the system/venue combination (like combat), set pacing expectations for the players, and kept things moving.  And also, what special roles (if any) did the players play in keeping things on track, active and exciting.  For anyone who has run Sorcerer PBP and F2F (and even live-chat), what were the differences as far as GMing requirements?

And finally, if anyone out there is thinking of starting a PBP game that they intend to see through to play -- come hell or high water, keep me in mind.    It's tough for me to set aside a periodic meet, but I always have time here and there and I'll not neglect the game.

thanks all,

Chris

[Lxndr]

I already answered a number of your questions in my earlier post, but to answer the other ones:

1.  How I chose players.  I started by asking two people who I'd played with before, and who were good contributors to the play-by-email games we'd shared (one of them, coincidentally, my girlfriend).  I then advertised on indie-netgaming, and finally found the last person in the #rpgnet IRC chat of all places.

Unfortunately, the rpg.net character is the one who wound up having to drop out, but I don't blame him.

2.  How I did the pre-game prep:  Well, I had an idea before I even started looking for players, and wrote it up so I'd have it to present to potential players.  Besides that, really, just go to my game (Razing Arizona, url posted earlier) and read the "Pre-Game Roundtable."  That's how I did the majority of pre-game prep, right there, the entire conversation more-or-less enshrined.

3.  I already said earlier how I handle Sorcerer combat.  In general for Sorcerer resolution, I wait for all declared actions, and then I roll all the dice for everyone at once (adding in bonus dice at that time).  Keeps things simple, and RPOL's dice-roller allows me to differentiate easily.

4.  How I keep things moving:  by posting, especially in the OOC room if nobody's posting.  

5.  What roles did the players play?  They just have to post too, and they usually do.  I also try to encourage OOC kibbitzing, but that's not happening too majorly as of yet.

6.  PBP and FTF?  Haven't done it yet, so I have to waive this question.  I can speak about PBP vs FTF more broadly, but not in re: Sorcerer in particular.

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Folks,

I think in our game it was a combination of things. It originally started with a group of four players, three of whom I knew previously, and Chris. I think that in the beginning everyone was pretty excited about the game, but at least a couple of the players were gunshy to do any posting without having a copy of the rules in hand. I feel like this sort of created a moving target of enthusiasm for the game itself. At any given point we had a couple of people who were active, posting, and genuinely enthused. The other folks seemed to be nowhere to be seen during those periods. While that might be functional during the game, I feel like it was pretty murderous for the prep sessions. As a note, to his credit, Chris was pretty much always part of posting group.

Additionally, I personally found the roundtable in general pretty frustrating. It seemed that most of the things that I really like about roundtables in the meat are lacking in the online format. I wasn't able to get a good feel for whether everyone was on the same page, and especially if I as GM was getting at what the players really wanted. The shared vision that clicks for me in person, just didn't online. That said, I think that can be achieved successfully; I think Alex and the Razing Arizona folks have done a pretty good job of exactly that.

We lost a player early on, and in the final prep wrap up it seemed that we had lost another. I got a very strong vibe that people, or at least not enough people, didn't have the time to really commit to the game. I was pretty frustrated and rather than try to keep together a game with two players and a frustrated GM, it was better to just let it die.

-Tim

[Mike Holmes]

I've been in two Sorcerer games online that fizzled early. All this says to me is that Sorcerer is about par for the course with all other games. That is, I definitely think that it's just the proclivity for online games to fail that's at fault here.

I can't put my finger on it, but some games online get off the ground and go, and others don't. What makes one successful, and another not? I wish I knew.

I'd say that Sorcerer has a better than average chance of working for several reasons. Maybe 60% instead of a theoretically average 50%. So I'd try again if I were you. One failed game is just typical, and not indicative of any particular problems, I think. If you like online gaming, you just have to get back on the horse, and accept that it might fail again. And it might. You just have to keep on trying.

Whether or not that makes it seem to not be worthwhile is something that only you can work out. But, IMO, there's no way to garuntee a game will happen. I've started games with very good and trustworthy players that just fizzled. I think it's just something that you have to accept if you want to play online games.

Mike

[Calithena]

I've had a PBeM (not Sorcerer though) going for three years straight, with very loyal and reliable players.

I call breaks periodically to keep myself fresh so that things don't get stale (and because it's a ton of work).

I try to get people interested by providing a lot of evocative setting detail (but no maps!) up front, and keep them interested by constantly re-weaving their characters' stories with one another and with NPCs they've gravitated to in the surroundings, so they're always curious to find out what's coming next.

It's a lot of work, though. One thing that's helped the PBeM's I've been involved with is letting in, say, two or three more people then you're planning on actually running for. If you do too good a job then you may have a slightly unmanageable game, but if the usual number disappear then you'll still have one once things settle down. Also, sometimes extra-large is good: when one or two players get too busy in life to post the others can take up their slack.

One BIG trick I've used, that's helped a lot, is allowing posting in 'back-time'. That way when one PC is really interested in one NPC, or a few PCs want to go to the library, or something, you just do those scenes in tandem with moving the story forward. When the story comes to a crisis point you have to call this to a halt, but it allows more room for individual role-playing, setting-exploration, and story-creation (whichever is your players' bag) on your players' part without being a drag on the whole group.

Similarly, the 'feel' of a ruleset is much more important than the details in a PBeM, because of the slow pace. Systems that are too clunky for me to ever enjoy running them for more than two or three people at the tabletop also often work out well during PBeM: HackMaster for example is no slower than Fantasy Trip for resolution when it's all going back and forth with 1-2 rounds every 2-3 days.

[sirogit]

Lxnder: I didn't really consider the different places very much, I just picked playbyweb and ran with it. I think I might have glanced at rpol.net but thought "Well, there seems to be some good people coverin' the sorcerer base. great." There are a few reasons I would consider using Rpol next time, being:

1)Seems easier to use
Is the die rolling system pretty good? I'm thinking of using a different online die roller myself.  

2)Larger user base
Though I'm not sure if saying so would be accurate, it seems like alot of the user base on rpol is focused on DnD with a speckle of White wolf games, that is to say, moreso than gaming at large, which is quite abit.  Is that a misconception?
For the most part, the real life gamers I know don't really have convient internet access(Strange, no?). Therefore a good place to advertise the game is rather important.  

On the roundtable: Has anyone run what they would consider a successfull Sorcerer roundtable? Personally I would consider either having an IRC roundtable, or the roundtable limited to players' submission of certain key elements.  

One thing I've struggled with is the concept of initial communication with players, paticularly the scared/unitereasted/missassumption factor. It's much harder to deal with than in a face-to-face situation because you can't respond to specific concerns as quickly. For example, when I say demons, the players seemed to think "Biblical devils", and when I responded that "Demons is any extremely customizable concept", they seemed to think "Biblical demons with one of those mid90'smovies twist." . I think if I ran another game, I would start ouut with calling demons something different.

Genre seems to be kind of a stumbling block for people too, I tried a "Here's a vague concept, what does it make you think of?" approach, and alot of people seemed to think in terms of convention, i. e. Unusual period setting = Historical simulation. Modern = Armed to to the teeth swat team members blazing holes into terrorists. Fantasy = magic missles as guns.

I think having more players would probably help things as well. Both because of the format, it's easier to to support that many, it would increase the amount of "action", and it seems quite beneficial to have a safety net.

[Lxndr]

RPOL:

1.  I love the dice-roller, especially since I talked the owner into putting in a "Sorcerer" dice option that sorts the dice from highest to lowest (useful for other games as well).

2.  I didn't actually recruit any of my gamers from RPOL, but it seems as if RPOL is divided into three categories: the Freeformers, the D&Ders, and Everyone Else.  With EE being the smallest category, but still pretty large.  Instead, I recruited here.  But I've seen RPOL games using a lot of things, from T&T to Toon to Marvel to Orpheus to Unknown Armies.  I don't believe I'd have any trouble finding players.

3.  I believe I have run a successful roundtable.  I think there's a lot of room for improvement, but I don't believe it was "non-successful."

4.  The issue with Sorcerer about the misconception of demons is a strong one regardless of whether or not it's online or not.  "Demon" = "biblical demon" is a really big stumbling block to get over.

I haven't had an issue with genre expectations mixing, though.  As you can see, my game's clearly a modern day game, but nobody's anywhere close to armed-to-the-teeth.