OK, so I know I'm not the first person to say something like this, but I have just finished up my first couple of conflicts in the first DitV game I've played in (which I'm also GM'ing), and I am totally blown away. The game is a play-by-forum supernatural Western survival horror game using DitV with a few house rules from Afraid. You can check it out here if you like.

I've been playing play-by-forum games for about five years, and I have never had a play experience like I've had so far with this game. It has been the best written nd probably the most satisfying gameplay I've had in forum gaming yet. Truly awesome.

I'll tell you a couple of things that work particularly well:

- The mechanics are always ramping up the tension in a conflict. Building tension during a fight is usually difficult in forum games. To take d20 as a classic example, combat almost always devolves into a long tedium of number crunching, and it can literally take weeks of real time to finish a fight. By the time it's finished, no one really cares about the results. With DitV, we're always escalating, and with every Raise or See, the player has narrative control over the story and a great deal of creative freedom. We finished our first conflict in just two days of real time (a blink of an eye in forum gaming). Awesome.

- The narrative focus and Raise/See mechanic gets everybody's creative juices flowing, and the conflicts take wild, unexpected turns.

- Group NPCs. What a concept! In our first conflict, the three PCs thwarted a bank robbery by three NPCs. The mechanics went sooo smooth with the Group NPCs. It was just the right level of challenge, and it kept everything really nicely organized. Kudos to you for this one, Vincent. Great work.

So, thanks very much, Vincent, for a truly awesome gaming experience.

Thank you, Archer. You're kind.

-Vincent

I am a player in the afore mentioned PbP game, and I can't agree more with Archer's assessment of the mechanics and fluid nature that the DitV system has brought to forum based play. I play in several online games and few of them captivate me as much as DitV has. I seldom have to reference my character sheet to know what the character is or has become! I don't know how else to put it, the character is ... well... surprising me with ever post. Spooky isn't it?

Yes, Kudos and thanks very much! Got my money's worth with this forum game alone.

The Bane