Play-By-Post Autopsy
Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2015 12:03 am
I've Mister Cavern'd a couple PbPs on the Den, which people have largely enjoyed. The most popular have been:
Back to Basics (AD&D 2nd) IC / OOC
Shadows Over Stygia (Conan d20/Call of Cthulhu d20) IC / OOC
Crypts of Chaos (d20 3.+) IC / OOC
What I'd like to do, in this thread, is to take a look at each one and try to see what worked, what didn't work, and if possible why it did or didn't work.
Now, the general problem with PbPs is that they tend to run long, and it's hard to hold interest, so eventually they just peter out (or lurch around in undead fashion, one or two players still posting while others drop off the face of the internet). I would consider these three games largely successful because there was an ending, and most if not all of the players managed to make it through to the ending. Now, the individual endings might not have always been great, but they were usually sufficient, which I think is important. The dungeons might not all have been explored to 100% completion, but the dungeons were crawled. Big Bads were slain. Key objectives were met.
On my particular MC style - I like to think that in general I am a very accommodating MC. I want my players to have a good time, and I want them to contribute to the game and even the game world. I don't usually like to get into one of those situations where there is only one right way out of any given situation, and I think the points of greatest weakness in my game has been those situations were I sometimes have been a little too literal and unforgiving about PCs stuck in not great-situations. On the other hand, some players seem to like it when traps and fights are extremely brutal. But I think in general the ability to work with players on what their characters do helps keep the game moving, and posting.
I don't do much with maps or illustrations. I probably could do more, but it's a lot of effort and I almost prefer describing the scene as accurately as I can. A large part of this has to do with my open sandbox/pull-it-out-of-my-ass approach to MCing. I like to give players great freedom in what their characters do, and adjust the plot of the game to fit. I have some events and particular locations laid out, but I don't always go into the trouble of working up elaborate maps that are correct down to the in-game inch (the large exception being Back to Basics, which started life as an auto-generated dungeon which I then modified with generous helpings of flavor text.) One of the benefits of this is that I can work a plot to fit the players' plans, but still find ways to throw them a curve ball or work in an event/location/NPC I really wanted them to interact with - such as the fat princess in Shadows Over Stygia.
One thing I do try to be very stringent about, however, is that any rules that apply to the PCs also apply to my NPCs. So in Crypts of Chaos, this involved some occasionally-unsubtle muckings about with the way magic worked - I tried to be as consistent as possible, and the same things that handicapped the PCs also handicapped the NPCs (sometimes moreso, because the PCs pulled a few tricks I didn't expect).
Anyway, thoughts welcome, but I'm going to do a post each on Crypts of Chaos, Shadows Over Stygia, and Back to Basics over the next few days.
Back to Basics (AD&D 2nd) IC / OOC
Shadows Over Stygia (Conan d20/Call of Cthulhu d20) IC / OOC
Crypts of Chaos (d20 3.+) IC / OOC
What I'd like to do, in this thread, is to take a look at each one and try to see what worked, what didn't work, and if possible why it did or didn't work.
Now, the general problem with PbPs is that they tend to run long, and it's hard to hold interest, so eventually they just peter out (or lurch around in undead fashion, one or two players still posting while others drop off the face of the internet). I would consider these three games largely successful because there was an ending, and most if not all of the players managed to make it through to the ending. Now, the individual endings might not have always been great, but they were usually sufficient, which I think is important. The dungeons might not all have been explored to 100% completion, but the dungeons were crawled. Big Bads were slain. Key objectives were met.
On my particular MC style - I like to think that in general I am a very accommodating MC. I want my players to have a good time, and I want them to contribute to the game and even the game world. I don't usually like to get into one of those situations where there is only one right way out of any given situation, and I think the points of greatest weakness in my game has been those situations were I sometimes have been a little too literal and unforgiving about PCs stuck in not great-situations. On the other hand, some players seem to like it when traps and fights are extremely brutal. But I think in general the ability to work with players on what their characters do helps keep the game moving, and posting.
I don't do much with maps or illustrations. I probably could do more, but it's a lot of effort and I almost prefer describing the scene as accurately as I can. A large part of this has to do with my open sandbox/pull-it-out-of-my-ass approach to MCing. I like to give players great freedom in what their characters do, and adjust the plot of the game to fit. I have some events and particular locations laid out, but I don't always go into the trouble of working up elaborate maps that are correct down to the in-game inch (the large exception being Back to Basics, which started life as an auto-generated dungeon which I then modified with generous helpings of flavor text.) One of the benefits of this is that I can work a plot to fit the players' plans, but still find ways to throw them a curve ball or work in an event/location/NPC I really wanted them to interact with - such as the fat princess in Shadows Over Stygia.
One thing I do try to be very stringent about, however, is that any rules that apply to the PCs also apply to my NPCs. So in Crypts of Chaos, this involved some occasionally-unsubtle muckings about with the way magic worked - I tried to be as consistent as possible, and the same things that handicapped the PCs also handicapped the NPCs (sometimes moreso, because the PCs pulled a few tricks I didn't expect).
Anyway, thoughts welcome, but I'm going to do a post each on Crypts of Chaos, Shadows Over Stygia, and Back to Basics over the next few days.