Forum based games. How to actually run them?

I have tried to wrap my head around the strengths and drawbacks of forum based role playing. I do realise that my normal what to run a game would not really fit a forum.

As an example, I usually won't let my players carefully plan their actions when in combat, and letting the opponents idly wait on the gamers decisions. I more likely keep them stressed. That doesn't really work when it can take a day or two until the next reply.

Another example is that I like give information to the players in form of dialogue, or possible by having the players interrogate a NPC. Not by having a roll and a long monologue. So this would probably mean that a quick exchange of words, that would have been equally quick at a table game, might take weeks to carry out on a forum.

So for all of you that have been playing in a forum based game, either as narrator or player, how has combat and dialogue been handled? What strengths and drawbacks have you found in these regards? And of course other situations that anyone can think of when it comes to forum based games. :)

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Originally Posted by Cpt. Lundgren

So for all of you that have been playing in a forum based game, either as narrator or player, how has combat and dialogue been handled?

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Just to give you some insight to my experience, I used to run a gaming group that gathered every Monday night for my games for about 12 years. In 2003, I put my feet into the Forum based Play-by-post gaming method, as well, when I bought the CODA Lord of the Rings books. In 2004, we moved from Florida and so my Monday night group came to an end and I have never met any new players in my new home town. So, since 2003, my forum based games have fortunately been going strong and although there has been some player turnover, my core group has been together from the start, and it has been fantastic!

That said, gonna answer your questions.

Dialogue is handled like at a game table. It can be slower, but I find that you can expedite the conversations if you have a NPC in the party. It is also sometimes necessary to feed the players with information so that they know how to respond and the game doesn't stagnate.

Example from one of my games - 'And so, alone in the vast expanse of the Galaxy, the heroes must decide whether it is better to try and disappear completely, or to fight and win back the freedoms they once knew.'

The above stimulates conversation in the right direction for me, as GM, to know which direction they are gonna go, etc.

As far as combat goes, I have seen games that run one LONG thread as the story, and the combat flows within the one thread. To me this is tedious if you need to go back and reference a particular location, event, statement, etc. I instead break my games up into individual threads that revolve around a particular scene, and I break combat out further into individual combat rounds.

Each thread for combat, I start with the situation as it stands from the previous scene/round and the PC's perform their allowable actions that they can for that round in opposition of the bad guy NPC(s)/monster(s). It is just easier for me to see, and keep accounting of what is going on. The players will include little narrative blurbs with their actions and it works really well for our group. I will also summarize the situation in the beginning of the next round with narrative and dialogue.

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Originally Posted by Cpt. Lundgren

What strengths and drawbacks have you found in these regards?

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There is only one drawback that I can say - I miss throwing dice at the table, face to face with my friends. It was always fun to gather on Mondays with some beer, maybe a bottle of Wild Turkey, and pizza and game until midnight. PbP games do not allow for this obviously, unless you are playing via a net-based table and all the players gather to play at the same time - even then, it is not the same.

So, what are the strengths? Let me list them:

1) As GM, I am no longer rushed to have stuff ready for Monday night's. There is truly no pressure to gaming anymore. PbP gaming is much slower and everyone plays 'all the time, and when they can'. I know that sounds contradictory, but I sit down everyday, when I want to, and add something to my game - or maybe I don't that day. Point is, the game evolves a bit slower and as GM I have time to think of where the story is going and can do it at this pace, which is a lot less pressure. No longer do I need to have the night's bad guys, and challenges created before everyone gathers. Now, I generate when needed and at my pace.

2) Character development is incredible. Good players are able to really describe their PC's both physically and how they think. They can 'talk' like their PC might talk, whereas around a gaming table, players might be too embarrassed to get 'in character'. The players can give details of their PC's thoughts and emotions - it allows for romance, fears and hatreds, where again, players around a table might not get 'into character'.

3) Cut scenes! When you read a book, the writer takes you to different places and activities going on in the story that the reader needs to know to understand why things are happening. When I was around a table, as GM I never often used cut scenes to the evil mage's tower to give his intentions or describe his actions to defeat the players. In PbP, it adds so much flavor to the game to do this - with the players' understanding that what they read is not available for them to use in their narratives/dialogues. But it helps keep the story moving and it enriches it and broadens everyones' mental imagery.

4) More descriptive scenes and settings. The written word can create mental pictures that sometimes go unnoticed when gaming at a table due to all the small distractions that can be going on (i.e. eating food, making Monty Python jokes, etc.)

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Originally Posted by Cpt. Lundgren

And of course other situations that anyone can think of when it comes to forum based games. :)

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That is about it... if I come up with any other suggestions or pros/cons, I will add them. I do invite you to visit my site if you wanna get ideas on what is useful to have for players, or want to see how our games go.

I am currently running four games on the site:

Chronicles of the North - CODA Lord of the Rings
What Once Was - CODA Lord of the Rings
Run Silent, Run Deep - CODA Star Trek
Black Sun - d20 Star Wars Saga Edition

Here is the link:

http://rpg.avioc.org

Thank you Tomcat. Just the kind of input I was looking for :)

Another question. When it comes to OOC discussions, I finds it bit annoying to have it mixed with the IC/story when reading a forum game. It would be possible to keep anything OOC in another thread. But as a participant, would having it separated be annoying or confusing?

I only have my players post scene related, or character related OOC posts in a game thread - for all other chatter, I set up a General Discussion room. There have been times when I will move a conversation out of a story and let everyone know, and I will also delete unneeded OOC posts once the issues have been resolved. This helps to keep the story threads flowing with out extra jumble.

Just so you know, as I have tried to let everyone know, I am happy to host games on my forums.

I have already seen you mentioning it. But worth mentioning again :)

But if I decide to run something Trekish as a forum game, I will most likely do it here.

But I must admit that the main reason I am hesitant to run something is because english is a second language to me. On the other hand, my english is as good (or as poor :p) as my swedish.

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Originally Posted by Cpt. Lundgren

I have already seen you mentioning it. But worth mentioning again :)

But if I decide to run something Trekish as a forum game, I will most likely do it here.

But I must admit that the main reason I am hesitant to run something is because english is a second language to me. On the other hand, my english is as good (or as poor :p) as my swedish.

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You'll do just fine, Magnus. I am sure of it. And a lot of native speakers are kind of forgiving if you just try using english ;)

Over at Tomcat's site the crowed is really friendly! I never had problems with my english language skills nor were there any complaints (that I know of!) ;)

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Originally Posted by Cut

You'll do just fine, Magnus. I am sure of it. And a lot of native speakers are kind of forgiving if you just try using english ;)

Over at Tomcat's site the crowed is really friendly! I never had problems with my english language skills nor were there any complaints (that I know of!) ;)

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Actually, that is something I am not worried about at all. It is more about that typing can take a bit of time, as I do tend to forget words at times and have to work around that.

But that is one of the appeals of forum based games. It would be quite a good writing practice. :)

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Originally Posted by Cpt. Lundgren

But that is one of the appeals of forum based games. It would be quite a good writing practice. :)

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Indeed :)

It's always nice to have a package deal like practice and fun ;)

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Originally Posted by Cut

Indeed :)

It's always nice to have a package deal like practice and fun ;)

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That's the best kind :)

Cut, the questions above. What are your take on them, from your perspective?

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Originally Posted by Cpt. Lundgren

Cut, the questions above. What are your take on them, from your perspective?

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Difficult to say. I have mostly mastered games that we played in person.
And that didn't happen that often at all. I nearly never got to play at all. That changed mostly due to online games.
Recently I have been able to play in a few only games ('What Once Was' over at Tomcat's site had me as a player for a while, before real life issues forced me to withdraw) and I have been a part in a one shot first Level D&D 3.5 adventure over at a german RPG site.

As to your question: I really am impressed what a dedicated gamemaster can do with a virtual game. Tomcat, for example, has beautiful sourcematerial (Maps, character sheets, deck plans, illustrations, etc.) and I really like the pace the games move at. I feel very much the same, as Tomcat said above: The game moves along more slowly but more steadily than a game that you get together once or maybe twice a month, that will be cluttered up with some catching up and trash talk by the gamers ;)
In a forum you can post whenever you feel like it and can play together with people from all over the world. If you have good players and a strong storyteller as Gamemaster, this can give you awesome results. So, as it got me gaming, I think very highly of online PbP games.

Would I ever do something like that myself?
Well, right now my 'forum skills' aren't good enough to pull off a scenario with that kind of supporting materials that I think would be needed for a good looking and atmospheric campaign. Also, my narrative would't be as good in english as I think I could provide it in german.
So that's a no right now.

Then again, I haven't started preparing running an online game, although I questioned Tomcat more than once for advice and consider it every now and then. I see it as something of a long term challange :)

Right now, I don't even have the time to play in an online game, even at the slow paces that those move in, let alone set up and run a game myself.
I even would have to learn a few new skills just to pull things off at a decent level. But that would be worth it...

I figure that I will wet my hands one day with an online campaign of either Star Trek, Earthdawn or Hollow Earth Expedition (games I'd really like to play sooner than later...) but will then depend on helping hands and advice to pull that off. And I might shamelessly borrow from experiences and examples provided in those games I participated in until then!

Did I actually by accident answer any of your questions?;)

Edit:
In said LotR game over there, dialogue and combat worked really well.
I think this has to do more with the gamer quality and the quality of the story and how it is told, than with the actual way you use to tell that story.

Tomcat has a very vivid way of telling stories, that immediately draws you into the scene. That's quite a nice feat in a gamemaster I think.

He usually starts out a scene with some narrative that directly leads us, the gamers, into character roleplaying and interaction, meaning dialogue.
At this point, enter the good players. We have a bunch of people that really portray their characters and start interacting with the other characters and the environment as soon as possible, at least most of the time.

Actions of one character are being picked up and expanded upon by the other characters.
So the scene develops mostly by itself.

IIRC during a combat encounter (or even at the very beginning of one) there has been no real 'tactical session' so far, as to plan our attacks or efforts, at least no more than I would expect during a classical gaming session. In fact, maybe even less, as we aren't there, sitting around the same table, discussing multiple options face to face in a manner of seconds.

Maybe if you have players that start massive OOC ramblings during those times, these things might become an issue. In my experience so far, luckily this has never happened.

Thanks for the nice words, Cut! I am glad you liked the games and look forward to your return.

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Originally Posted by Cut

Would I ever do something like that myself?
Well, right now my 'forum skills' aren't good enough to pull off a scenario with that kind of supporting materials that I think would be needed for a good looking and atmospheric campaign. Also, my narrative would't be as good in english as I think I could provide it in german.
So that's a no right now.

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Hm... I tend to rely almost only on spoken word, and not much on using material that I present to the players. But I guess I tend to use my hands quite a bit. For example to explain how things are in relation to each other. That I need to translate to words, no matter of the language I use.

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Then again, I haven't started preparing running an online game, although I questioned Tomcat more than once for advice and consider it every now and then. I see it as something of a long term challange :)

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I do have a specific idea in mind myself. But still quite a lot of planning to do before it would be worth running anything.

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Right now, I don't even have the time to play in an online game, even at the slow paces that those move in, let alone set up and run a game myself.
I even would have to learn a few new skills just to pull things off at a decent level. But that would be worth it...

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Available time is something that worries me a bit. But I guess it can somewhat be managed by what kind of "episode" one is currently is running within a "series."

I hope your available time gets better soon, and that it is a good kind of busy, and not a bad one.

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Did I actually by accident answer any of your questions?;)

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Quite a few actually. Including one or two I have not asked yet :)

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Maybe if you have players that start massive OOC ramblings during those times, these things might become an issue. In my experience so far, luckily this has never happened.

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At a table, I tend to handle that either "Okay, you hesitated." Turning to the next player asking what they are doing. Or if everyone is arguing with each other, then a "And while you are arguing, they advances on your position." Rolling a few dices and turning towards one of the players, "two bullets hits your cover, right next to you, and you can feel the shock wave of one passing your head with a few centimeters." That tends to stop the OOC rambling. But if that happens at a forum game, then I don't have a clue on how to handle it.

Reviving this thread again... :)

One of the most common worries about running or participating in a forum based game seems to be lack of available time, and skip it to not risk letting everyone else down. That is actually my primary concern on running something myself. Writing in English do take a bit of extra time as I have to work a bit harder on grammar and spelling, and still quite annoying errors tend to slip through.

I have been toying more than once with the idea of running something with a co/assistant-gm. That way, even if life gets to hectic for a short while, the game would not grind to a halt because I am busy elsewhere.

If there is anyone who has experience, either as gm or player, from a game with more than one gm I am interested to hear how it worked. :)

I tried the Co-GM thing once with a long running Star Wars campaign. Truth be told, it was an unmitigated disaster. The campaign had been run by one guy who wrapped up the campaign with us surviving a narrow escape from the second death star. My friend and I tried to take up the mantel and keep the campaign going in the New Republic period and despite both loving the setting, we ended up having radically different ideas on how to run things. In addition, we had grown EXTREMELY attached to our PCs after an 18 month campaign and things just never worked well. My situation was obviously unique, but the Co-GMing went so bad, it ended up splitting our group and very hard feelings all around.

I'm running a forum-based game right now; my original plan was to at least give folks a minimum once/week response, but we're keeping up with a once/day pace and the game is running relatively smoothly.

I think the majority of my players are having fun. :)

As far as time goes, the GM has the most work to do, though a lot of that is off-forum (adventure creation/management, etc.). I find that I'm probably putting about a half-hour to an hour into posting over the course of a day (some posts take 2-3 minutes to write, some may take 10-15 minutes to write, depending on what you're doing at that point). I don't feel it's overwhelming.

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Originally Posted by Pericles

I tried the Co-GM thing once with a long running Star Wars campaign. Truth be told, it was an unmitigated disaster. The campaign had been run by one guy who wrapped up the campaign with us surviving a narrow escape from the second death star. My friend and I tried to take up the mantel and keep the campaign going in the New Republic period and despite both loving the setting, we ended up having radically different ideas on how to run things. In addition, we had grown EXTREMELY attached to our PCs after an 18 month campaign and things just never worked well. My situation was obviously unique, but the Co-GMing went so bad, it ended up splitting our group and very hard feelings all around.

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Ouch! That sounds like a good example of a worst case scenario... :eek:

I guess most of us GM's tend to have strong opinions and want to have a certain amount of creative control. Adding with having investment into the game as player as well tend to add to the mix.

The idea of what I am toying around with is probably better labeled as Main GM/assistant GM. That way, when it comes to disagreement, it is the main gm has the final say on what that goes. Still requires two people that can work together.

The setup would probably be something like this:
Main GM
More or less the traditional GM-role.

Assistant GM
Helps with bouncing ideas, come up with ideas, running some of the adventures, etc.

Player controlled NPCs
Important or interesting NPCs that are semi-controlled by others than the GM(s), but not by one of the normal players. To take an example, if the player characters are playing the main cast controlling DS9, those PC-NPCs could be characters as Gul Dukat, Garam, Martok and Quark. Sometimes the person having a PC-NPC participate in an adventure with no more information about the plot than the players, sometimes with "behind the scene" information, or maybe just controlled by a GM, but bouncing ideas to get better ideas on how the PC-NPC should react and what the character is up to.
My original idea for PC-NPC was when I was putting together a campaign, but one of the players was about to move to another city. So the idea was that he was to give input and ideas for a NPC, playing it a bitt more from a strategic point of view, and play when he was in Stockholm if it fitted in that the NPC showed up. Unfortunately, a breakup between two of the players lead to the game to die before it even had started, so I never got to try out the idea in practice. As it was a Trek game, one of the players was afraid I was going to let him play Q :p

Player Characters
The "normal players" of the campaign.

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Originally Posted by Sea Tyger

I'm running a forum-based game right now; my original plan was to at least give folks a minimum once/week response, but we're keeping up with a once/day pace and the game is running relatively smoothly.

I think the majority of my players are having fun. :)

As far as time goes, the GM has the most work to do, though a lot of that is off-forum (adventure creation/management, etc.). I find that I'm probably putting about a half-hour to an hour into posting over the course of a day (some posts take 2-3 minutes to write, some may take 10-15 minutes to write, depending on what you're doing at that point). I don't feel it's overwhelming.

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So I guess that if things would stack up, so you have to drop down to an one post per week schedule, then it would mean maybe a couple of hours per week to handle the posting.

Do you let the players handle some of the NPC reactions, or are the behavior of NPCs strictly controlled by you?

I can see a GM assistant GM thing working as you only would have the one head chef. I know my experience is an example of 'Don't let this happen to you' but you did ask if anyone had any experience with Co-GMing. I guess the secret to making it work is having a solid understanding up front with whoever you are working with, something I most manifestly did not.

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Originally Posted by Pericles

I know my experience is an example of 'Don't let this happen to you' but you did ask if anyone had any experience with Co-GMing.

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I did, and your answer is helpful. I didn't take it as a "don't do it, it will never work", but a "be careful, this is what happened to us and here is a bit of the background" :)

I hope my train wreck helps you avoid the same.

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Originally Posted by Pericles

I hope my train wreck helps you avoid the same.

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The good thing about learning from others mistakes is that one get the option to invent new ones :p

Back in my teens, a friend and I took turns in being the GM for a unspecific/general fantasy setting. Thinking back on it, the setting did take quite strange twists depending on who was running it for the moment. But fortunately we didn't care about that. But we did have more than one heated argument about the rules. Sometimes they was heated enough for us to be mad at each other for a couple of days.

Something that did fascinate me even back then was that the opinion followed "the chair" and not the person.

I wrote this last year about how to run play-by-post campaigns and it has been generally well-received.

As for co-GMing...it works if you have two things. First, one GM who is in charge. Second, the GM who is in charge let's the assistant/guest GM do their thing. :) That's the trick with it. I have a few play-by-post campaigns which are pretty expansive and I have let players GM aspects of it and given them free rein within limited areas. You have some who follow the ground rules and really help take the weight off the GM and some who don't follow the ground rules, but it's no big deal. I do have time limits on how long someone serves as assistant/guest GM a month with play-by-post and that limits the damage the problematic ones can cause, though sometimes a little chaos is good for a campaign for GM and players. :)

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Originally Posted by Cpt. Lundgren

So I guess that if things would stack up, so you have to drop down to an one post per week schedule, then it would mean maybe a couple of hours per week to handle the posting.

Do you let the players handle some of the NPC reactions, or are the behavior of NPCs strictly controlled by you?

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I try to run the NPC-side of the conversation, usually because it allows me to impart some story-advancing information when needed. :) However, I do give some latitude to non-mission-related conversations with NPC subordinates within the PC's department. (Character development is good. :) )

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Originally Posted by Cut

I figure that I will wet my hands one day with an online campaign of either Star Trek, Earthdawn or Hollow Earth Expedition (games I'd really like to play sooner than later...) but will then depend on helping hands and advice to pull that off...

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Little bit o' drift. Hey Cut, if you ended up running Hollow Earth, I would happilly set something up on the Mythic Eras forums for that. (http://mythiceras.net, I'm Harrier there.)

Back OT, I haven't run any online games myself, but am likely to start soon as well. I think I've learned a fair amount just reading Tomcat's stuff :) I'm faced with the additional issues of my friends being relative computing neophytes (to say nothing of forums), so we'll see how that goes. One of the reasons I really want to do it, is that I really prefer a more naturalistic, improv style (which I've always employed at the table), and that becomes easier when you have the luxury of time afforded by PbP.