Forum based games. How to actually run them?

[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.

[Cpt. Lundgren]

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.

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

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

Player Characters
The "normal players" of the campaign.

[Cpt. Lundgren]

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.

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?

[Pericles]

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.

[Cpt. Lundgren]

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 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"

[Pericles]

I hope my train wreck helps you avoid the same.

[Cpt. Lundgren]

I hope my train wreck helps you avoid the same.

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

[Cpt. Lundgren]

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.

[Kirk Johnson-Weider]

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.

[Sea Tyger]

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 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. )

[Sho-sa Kurita]

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...

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.