I was thinking about joining or running a Discord play by post game so I went to the Play-By-Post forum to gain some insight on how to run such a game, and everything looks so, well, uncoordinated.
Like I see these threads where I cant even tell who the DM is because it seems like every player has control over NPCs and the scene.
I thought a PBP game would be run something like this:
DM Describes Scene
Player 1 posts action/response
Player 2 posts action/response
Player 3 posts action/response
etc
DM resolves Actions
DM Describes Next Scene
But this is not what I am seeing when I am looking through these posts..
It largely depends on how the game is set up, but generally speaking you'll see players having way more control over the environment than in a conventional tabletop RPG, especially DnD. I played in a lot of PbPs in the early aughts, and generally speaking the "GMs" (because there were always several) were more like forum moderators. They came up with the setting for the game, outlining the different locations you could go to, and would play a few key NPCs, but generally speaking they would step in only when requested to resolve a dispute between players. Players were free to come up with and control incidental NPCs for a scene (e.g. waitstaff in a teahouse) and even contested rolls between players didn't require GM intervention as long as they were using a system that allowed all parties to see the rolls (e.g. roll20). This allows for much larger player bases - going into the dozens.
(Of course, many PBPs don't use rolling mechanics at all and are purely narrative-based, but that's a different beast.)
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I was thinking about joining or running a Discord play by post game so I went to the Play-By-Post forum to gain some insight on how to run such a game, and everything looks so, well, uncoordinated.
Like I see these threads where I cant even tell who the DM is because it seems like every player has control over NPCs and the scene.
I thought a PBP game would be run something like this:
But this is not what I am seeing when I am looking through these posts..
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Here's a pretty basic example of how I have run a PBP here on the forums. I thought it went fairly well and was pretty clear.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/play-by-post/15526-stellarium-of-the-vinteralf
Okay yeah that seems much more clear and in keeping with how I thought a PBP game would be run. Thank you!
Check out my Homebrew Magic Items
It largely depends on how the game is set up, but generally speaking you'll see players having way more control over the environment than in a conventional tabletop RPG, especially DnD. I played in a lot of PbPs in the early aughts, and generally speaking the "GMs" (because there were always several) were more like forum moderators. They came up with the setting for the game, outlining the different locations you could go to, and would play a few key NPCs, but generally speaking they would step in only when requested to resolve a dispute between players. Players were free to come up with and control incidental NPCs for a scene (e.g. waitstaff in a teahouse) and even contested rolls between players didn't require GM intervention as long as they were using a system that allowed all parties to see the rolls (e.g. roll20). This allows for much larger player bases - going into the dozens.
(Of course, many PBPs don't use rolling mechanics at all and are purely narrative-based, but that's a different beast.)
"We're the perfect combination of expendable and unkillable!"