I have some friends from work, we all want to play, but our schedules for play rarely sync up. I thought of attempting play-by-post over discord. For the sake of ease (as far as creating content), I was planning on running an official module(LMoP). I plan on using Avrae and a few aliases to make things smoother.
Has anyone here ever done it (any modules)? What did you think? What advice would you give?
I've done Tomb of Annihilation and Rime of the Frostmaiden as Discord PbPs. I also run my own homebrew campaign as a partial PbP. I use Avrae and integrate the DDB dice roller. Here are my impressions:
1. That format allows for really fun secrets between DM and individual players that a normal game doesn't support. If you make private channels for each player, you can have whole subplots going that nobody else knows about, including secret rolls and insights. Cuts down metagaming, too.
2. If your group likes to roleplay, you can have separate channels devoted to side conversations that don't affect the narrative.
3. Combat over PbP is painfully slow. Depending on how active your players are, you could be dead in the water for hours or even days waiting on someone's Dex save or turn. Prepare for that.
4. Avrae is really convenient for game information lookups (like spells and conditions and monster stats, etc.) and makes DMing combat easier because you can just type in the command for a werewolf bite and it calculates everything including damage in one go. That said...Avrae gets "stuck" on certain numbers and is far from random a lot of times. Many of my players prefer to use the character sheet roller instead. Having both available is nice.
5. Prepare maps/visuals for your players. Unless you are very descriptive with your narration, it's extremely easy to get confused or lost in combat/exploration without something to look at as a reference.
6. Have an out-of-character channel for game-related questions (like "how far is the dragon from me?" or "I'd like to cast Suggestion on the guard") and general banter. Helps declutter things. Also, having an initiative tracker channel helps players know who's on deck in combat when they've been offline for a while.
7. Finally, social encounter scenes can really get away from you, especially if you have a group that likes to roleplay. Be aware that you might have to impose a posting freeze or slowdown so that offline players don't get left in the dust.
Hope that helps! I really loved my Discord games; with the right group, it can be a truly fulfilling game experience.
Thanks for the detailed reply. I have already done some of those things and imposed some rules to correct issues, like pinging players if it's their turn and having a 24 respond time rule. It really helps in combat, and if they don't respond, the default is that they take the dodge action. Thanks for the insight.
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I have some friends from work, we all want to play, but our schedules for play rarely sync up. I thought of attempting play-by-post over discord. For the sake of ease (as far as creating content), I was planning on running an official module(LMoP). I plan on using Avrae and a few aliases to make things smoother.
Has anyone here ever done it (any modules)? What did you think? What advice would you give?
~ May all your rolls Crit ~
I've done Tomb of Annihilation and Rime of the Frostmaiden as Discord PbPs. I also run my own homebrew campaign as a partial PbP. I use Avrae and integrate the DDB dice roller. Here are my impressions:
1. That format allows for really fun secrets between DM and individual players that a normal game doesn't support. If you make private channels for each player, you can have whole subplots going that nobody else knows about, including secret rolls and insights. Cuts down metagaming, too.
2. If your group likes to roleplay, you can have separate channels devoted to side conversations that don't affect the narrative.
3. Combat over PbP is painfully slow. Depending on how active your players are, you could be dead in the water for hours or even days waiting on someone's Dex save or turn. Prepare for that.
4. Avrae is really convenient for game information lookups (like spells and conditions and monster stats, etc.) and makes DMing combat easier because you can just type in the command for a werewolf bite and it calculates everything including damage in one go. That said...Avrae gets "stuck" on certain numbers and is far from random a lot of times. Many of my players prefer to use the character sheet roller instead. Having both available is nice.
5. Prepare maps/visuals for your players. Unless you are very descriptive with your narration, it's extremely easy to get confused or lost in combat/exploration without something to look at as a reference.
6. Have an out-of-character channel for game-related questions (like "how far is the dragon from me?" or "I'd like to cast Suggestion on the guard") and general banter. Helps declutter things. Also, having an initiative tracker channel helps players know who's on deck in combat when they've been offline for a while.
7. Finally, social encounter scenes can really get away from you, especially if you have a group that likes to roleplay. Be aware that you might have to impose a posting freeze or slowdown so that offline players don't get left in the dust.
Hope that helps! I really loved my Discord games; with the right group, it can be a truly fulfilling game experience.
Thanks for the detailed reply. I have already done some of those things and imposed some rules to correct issues, like pinging players if it's their turn and having a 24 respond time rule. It really helps in combat, and if they don't respond, the default is that they take the dodge action. Thanks for the insight.
~ May all your rolls Crit ~