It's hard to simulate a real world ticking clock unless you have a very active group who is willing to dedicate a window of time.
Best case scenario is probably to increase your DM update rate according to the expected post rate of the group. If they normally post 1~2 times per week, then give updates at twice to four times that rate, so that they feel a sense of urgency. The goal being that either the players temporarily increase their posting rate, or only part of the group has time to react between each update intervals.
Edit: You can also start rolling unmodified d20s at regular intervals to indicate that "something" is happening behind the scenes, and give no clues as to what's happening. (Most of the time, this might just be a bluff to make them worry.)
Just wondering if there is a free website anywhere that allowed you to pose questions and the person answering has a limited time to answer? Will have a hunt tomorrow if I have time but worth a look.
Alternative is you set for the email to send you a notification when opened and tell players they only have so many minutes after opening the email to send the reply. You would need to prewarn so they open when ready to go. They open it, you get a message telling the time email was opened, email has a send time on it when they send the response. If it is in time great, otherwise stuff happens.
I had a situation in a play-by-post where I had to track time, as well as build tension with a door being knocked down while townsfolk fled. The book said to attack the door every 15-20 seconds or to attack with a frequency that would build tension. I also needed to keep track of a patrol which would be back after a certain amount of time.
My method was to start each of my posts with time elapsed, mysterious number (door hit points), and people inside temple. Whenever someone posted I rolled damage for the door and rolled for people to leave the temple, and I added 6 seconds to the time elapsed. I would do this for each post which followed my last one, and then make my new post with the results. To reduce the harshness of the players increasing the time and reducing the door's hit points every time they posted I let reinforcing the door add hit points, and encouraging the people to leave added a bonus to how many fled per post. If no one posted in 24 hours I would have rolled some more dice and posted the results, but that did not happen.
It looked like this
I had players keeping watch for the patrol to return and others urging the townspeople to hurry. They may have just been looking for things to do while the numbers changed, but maybe they were feeling tension. It is probably not the greatest method, but it was an attempt.
In a PbP game, how do you instill ticking clock pressure?
There are a handful of adventures that say wait 60 seconds or count to 10 or similar.Is it possible to get that in a PbP?
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
It's hard to simulate a real world ticking clock unless you have a very active group who is willing to dedicate a window of time.
Best case scenario is probably to increase your DM update rate according to the expected post rate of the group. If they normally post 1~2 times per week, then give updates at twice to four times that rate, so that they feel a sense of urgency. The goal being that either the players temporarily increase their posting rate, or only part of the group has time to react between each update intervals.
Edit: You can also start rolling unmodified d20s at regular intervals to indicate that "something" is happening behind the scenes, and give no clues as to what's happening. (Most of the time, this might just be a bluff to make them worry.)
Just wondering if there is a free website anywhere that allowed you to pose questions and the person answering has a limited time to answer? Will have a hunt tomorrow if I have time but worth a look.
Alternative is you set for the email to send you a notification when opened and tell players they only have so many minutes after opening the email to send the reply. You would need to prewarn so they open when ready to go. They open it, you get a message telling the time email was opened, email has a send time on it when they send the response. If it is in time great, otherwise stuff happens.
I had a situation in a play-by-post where I had to track time, as well as build tension with a door being knocked down while townsfolk fled. The book said to attack the door every 15-20 seconds or to attack with a frequency that would build tension. I also needed to keep track of a patrol which would be back after a certain amount of time.
My method was to start each of my posts with time elapsed, mysterious number (door hit points), and people inside temple. Whenever someone posted I rolled damage for the door and rolled for people to leave the temple, and I added 6 seconds to the time elapsed. I would do this for each post which followed my last one, and then make my new post with the results. To reduce the harshness of the players increasing the time and reducing the door's hit points every time they posted I let reinforcing the door add hit points, and encouraging the people to leave added a bonus to how many fled per post. If no one posted in 24 hours I would have rolled some more dice and posted the results, but that did not happen.
It looked like this
I had players keeping watch for the patrol to return and others urging the townspeople to hurry. They may have just been looking for things to do while the numbers changed, but maybe they were feeling tension. It is probably not the greatest method, but it was an attempt.
Thanks for the suggestions =)
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale