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Hi All,

I've only ever run RPGs face to face and although I have a great gaming group we only meet up on Fridays and often cancel. With my current contract of employment coming to an end tomorrow (!) I'd like to try something new and I've heard it mentioned occasionally that TOR makes for a great play-by-post game. Not knowing where to start on this I was wondering if anyone here could give me advice, what they use, and generally how to go about it. Also the idea I have is to run the game with people here, using the Actual Play sub-forum (if possible) with anyone that would like to play it - ideally 4 to 6 players + me as LM.

Any thoughts/opinions?

Rich

Is your idea to play with meetings online via Skype/Google Hangouts, etc?
Or do you want to post a message in the forum, wait for everyone to answer during the following week, post again the result of the player's actions, etc.?

I'm LMing a MERP adventure of the second type in a spanish forum. If you haven't had any experience with this kind of play-by-forum, I can only say that everyone has to be very patient. Short adventures are best, because they expand a lot in real time. You don't have to play every action or sentence of a dialog, like you do in face to face games. In my experience, it's better if the LM has the freedom to "autoplay" the characters in some scenes until important choices show up. Also, the LM should give the players the freedom to come up with scenes, NPCs and situations in their posts that make the story evolve and advance.

It's more about constructing a story all together than rolling dices and succeeding at tasks.

If you're planning on the second type of play, and you don't mind it, I'd like to be part of it.

Hi Falenthal,

Yes, I was thinking more of the second kind of game rather than the first as I already have a face-to-face group so want to try a style of play that is quite different from a 'standard' style. I think TOR would lend itself to more of a 'literary' type game where we can consider responses and write longer style posts rather than blow by blow accounts.

I really don't have much of a clue as to how to go about setting it up and executing it though but you're welcome to play if it does come to fruition!

Rich: my opinion is that it's great. I can give you links to actual play if you want, though I think you have some of the one's I'm in: http://torrpg1.proboards.com/board/1/general-board

I think the biggest challenges are:
-determining when a session begins and ends for the purposes of resetting fellowship pool
-realizing, if you are the LM, you will sometimes have to drive the story with a stronger hand than otherwise needed in face to face play.
-cut out the dead weight if they are not participating
-get a good die-rolling mechanism for yourself and the players, or else you'll be tasked with a lot of book-work.

I humbly volunteer for your game if you are taking applications

Rocmistro wrote:Rich: my opinion is that it's great. I can give you links to actual play if you want, though I think you have some of the one's I'm in: http://torrpg1.proboards.com/board/1/general-board

That'd be really useful. Will check out that board or do you have direct links to particularly helpful ones?

Rocmistro wrote:I think the biggest challenges are:
-determining when a session begins and ends for the purposes of resetting fellowship pool

Would probably be using a lot of the house rules I've collated (re: stolen!) from various sources, so in this particular instance I'd use the one where the Fellowship Pool refreshes at important narrative points within the story rather than at the end of each 'session'. I'd therefore need to be clear with the players about what alterations and changes I was bringing to the table.

Rocmistro wrote:-realizing, if you are the LM, you will sometimes have to drive the story with a stronger hand than otherwise needed in face to face play.
-cut out the dead weight if they are not participating

Good point.

Rocmistro wrote:-get a good die-rolling mechanism for yourself and the players, or else you'll be tasked with a lot of book-work.

Any that you can recommend?

Rocmistro wrote:I humbly volunteer for your game if you are taking applications

Be happy to have you on board - I'll need a lot of help as it will be a completely new way of RPing for me so engaged and proactive players will be a real benefit!

If my experience can be of use, what I did was:
1) Come up with a general idea of the adventure (the usual when, where, what's happening,...). Knowing that, I wrote an introduction or prologue and posted it in the Play-thread of the forum. Something like "It's the year xxxx of the Third Age. Esgaroth has just been rebuild and word has spread out all over Rhovanion of the celebration of the Dragontide for the first time. People from distant lands are coming to join the celebrations and share the new era..." and so on as far as your inspiration goes . At the end, some kind of hook should tie in the beginning of the adventure you've planned.
2) Then I asked for players who could be interested.
3) After you have your players, an off-topic thread can be opened where people discuss what characters they want to build (just to prevent having 5 dwarven slayers in the group). After you have everyone's character (with azrapse that's easier than ever), I suggest every player writes a post/turn where they describe his hero and why/how he has arrived at the hook point of the prologue.
4) From there on, everyone writes in the same thread: first you describe what happens to them, then each player writes what he does. then you describe the consequences and what happens next, and so on.

I've played a few games by post, and every LM does it somewhat different. I think that you'll find your way by running the game, just like with face-to-face LMing.

I've been wanting to try this as well. In fact....the TOR apps I've been writing have just been me dusting off my programming skills because I've been envisioning a software platform specifically for supporting this kind of play. So I'd love to participate if there's space.

Not surprisingly, I have lots of thoughts on this subject.

The divide that works best for me is three threads: Recruitment (for making new characters as needed and coordinating the shape of the fellowship), In-Character (posts from LM and Players are in the characters voice or at least in the shape of 'Amroth dances a little jog for Woodman Lord') and Out-of-Character (for rules discussions, clarification of the narrative and scheduling)

By virtue of the medium, you pretty much have 'refresh the Fellowship Pool at narratively important moments' because you're in control of when a session ends. I tend to have my sessions last about a month, but I'm flexible and find a narrative point nearby.

We just added a player and I told her in the 'welcome aboard' message: I AM RELENTLESS. The story moves forward every 48 hours (every 24 hours for combat). Participation is desirable, but I try to never get hung up waiting for one player to respond.

To that point, I roll all the dice. For the players, I use the format (1d12-1);Xd6. That looks like this: Riddle (TN 14) and helps me pay attention to the Tengwars, Weariness and Saurons/Gandalfs. A result of 0 on the d12 means a Sauron (or a Gandalf if it's a bad guy rolling), a result of 11 means a Gandalf (Sauron). I'd love for Elfcrusher to make a persistent die-roller customized for TOR, presently our Hobbit with Fair Shot sees things like: vs. Black Uruk (TN 17).

I'm cautiously interested myself... but I'm not committing myself quite yet. I run two games and play in one (due to a long-standing reservation that finally opened up); and I'm intending to open up a Ruins of the North game in due time. So, my plate might already be over-full.

zedturtle wrote:Not surprisingly, I have lots of thoughts on this subject.

The divide that works best for me is three threads: Recruitment (for making new characters as needed and coordinating the shape of the fellowship), In-Character (posts from LM and Players are in the characters voice or at least in the shape of 'Amroth dances a little jog for Woodman Lord') and Out-of-Character (for rules discussions, clarification of the narrative and scheduling)

This is precisely how I'm envisioning this app...two separate chat logs.

Well...three chat logs. Another completely separate one for dice rolls. One of our (Hermes Serpent's group) frustrations with roll20 is that HS has to scroll back up through chat dialog to find roll outcomes. They should be aggregated in one place.

Also notifications: when it's your "turn" you should get a message on your smart phone. If you choose. And if you time out, you get a notification saying what your character did in your absence (whether the LM chose the action, a designated player chose the action, or your default actions/scripts fired.)

Rich H wrote:Hi All,

I've only ever run RPGs face to face and although I have a great gaming group we only meet up on Fridays and often cancel. With my current contract of employment coming to an end tomorrow (!) I'd like to try something new and I've heard it mentioned occasionally that TOR makes for a great play-by-post game. Not knowing where to start on this I was wondering if anyone here could give me advice, what they use, and generally how to go about it. Also the idea I have is to run the game with people here, using the Actual Play sub-forum (if possible) with anyone that would like to play it - ideally 4 to 6 players + me as LM.

Any thoughts/opinions?

Rich

I have only played face-to-face RPGs, so I have no helpful opinions or advice. But count me in as a player, Rich!