PBEM Update

My Greyhawk PBEM Castles and Crusades game is still alive, but barely...

The game is approximately 18 months old, which is ancient for PBEM, and most of my players are around 3rd level. I was taking them into The Dark Chateau module by Rob Kuntz. The action started out great with the players adopting the usual paranoia associated with entering a "funhouse" style wizards haunt.

They met up with some goblins/orcs who were hanging near a couple of external sheds. The PC's were surprised and after taking on heavy arrow fire they pulled back into the woods and then proceeded to fight fire with fire. The elven ranger of the group has a +6 bonus to hit with his arrows (no magic involved) so he mostly sniped the orcs and goblins from afar while the wizard of the party laid the smack down with magic missiles. The fight was over quickly.

The players did a sweep of the outside of the Chateau, finding their encounter with some strange giant frogs to be intimidating. They decided not to mess with these frogs who glided about in the pool gazing at them with alien stares of disinterest. They entered the Chateau and swept through the first floor fighting some giant rats and claiming a magical Cleaver. However, at this point they hit a slow spot. The players are having real life conflicts/disasters and a general paralysis of decision has affected the group. Presented with a variety of traps and tricks, they are hitting a wall.

So over the last 5-6 weeks things have stalled completely. There were only 3 posts in the last week. I started to lose interest in the game and contemplated several times about giving up on it. However, the fact that we have had almost a year and a half of really good times in this game is stopping me. So I decided instead to throw a curve ball at the players.

I decided since they have killed several groups of goblins & orcs around the area during their 3 day (game time) stay near the Chateau, that the goblins and orcs have decided to get some reinforcements and attack in force. The goblins bribed a couple of hill giants and also rallied several loosely affiliated bands together to make a war party over 100 goblins&orcs strong.

The party had left the ranger of the group outside the Chateau (since the player of this character is in the military and would be unavailable for the next 6 months or so) - so I decided to have him run by the Chateau and warn the party. Here is the post:

Esmeralda begins to prepare her trap for the centipedes, pushing smelly rat meat
into a large sack with a grimace. The rest of the party flexes, prepares, and
tenses for battle. Just then a cry is heard from the outside of the Chateau.

"An army of goblins are coming, and they brought a giant!!!!" Comes a cry from
Lo'Stranner.

Turning quickly, Leinen leaps quickly to the window and catches a glimpse of
Lo'Stranner running past the Chateau from the north side and heading toward the
south. He leaps into the underbrush of the forest just as a group of barbed
arrows slam down into the soft earth of the Chateau's lawns.

This army must be at his heels.. which means you only have moments to decide how
to react!!!

Well, I have dropped the gauntlet. I'm going to force some action out of my players or force a TPK and move on to a new game. The evil GM in me prefers this to a slow wasting death of the game. I definitely feel at least partly responsible for the way things are turning and I'm hoping I can breath some life back into this game or just dump it. I can't keep it going the way that it has fallen apart.

Either outcome, I have definitely realized that PBEM games of this sort do not handle dungeon based adventures well - unless you have a group of very interactive posters. Wilderness encounters are much better since things are much more fluid and the players have an easier time figuring things out.

Weird Watery Magic of Pools and Vats

I haven't been posting much on this blog. Recently, I've been pretty much obsessed by the use of magical vats of liquid in my games. I created this Lovecraftian sort of monster in my Castles and Crusades game. It was an outsider "demon" creature from space that crashlanded in the Bright Lands of Greyhawk. I combined this concept with Moldvay's "The Lost City" and I'm working in this whole backstory about how the creature has spent the last 500 years feasting on the intellect of humans. My thought is that this creature is made totally of protoplasm and it can fashion itself a body and change the hardness of its goo to that of chitin plate if it desires. It's intelligence was so alien to human kind that initially it could not communicate telepathically with humans. After 500 years of feasting on human psyches it has now adapted to be able to communicate. Anyway, I ruled that during its crash landing on earth it lost a particular artifact which allowed it to live easily in any environment. It has been stuck deep underground living in certain pools that sustained its abominable lifeforce until it could regain the artifact. The PC's were chasing this Half Orc Assassin which had obtained the artifact, but they failed to stop the half orc from returning the artifact. This demon being which was revered as a god by these underground people has now been unleashed on Oerth. I'll be bringing the PC's into confrontation with the beast again once they have gained a few more levels and could survive the encounter. Anyway as a side effect of this adventure I became obsessed with pools and vats. I started brainstorming a huge number of ideas for how these magical vessels of liquid could be used to awesome effect in DnD style games. I have written a ~4-5 page article so far and I still have lots of ideas. I'm thinking of throwing it in front of some folks that publish hobby gaming fanzines. In addition, I will probably publish most or all of the ideas up on this blog and try and get some feedback for how the article is progressing. Here is my introduction to the article - I haven't done any re-writing yet, this is still a first draft:

Introduction:

Human kind has long had both a fascination and fear of water. Man needs this precious liquid each day to live and yet he can drown in a mere teaspoon of the substance. Vessels of water hold a powerful symbolism of motherhood and the womb, juxtaposing the origin of life itself with an environment that man can no longer enter without fear of death by drowning. Foul potions brewing in the cauldrons of witches and the embryonic vats birthing an artificial monster of a man are just two examples of how this powerful symbol has been employed in literature. This article aims to flesh out a variety of ideas on how you can use vats and pools in your fantasy RPG game. These entities should be used infrequently and each use should invoke either a pure magical wonder or a sense of horrific alien fear. The statistics used in this article are written for Swords and Wizardry, however they could be adapted with ease to any retro clone or original edition of DnD.

Birth and Death

I've got exciting news! I just joined a new PBEM labyrinth lord sword and sorcery game. I'm playing a red haired barbarian (Skarite) cleric of Wotan, Brannach.

Here is an overview of Brannach:

Name: Brannach

Class: Skarite Cleric

Level: 3

AC: 5 (Std Lthr + Shield)

Hit Points: 21

Appearance/Description: Brannach has a long mane of red hair that lies back on his shoulders. Upon his chest he bears studded leather armor gilded upon his forearms with bronze bracers. His zealous religion can be a bit off-putting to some.

Exp: 5001

Nxt: 6251

S: 14 +1 to attack and damage

D: 10

C: 13 +1 hp

I :13 +1 additional lang. Able to read and write.

W: 15 +2 to all magical saves, +5% to EXP

C: 7 +1 Reaction Adj, Max 3 retainers, Ret. Morale 6

Weapons: Light Mace +1 to attack (1d6+1), Sling (1d4)

Items:

2 pair of clothes (2gp, 2lb)

Studded Leather (30gp, AC6, 20lb)

Light Mace (5gp, 1d6, 3lb)

Shield (10gp, AC-1, 10lb)

Sling + 10 bullets (2gp, 5lb)

BackPack (2gp, 2lb)

Bronze Bracers (1gp, 1lb)

HolySymbol (silver) (25gp, 1lb)

1 Wineskins of water (1gp, 8lbs)

4 vials (4gp, 1lb)

50ft Hemp Rope (1gp, 10lb)

6 trail rations (3gp, 6lb)

On mule: Saddle and saddlebags (5gp), 3 more wineskins (3gp), feed for mule 5 days (1gp), bedroll (1gp)

Animals: Mule (30gp)

Wealth: 16gp

Saves: BA:16 Poi&Death:11 PP:14 Wand:12 Spell:15

Cleric Abilities: Turn Undead, Spells, Diety is Wotan (Odin)

Languages: Common, Sharan

History: I can work it out later... perhaps something to discuss with the party over a roaring bonfire?

I'm pretty excited about getting involved in an old school flavored DnD game as a player (not GM)!!! But, I've decided I'm pausing my Mythic solo game Streets of Madness for now to gain some internet time to devote toward posting in my Greyhawk Castles and Crusades game (as GM) and posting as a player in this LL game.

Recent History and Strange Observations

If anybody is still checking in on this blog... thanks. I've been massively overwhelmed in the last several weeks which has impacted my previous schedule of ~12 posts per month. Alos, my PBEM Greyhawk game is really taking off. My players have descended another level, finally acquired a bit of treasure from their adventuring :) and found an albino cleric. This albino cleric cannot communicate well with them for lack of overlapping languages but through miming and pictography they have decided they are on the same team for now and are now following this cleric down into the depths of this dungeon.

This albino cleric worships a god Ishu, which is the symbol of a three fold woman (bearing some resemblance to Istus) and they seem to be at odds with another group of clerics who have now captured the half orc assassin. There seems to be a battle of sorts occurring somewhere underground and the PC's found their albino cleric nearly fatally wounded lying on a bed in the dungeon. After quite a bit of debate about whether to heal the man they finally did and he awarded them with some treasure (by showing them how to use some golden masks to make their way past mechanical wasp guardians armed with death poison to pilfer some gold and gems).

But during this encounter I noted something quite odd about PC's. They will sometimes obsess over really strange things that you would have never guessed about. Take this description as evidence:

As Geodine and Esmeralda approach the wounded man he looks up apprehensively toward your strange ensemble. Geodine examines the man from a closer and closer distance noting that his stomach wound will be fatal without magic aid. As Esmeralda comes close to the man and takes first his club and then tries to grab at his Emblem he knocks her hand away and yells out something sharp and quick in his strange tongue.

As the torches draw near and he whips his arms about you note that his skin is pale, he must be one of these albino people you have heard about. Looking closer, his eyes seems to have dark brown pigment, so he is not a true albino - perhaps his skin has not seen the sun... ever. His dress is very simple, dark thick padded armor pants, thick boots, and he is shirtless except for his bandages. His hair is a long mass of brownish yellow and held back with a yellow tie. He has a bit of wispy beard upon his face but it doesn't grow thick.

Nau Gui addresses the man in two languages but he doesn't seem to recognize any of it. Instead he speaks once more in a non-sensical tongue, "Curthag unkthatack arosthack!"

A little later I posted this:

In the chests there are some thin metal masks (maybe steel) covered in gold
paint (you can see where it was scraped off in some spots. Also in the chests
there are more pants, shirts, bandages, a jar of what looks to be a salve of
some sort, and a light cudgel.

The rest of the room is bare except for a deck of cards on one of the small
tables. There are two doors in the back of the room one on the wall to the left
and one on the far wall. Esmeralda hears a slight buzzing noise on the other
side of the door to the far wall.

While some of the pc's focused on the dying man or the strange buzzing noise, and the chests full of strange thin metal masks... other PC's decided it was wiser to spend the next week of PBEM time examining the deck of cards that was mentioned in passing. They got into a minor in game argument over who would keep the deck calling each other grabby among other things. PC's will focus on strange things and forget about your obvious clues, I don't understand it, but it is true :)

Updated Game Map and Related Information

My PBEM campaign is now forging ahead at lightning speed for a PbP game. As a result of that I haven't been posting much on the blog. My new player joined the crew and together they have investigated more of the dungeon. They finally encountered a Hextasaur (albiet a half hit die "baby" one) and they put a beat down on it in two rounds thanks to the bastard sword of the groups barbarian. It did nearly kill one of the druid's animal companions.

Here is an updated game map:

Although functionally they have really only explored like 3 additional rooms in two months our group is posting like crazy and having lots of fun.

My new player

I added another player to my PBEM Greyhawk game. He is playing a female Rhenne thief named Esmeralda. My players have explored a little more of the dungeon now - and so I inserted the new character into the dungeon with the following backstory:

There are some strange albino people living in this underground complex. You came to the dungeon with a group of adventurers who were exploring the desert for sunken treasures lost to time. When you came to this lost city, your group was beset by a group of six legged lizard creatures and slain. While they were fighting you found a secret door at the base of the idol and ran into the dungeon.

Talk about out of the fire and into the flames. As you entered the dungeon you were immediately immersed into a horrible fight between two groups of albino men whose language you couldn't understand. In the midst of the this battle was strange half orc who was carrying something like a quarterstaff wrapped in leather on his back. Both groups seemed to be trying to capture this half-orc alive, while also trying to kill each other.

You never got to see how it all turned out, because somebody with a club smashed you over the head. When you woke up you were without your backpack, trapped in a room in the dungeon in the pitch black with nobody about. Luckily, your money pouch was still at your belt and you still had your trusty thieves picks and your dirk. Otherwise you are lacking equipment and trapped in this dungeon probably waiting to starve to death.

Just then you hear a strange scuffling noise outside of the door...

He, he, he - I love just tossing new characters right into the middle of the game! It is one of the things that gives me the GM jollies!

Greyhawk PBEM Update

Things are really starting to get interesting in my Greyhawk campaign. My PC's just crossed the Bright Sands desert to find this sunken city, the trip was hard but due to their druid they were never without water. They had a hard time with a sand flea infestation (they rendered an oil from horse fat to suffocate the fleas finally) and got into a fix with a salt marsh in the middle of the desert that had corrosive salts (caused a little rusting of weapons and burned one character who tried to use the salt to kill the fleas). The ranger and druid found an aloe plant and healed the victim.

They made it to the city to find a triple statue above the city of an old maid, a middle aged woman, and a yound maiden. It is an idol to the god Ishu (an aspect of Istus worshiped ~800 years ago by the inhabitants of the sunken city). They also found some strange insect lizard hybrids, but managed to sneak around them without having to fight them.

They just entered the upper part of the pyramid (which they don't know is a pyramid). They found the tracks of the half orc assassin (which is who they followed into the desert, he is carrying an ancient evil artifact and also killed a friend of the dwarf paladin, but that is a long story). It was here that I read over their character sheets (we post them as txt docs online) - they only have three torches... It will be interesting to see how they handle this without access to the continual light spell (they are only 2nd level). Only the gnome and dwarf have darkvision.

If they don't just give up (considering that they don't have any torches) I have some really strange stuff waiting for them in this dungeon ~~ insert evil DM cackle here.

Narrative Control and Player to Player Power Grabs

In my opinion this is one of the hardest things to get right for a group of people playing PBEM/PbP games. It is all about control. The players all want complete control over their character (no brainer really). The DM controls the reactions of NPC’s and monsters... etc.... This all seems pretty simple - and it is - but in PBEM/PbP you can find yourself into situations where these lines are crossed.

Example A: A PC playing a female character walks into a bar where 4 other player characters are sitting at a table... the Player is playing a “hottie” so he/she types in:

“Ezbania walks past the four men at the table to the bar, slowly and confidently. As she nears the bar she pulls a string out of her hair allowing her restrained tresses to flow down her shoulders. All the men at the table can’t help but look over at her, watching her entrance.”

It was going good, until the player decided to tell the other players (probably on accident) what their reaction to her move would be. In this circumstance the other player characters may not mind. But each character should get to choose how they react to this scene. Maybe the barbarian character would want to say, “My character is staring at her, drooling :)” Maybe the thief would want to say, “Noting most of the men at the table are watching a pretty lady and forgetting about our card game, I’ll take the time to swipe a couple of silver pieces out of the pot and check the barbarian’s hand.”

Again, this circumstance is pretty low key - but I find that players can accidently run rampant over each other - telling each other how their characters are supposed to feel/act.

Example B:

DM controls characters. This one is a little harder to define. The DM is always telling the characters what they see/hear/taste/smell/ touch - the part that matters is how much the DM adds in the way of telling the characters what they feel or how they react. For example, the DM is describing a foggy night on a rainsoaked moor, the moon is full, the howls of the werewolves of Areadorn are following them as they push their horses faster. They may not make it to the Tower of Light before they are overtaken by the were-creatures. The DM could add that the characters “clench their fingers tight to the reins, fear gripping them from behind as they urge the horse faster and faster!”

This type of line is really nice when Tolkien describes Arwen and Frodo fleeing from the ring wraiths. However, I try not to run rampant over the feelings of the PC’s and let them describe how they are responding to the situation. The paladin for example probably feels no fear - if the were-creatures close in - he is planning to take them all on, to give the rest of the party time to get to the tower - even if it means his life! The halfling character may be scared out of his wits. The evil mage of the group might be slightly bored since the flight spell he memorized will let him escape no matter what happens - although he would be inconvenienced by the loss of his party he won’t be shedding any tears.

Example C & D:

While in situations like A&B in all my campaigns I strive to keep the same policy, in the next two examples I think there are different ways the game can be run...

C: The players control the feelings or actions of NPC’s. Typically this could happen when a character says something like this:

Crohan the Barbarian (our PC) is fleeing from some back-alley thieves. Turning a corner he comes to a deadend. The character then types, “ I turn on my heels and whip the scabbard off my blade, lifting it up, point forward to my enemies, staring down the blade I summon the wild rage of my heritage and let loose a war cry as I leap forward to attack. The cowards before me tremble in fear, stumbling before my onslaught”.

Well from that ham-handed explanation - you can see than the player took over on the reactions of these NPC’s. As a DM I try to explain at the beginning of a campaign - how much narrative control the PC’s can have. I usually give it out in doses that are proportional to the “power level” of the PC’s in my game. If I am running a GURPS black ops game where the PC’s are the best of the best - cream of the crop - I give them narrative control over all the “forgettable” NPC’s. As long as they aren’t trying to control the Dr.Evil archnemesis types - they are good coming up with as much flavor in their descriptions. The same kind of thing applies to D&D games where the characters are “heroic” powered. In games where I want the characters to have a more “average guy” power level - then I typically recommend that the players try to leave the reaction text to the DM. This really just means in the case of Cohan the barbarian above, the player would only have had to leave out the Italics part of his post.

In the Monsters and Manual’s blog by Noisms - he was recommending Diceless Play for PBEM/PbP - where the PC’s are automatically assumed to succeed in all that they do except where they but heads with other PC’s. They are given all sorts of narrative control over the NPC’s, and the world.

While I think this type of play can work for free-form cooperative story games - I think it is pretty much counter to the D&D spirit and feel. For this style of game - the tension of the game stems directly from NOT being able to automatically succeed. Each door could be locked or trapped, each NPC and monster is an unknown - your chances of survival are based on your skill of identifying situations where you can’t automatically succeed. It is kind of like playing poker - the skill lies in understanding when there is enough reward to justify the risk. Therefore, the DM must control nearly ALL the actions of the NPC’s and the dungeon. In a heroic style game - the PC’s might be able to gain narrative control over low HD NPC’s and monsters

D: Example D is kind of the “null” example - this is where I have most of my problems in running PBEM/PbP games. This is where a PC will log onto the game - and put up a post without saying or doing anything - thus dragging out the game in the worst way. The reason for this, is that they don’t want to accidently step on the wishes of others or put the party into risk. However, the result can be that nobody does anything. Instead, you get a lot of posts that are the PC’s joking with each other, or describing how their character feels, petting their familiars, arguing about which path to take. In one of the worst examples of this behavior, I think I had some players sitting in front of a cave entrance for almost a month of real time. They couldn’t agree on how to proceed and I didn’t want to railroad them.

Example D is one of the hardest to remedy. It is one of these sinkholes that can trap a group, and it is impossible for one player/DM to bring the group out of it. It has to be confronted as a team. I’m thinking that there may be some kind of corporate philosophy for situations like this since they must come up in the business world frequently. I'm going to think about this more and see what I can do in my games to help with these situations.

Example - combat vs. skeletons

Round1:

Lo'Stranner pushes Lienen's hands away from the horses, " We need your strength

at the forefront - my arrows are less effective against these creatures!". He

continues to bind the horses down while the barbarian hefts his greatsword and

turns to rush toward the scene unfolding. In the midst of the group Nau Gui

conjures forth a magical shield, his spell rushed and breathy sounding in the

humid night air.

Grarym steps forth and begins to call forth the power of Moradin to turn back

these creatures , however, at the last moment he is overcome by some dark power

and the force that he was channeling slips away from his grasp. As the dwarf

falters the skeletons surround him chopping down with their ancient rusty blades

sparking forth the ringing sound of metal on metal. Grarym quickly recovers and

beats one of the skeletons back with the heft of his axe.

At the side of the dwarf Geodine recites his entangle spell with all the

concentration and speed and lactating??? :) he can muster. Growler and Scruffy

flank the short gnome each standing nearly the same height as he. Geodine is

able to complete his spells only moments before the undead reach him and it

entangles two of the skeletons standing in front of him. As two of the undead

are stepping forward out of the writhing plant matter, unbalanced, Growler and

Scrffy leap forward at them. As a team they jump again and again at the undead,

foiling the slow chopping sword attacks and within a few seconds Scruffy is

gnawing on the leg of one of the skeletons. The skeleton that lost its leg is

now crawling after the dog swing at it ineffectually while the dog runs in front

of the skeleton holding its leg!!!

Two more of the undead slip through the initial line of Geodine and Grarym and

head toward NauGui, although one of the undead is battered back by the magical

shield, the other is able to swing through and slide its thin saber across the

belly of the barbarian wizard cutting a long but shallow wound. Leaping forth,

Leinen brings the thunder of the Lortmill Mountains on the skeleton with the

saber (natural 20!!!). His sword comes cracking down splintering bones from

head to pelvis on the skeleton. It falls to the ground cluttering and clacking

as the magic is released.

As Lo'Stranner completes the binding of the horses, he catches a strange flash

of pink and yellow colors somewhere out there in the dark with his elven eyes.

Then the party members hear a strange flapping noise, followed by a loud screech

from Hooters as if he is in pain, and maybe a small giggle, like out of a female

child. Suddenly, as if echoing from all sides, rhyming sing-songy children

voices cant,

"Lost in the da'ark, lost in the da' ark...

see them da' ance, see them fi' ight,

they should give in, and have some fun,

dancing in the da' ark, dancing with the dead!"

At the end of this outburst the silly giggles repeat echoing from all sides of

the party. You wonder what dark thing is taking on the voices of children and

taunting you as you fight for your lives... several more skeletons step forth

from the mist to the south flanking the party and nearest to Lo'Stranner.

Round 1 Summary:

This is a mixed melee and all party members are within 30 feet of each other.

Grarym is at the point of the party surrounded by four skeletons. HP=16/24

Geodine is right next to him with two skeletons on him, Scruffy, and Growler.

Lo Stranner is without enemies nearby but he can rush in and attack the new

skeletons or any of the skeletons on the group in the same round.

Leinen and NauGui share a final skeleton. Nau Gui HP = 6/8

Two other skeletons are currently entangled firmly.

Geodine Animals Stats:

Hooters,HD 1d4, HP 4, Flight, Claws (1), Beak (1d2)

Growler, HD 1d8, HP 6, Claws (1d2, 1d2), Bite (1d3)

Scruffy, HD 2d6, HP 9, Bite (1d4)

Scruffy and Growlers are not wounded, Hooters may be wounded but you don't know.

[this post was from Oct 31st, it was the last time my PC's have seen combat in my game... I had been watching the evil dead series at the time, which was the inspiration for my strange little poem :) ]

Smart Phone

I'm not usually one for keeping up with the newest technology, but a couple of days ago I got a smart phone (the droid eris). I'm pretty exited to see how it can help me with my PBEM/PbP gaming and also how it will help me organizing my professional life, etc...(boring - but important).

Does anybody know if there is a RPG dice roller application for the Google Driod OS? I could probably log into any webpage - but it would be nice to have an app.

Rolling the Dice

When I first started playing games over the internet I decided to play them over a chat client (mIRC) and we used a dice roller that would allow for rolls to be generated in the screen. You could also program scripts into the client, such that I could pregenerate all of the room descriptions for my map such that if the PC's entered room 12 I would go to lvl1-12 description in the client (using a short cut key like cntrl+shift+0112) and the room description would drop right down into the window. If you wanted to roll some dice you typed /roll 3d6 and you got some results. All my players were able to roll their own dice for saves and attacks and we color coded the text such that descriptive text was one color and command text and bot output was another color. This allowed you to focus on the descriptive text but reference the mechanics as necessary. I also played a couple of fudge campaigns and you could preprogram common tasks like roll 4 fudge dice.

This was a really nice way of playing that came really close to the table top experience. I've been thinking that one of the newer technologies that might also make gaming interesting like this would be the WebEx, Skype, and iChat technologies. I'd like to be able to have the characters chat face to face like they are in the room together, share a screen that shows diagrams of the dungeon etc... and at the same time have a chat window to handle the rolling aspects. If anybody has played in a game like this - I'd be interested to hear about the technology you are using.

Currently however, due to the aspects of playing with some of my gaming group who are in Italy, Scotland, Seattle, Florida, etc... with some gamers leading lives that take them to Asia or Australia, or Morocco at times - it just isn't possible to get everyone onto a chat window at a certain time of day for several hours anymore (at least not without it leading to several divorces). Also, I wanted to be able to play games in a format that allowed others to join in (people recruited via advertising on rpg.net, or pbem.com etc... or from off this blog or people who might stumble into my game somehow). This led me to the PBEM concept and it is something that is working right now. It isn't for everybody (see my posts here and here on the subject of the campaign I am running right now) but it is working for my tastes.

In the two games I am playing in right now (one as DM, one as player) all the rolling aspects of the game are handled by the DM. For my game I can say honestly that I have a set of Gamescience dice and I have rolled every die for every attack/save/contest. I'm not sure what the DM of my other game does. None of my players have had a problem using this approach so far... in fact one of them said he prefers the game this way. He can sit back and think of his move, describe it out well, and then let the DM take care of the mechanics. I am also worried that if I added a dice rolling mechanic/program/robot this could really drag out combat needlessly.

The way I run combat is 1 round at a time. Each player posts what they want to do - details are important. During combat I give each player 2 days to post (or until 75% of the party has posted) then I take control of their players move for the round. Initiative for the players is determined by posting speed (post first = first initiative) and the monsters initiative is determined randomly relative to the PC's. Typically a 7 round combat would take 1-2 weeks to complete and involve ~6-7 posts from each player. Using simple combat rules like C&C, LL, or S&W allows combat to be quick and deadly - there are no feats, no attacks of opportunity, etc.. to worry about. They tell me what they want to try - I roll some dice and then tell them what happens.

I typically format combat posts in the following mode:

Round #

Text Description of what happens (usually 1-3 paragraphs of text).

Description of Battlefield Positioning (who is next to what, etc...)

Summary of Important Rolls (1s and 20s that affected outcomes - fumbles, critical hits, max damage, etc...)

Summary of Player HP

At the end of the combat I update the player HP in my Database (they can view this at any time) and then I also update the treasure database (they can also view this at any time).

In my latest game we haven't had a combat since October. But it is about to get intense since the players are entering a sunken desert city (modeled after The Lost City by Tom Moldvay - but with a more Lovecraftian bent). I don't want to give away too many details in case I let my players know about this blog before they finish this section of the game - but I will definitely be posting info about how things are going if it turns out to be awesome.

Sometimes I wish I could give my players the experience of controlling their destiny with a d20 - but I don't have a nice application that would sit on my Group webpage allow my players to tap on a button and then post a roll into the page somehow. I would want it to operate outside of our typical communication window such that it doesn't clutter our email boxes/posting window. Also, would my players be able to log into the computers at an even more regular frequency to keep up with rolling?

I would have to drastically change the flow/method/format of the game and have players who are all dedicated to posting daily. Right now I have a mix of players - some check in 2-3 time a day and post like crazy and I am carrying a couple of players who like to post twice weekly and are fine with me NPC'ing them through a couple of rounds of combat now and again.

In summary, for PBEM/PbP I think things are going well without the dice roller. The players have to trust the DM to be impartial with his dice.

Playing by Post-It Note

Now that I covered at a high level the PBEM campaign that I am running I wanted to get into a few of the gritty details about how it is being run...

I'm using the Yahoo forums for my newest game which allows for play by post, or response via group email. It also allows me to post up my sketches, pictures, dungeon maps, and has a nice integrated table feature that I populated with combat and treasure and exp and anything else that needs to be referenced by the GM and the players frequently. After I started this game, I found another very similar game based on a dark age barbaric home-brewed world similar to the Conan books. For that game the GM is using the LL ruleset with some changes like: class based weapon damage and other mods that allow demihumans to pick a class (instead of Race = Class).

It's not as much immediate fun as playing on the tabletop. You don't get the fast pace, the dice rolls, and the bs'ing with buddies time that is always associated with tabletop RPG'ing. However, playing by email does have a few advantages:

1. The game never stops. Each of my players tends to post ~2-4 times/week, so I usually have ~3-4 posts per day. That is almost 1000 posts a year.

2. Playing by email gives the GM tons of time to "think on his feet" and make rulings. If a player does something that forces me to make a ruling, I have plenty of time to look up important rulebooks, think about the consequences of a ruling, and then type in my response. This avoids 90% of the take-back rulings where you may say something in "the heat of battle" that then leads to player abuse in the future and then you have to erase that one from the home-brew ruleset annals.

3. I'm running a sandbox style campaign and I haven't had to do any pre-work at all! There is always plenty of time for me to allow my ideas about an area stew in my brain for days/weeks before the players will stumble into an area. If the players say, lets head to that Haunted Graveyard to the west of the village, I probably have 2-3 real days of time to construct what they will find, while they... finish up roleplaying their flirting with the tavern wenches, gather the important gear, discuss the order, travel the distance, possibly encounter some randomly rolled creatures along the trip, and then finally show up at the rusty gates at the edge of the graveyard. In a tabletop game, the same GM may only have 30 minutes to think about the same encounter and finish all the above tasks.

4. If characters want to do something "in-secret" that they don't want to let the other players know, they can email what they want to directly to my email address. I've tried many ways of doing this in table-top games, but if the other players at the table know that your character has a shady past and suddenly you leave the room with the GM to discuss something in private, or hand the GM a tiny scrap of paper with something written on it - they know something is up. Even though they are supposed to keep Player Knowledge separate from Character Knowledge - suddenly I have players asking me, "why didn't I get a perception check or a saving throw or something to notice what he is up to".

5. Descriptions. While most of the time I keep my posts short and to-the-point, at times I can really go for it and write an epic description of a place that would be hard for me as a DM to roll off the cuff. I can describe the sights, smells, sounds of an area, go back through it, proof it, think about it again and completely re-write it, etc... This is fun when the players enter a new city for the first time and I want to give it a feel. I get to be as descriptive and creative as I can be and get it all down to the best of my writing ability.

6. Player to player roleplaying. While this is something that my oldest group of players (now disbanded) were really good at - for some folks it is hard for them to develop their characters personality and think of how she/he would respond to different situations and other characters. With this gaming format I have been blown away by the creativity and writing ability of some of my characters. One of my characters was an editor for an un-disclosed magazine in Scotland. He was so good at writing posts for his character that at times I felt I was reading a novel of the highest grade. He eventually left the game - since he was more interested in focusing on story-based freeform roleplaying without having the "game" aspects intrude - whereas the rest of our group wanted a balance between roleplaying banter and exploration, and dungeon crawling, and even a little hack-n-slash now and again.

Well, I can't think of anything else at the moment, if there are any readers of this blog out there, comment if you have any other ideas/suggestions/etc...

I think this is all I am going to post about PBEM gaming for now. Future posts will involve a couple of features about the games I am running and playing in that I am a little conflicted about and need to think more about before I post in depth on the subjects. Just to tickle the interests of my zero readers/followers :)... the topics will be: combat in PBEM, dice rolling (how to do this in a PBEM setting), player control/influence over how the game progresses, party consensus (or lack of it) and posters who don't seem to understand how to put action verbs into a post and how these problems seem to be the greatest entropic time-sucks on a PBEM campaign.

My Current PBEM Campaign

I thought I might start by posting on my current PBEM campaign. What is working, what isn't, etc... here is the high level...

World: Greyhawk (my first time as a DM, although I played as a character for years). I'm only using the 1983 Boxed Set, and the fairly new Greyhawk Gazetteer as source material and I am currently incorporating elements from classic adventures (Castle Amber, The Isle of Dread, The Lost City, etc..), and also using material from the Gygax Yggsburgh text placed just south of Greyhawk.

Rules: Castles and Crusades. Pretty much un-modified.

Characters: Gnome Druid (player resides near Salt Lake City), Elven Ranger (player resides in Italy), Human Barbarian (player resides in florida), Dwarven Paladin (Plays out of upstate New York), and Wolf Nomad Wizard (player resides near Seattle).

Everybody is currently second level and broke. They spent all their money funding an expedition into the desert to find a mysterious artifact that was captured under their nose by a half orc assassin. The artifact was found in a vein of pyrite mined from the ground by gnomes, and where the artifact was lodged in the solid mineral cyst, only maggots were found. The assassin is bringing the artifact so some powerful entity under the desert and the players have taken on themselves to stop him.

Number of Time Zones: (4)

Duration of game (~1 year real time, ~2 months game time)