Topic: Are you primarily a player or a GM?

[Warl]

Ah, I always knew that as PBM play by mail.

It just isn't the same as real playing though is it?

Sorry Warl, but I have to agree here. I tried PBP once and loosing the social interaction part just made it feel flat to me. Sitting at the table with people just "feels" better. To me it is like the calling someone vs texting, sure texting is great for just shooting someone a quick message when you don't need a response, but if you are going to be carrying on a conversation, just friggin call, please. It is faster and "feels" better because I can hear them and that gives me inflections that are lost in texting. To get the same inflections in texting (or PBP) I have to do all sorts of "quotes", italisized, bold, underlined, and the ever popular "quotes/italisized/bold/underlined", all of which are a pain to do. Also, as I like long campaigns where the characters go far and do lots of stuff, but I rarely get to stick with any game/campaign for very long, the uber-slow process would really bug me.

A skype game might work, but only so long as the connection is good. It still wouldn't be as good as face-to-face, imo though.

Of course it is better to have a face to face game. I never stated anything that implied otherwise.

What I said was, that if you can find a good pbp, it us better than no game at all.

I used to be such a table top snob that I thumbed my nose at pbp games, until I had no other options when I was truck driving. Then I discovered thst, though not as great as face to face, it was an enjoyable substitute for the situation.

Half the issue is attitude. If you go into with a negative out look, that is likely what you will take out of it.

[Warl]

Also,  in general, PBM has a much larger time dilation than a pbp game. All dependant on how often the players and gas check in and post.

[Peter R]

I have tried PBM when I was at college and the lack of responsiveness was the killer.
I tried MUDs but they are way too shallow.

We tried Skype type playing using a service called ooVoo that allowed us to see all the players and GM at the same time. The technology seemed to get in the way and one of the guys had a very poor connection. I felt very self conscious doing it as well. That sort of withered away, I guess others felt the same discomfort.

I am prepared to have a crack at PBP.

[Peter R]

Less than one percent. Also, not every player will buy a rulebook, much less an expansion. Typical gaming books do not sell a huge number of copies. 1000 is pretty great. Look at RPGNow, HARP made Gold, and Silver on DriveThroughRPGs (these are based on separate tallies). That means it sold something in the range of 602-1250 copies if what I read elsewhere is true.

I think part of the problem is that I have the core books for the version I play, all the players and the other GM have the same set of books. We have not added any suppliments to these rulebooks for decades. I have replaced dead paper books and I have bought pdf copies but I and all the guys I play with are not buying new material. The only exception is that the other GM is a Shadow World fan and is buying everything Shadow World.

A second issue is that everyone expects everything for free now. There is a thread on here about creating an online catalogue of PCs with previous versions of their character sheets. The idea being that you can post your favourite PC and it can become an NPC in another persons campaign. Basically they want a Heroes and Rogues for free. I guess that is the desire behind so many requests for ever more feature rich character generators.

[Spectre771]

Many many moons ago, I tried to get a PBM going with the group of RM friends I had.  It was when BBS's were still new and e-mail was this amazing new thing that only computers nerds and geeks knew about.  I had figured it would be like a "Choose your own adventure" book.  You read a page, make a choice at the bottom of the page, then turn to a completely different section of the book to see what the consequences of the choice were.

After graduation, all of my friends graduated college and went their separate ways.  After not having anyone left to game with, I tried to find some way to manage.  Of course it's not as fun or as hilarious as face to face, and not as immediate, but after 5 years of not being able to play ANY type of RM gaming session, it was welcome.

I just found the Real Roleplaying site that is in the banner ad on this forum and I checked it out.  The problem I see is finding a group of players who will check in frequently enough to make the game play fun.  Too much lag between posts and it loses the fun.  With internet being so prolific in our lives and everyone getting email on their phones, laptops, tablets, in their car, the response times should be much faster than 30 years ago when you had to wait for mom to get off the phone so you could dial into the BBS on your 300bps modem and hope no one picked up the phone while you were online or call waiting kicked you off.

I miss playing/GMing RM so much, I am all for a PBM/PBP forum.  When I am at work and there is a lull, I can send in my responses and actions or respond to the player posts. 

It's not as fun as face to face, but it's better than going years not playing at all.

[Peter R]

I am now checking the rpol site on a daily basis hoping for some RM games to pop up.

I'm not going to knock before I have tried it. I find forums fun so pbp should moer so.

[markc]

A fiend on mine ran a PBP game that had 30 people in it so it took him a lot longer to manage the game than people realized. So I would guess like any RPG game you GM it can take quite a bit of work on the back end to get a good front end.
MDC

[Spectre771]

A fiend on mine ran a PBP game that had 30 people in it so it took him a lot longer to manage the game than people realized. So I would guess like any RPG game you GM it can take quite a bit of work on the back end to get a good front end.
MDC

30 people is a massive undertaking! Wow.  In sessions where we had 8+ people playing, we would have another GM assist to keep the game moving along a little quicker.  If the party split up to do separate things in town, the 2nd GM could handle some of the interaction and dice rolls while the primary GM handled the plot-line interactions.  It was extremely helpful for combat. 

I haven't had any real time experience with the PBP yet, but I would think 12-15 would be the MAX I would want to try to GM or to be a PC.   30 replies to send out in one sitting a lot of work!  How did it go for the GM?  How long was he able to keep the campaign going?

[Peter R]

A fiend on mine ran a PBP game....

Please, please please tell me that is not a typo!

[Warl]

I have tried PBM when I was at college and the lack of responsiveness was the killer.
I tried MUDs but they are way too shallow.

We tried Skype type playing using a service called ooVoo that allowed us to see all the players and GM at the same time. The technology seemed to get in the way and one of the guys had a very poor connection. I felt very self conscious doing it as well. That sort of withered away, I guess others felt the same discomfort.

I am prepared to have a crack at PBP.

I actually Run a Ventrilo VOIP Game, where we also use a VTT (virtual Table top) called Maptools.

Been running this way in one game (Hackmaster) for 4 years now.
I have a Rolemaster game that has been running now for over 6 months using the same interfaces and it's going great.

The Rolemaster game runs every other sunday 7pm MST to 10-12 MST, you would be welcome if you wanted/available to join. Or even to come lurk to see how it goes.

As for PBP on RPOL.... IF you don't Mind a Modified game, I am not ready to start the game yet, I am currently working on my character creation Flow thread, I Hope to have character creation up and running by the end of  the month. But it is a mix of RM and Spacemaster.

[Peter R]

That is very kind of you!

The Sunday night sessions would would be 2am - 5am for me. Anything past midnight for me these days and I am spouting gibberish.

A spacemaster/RM game sounds fun. End of the month is cool. I have my head down putting the finishing touches on the first session of my Forgotten Realms RM game that starts on the 10th of Oct. I am also working on an article for the Adventurers Guild. That should keep me out of trouble.

[markc]

  Sorry my fiend was a friend  , but yes the play by email game went on for over a year and then was relaunched after a year to two year break with about 15 players. BTW it was set is Water World, the setting of the film of the same name.
  He also ran another PBeM I like Play By eMail better but that is probably just me as most people do not remember play by post, which was also a huge success. He was a very prolific typer and writer as you could imagine.
MDC

[markc]

  As for duel GM's I was at a Con (way back when) and played in a D&D game that had 10-16 players and 2 GM's. It was a blast to see that it could be done and that the 2 guys were really on the same page when it came to the GM tasks.
MDC

[intothatdarkness]

Never worked with another GM. I have run split party games before (espionage setting...one group was CIA the other was GRU). It was a lot of work, but pretty fun.

[Spectre771]

Never worked with another GM. I have run split party games before (espionage setting...one group was CIA the other was GRU). It was a lot of work, but pretty fun.

That seems like a cool concept and would work really well with PBM setting with only the GM knowing the facts and actions of both sides and either side only knowing what the GM relates to them.  Eliminates meta gaming by the players.

[intothatdarkness]

Never worked with another GM. I have run split party games before (espionage setting...one group was CIA the other was GRU). It was a lot of work, but pretty fun.

That seems like a cool concept and would work really well with PBM setting with only the GM knowing the facts and actions of both sides and either side only knowing what the GM relates to them.  Eliminates meta gaming by the players.

Yeah...I did it FtF, though. Usually what happened is one group met at one time, and the other would meet at another time. They did come together from time to time, and that was interesting. On the whole it worked pretty well, but it is also well-suited for PBM or a play by post with sub-forums.

[Warl]

Ya , I tried that once ft and it turned into a pissing/pvp contest.

So if I did/do it again, it will be via forums

[Cory Magel]

We once ran two full groups, 5-6 each, in two different rooms in the same house.  The two GM's wore headsets to talk to each other (in order to relay information, like the sound of a fireball going off or things like that).  The two parties were going through a mirror image of the same dungeon.  About halfway through it came together once in a room with a magical wall that no living material could pass through down the center (I suspect that thought we might try to make ranged attacks and each other if we found ourselves in it at the same time) and the overall dungeon ended in the same large room.  The first party there got an advantage and it was a party-v-party combat at the end.  While there can be some frustration when combating a whole separate party it actually worked well overall.  However, due to one person specifically, it got a little ugly at the end due to his attitude.

The room with the magical wall - we figured out no living matter could go through it.  So I, being the Cleric (D&D), went back and animated the corpse of a troll, had it go to the other side of the room and spike the door shut from the inside.  The other GM said they spent more time trying to figure out how we did that then they did actually breaking the door down.  Got a chuckle out of that.  We really didn't physically slow them down, but they wasted a bunch of time trying to figure it out.

The ugly end bit... we had the enemy party cast "web spells" in the stairwell we had to come down into the final room.  We had lighting bolted one of their members (to death), so I decided to animate him, douse him with oil, set him on fire and send him into the webs.  The entire point was to get rid of the webs.  Well, the individual with the attitude problem threw this huge fit that we were intentionally being disrespectful and thumbing our noses at him (which was a silly reaction).  That player didn't last long with our group(s).

[Spectre771]

 so I decided to animate him, douse him with oil, set him on fire and send him into the webs.  The entire point was to get rid of the webs.  Well, the individual with the attitude problem threw this huge fit that we were intentionally being disrespectful and thumbing our noses at him (which was a silly reaction).  That player didn't last long with our group(s).

That's an awesome idea!  We actually had players volunteer their corpses so we could continue with a full party!   He just wanted to be an undead.  Luckily, very luckily, the group I am with now is really good to game with and they have no problems like that.  However, I have experienced those types of players in the past.  One was so pissed off (A knight profession) that he sat down in the middle of battle and refused to take any actions.  Are you kidding me?  You're a knight, you have 4 undead around you and you sit down and do nothing?

He didn't last long either.

[Peter R]

I have seen players up and leave in the middle of a session when things went against them and we had one player who we now know suffered(s) from Schitzophrenia. He accused another player of cheating and he hasn't spoken to that player now for over 20yrs despite they come into contact not infrequently.

You never know what is going on behind the eyes.