GMing Play-by-Post Games

My friends over at The Disciples of Grell seem to have discovered my humble blog, so hello to them!  I now feel the pressure to, ahem, post something.  And since my new readers have a play-by-post gaming site in common, i will blog about GMing play-by-post games.  Heck, maybe i'll even do a series on it.

For now, just some basic tips:

1. This may be really obvious, but create or choose a forum site that will allow you to edit or otherwise moderate posts.  (It's easy to set up your own free site somewhere like http://www.prophpbb.com/ if you don't know someone that'll give you a spot on theirs.)  Forums are by far the simplest and most flexible medium of play.

2. Choose a system that all of your players have access to or can obtain easily.  It's rude to pick something that's $75+ for a used copy and otherwise unavailable.  If your prospective players have no prior experience, be prepared to answer a lot of questions.

3. Choose a system with a simple combat sequence. It is infinitely simpler to use systems in which characters do not have variable amounts of attacks that must be performed in a convoluted sequence. If a round is a round and everyone takes a turn during each (characters with multiple attacks simply make them all on their turn), you can establish the combat order and then just post for the opponents and NPCs as needed.

3. Check the math on your players' character sheets.  Trust me on this one!

4. Use as many visuals as possible.  It's more difficult to immerse over text, so consider providing pictures or art for major NPCs as well as maps and photos of places.  Google maps has a feature that allows you to mark places in real cities and share your edited versions privately.  If you don't want to search for images (or your forum settings don't support it), provide a lot of details.  It's better to explain too much than too little.

5. Have a plan, but be flexible.  Give the players enough room to effect the plot and interact with each other.  You're not limited to weekly sessions, so take advantage of the slower pace.

D&D 4e Red Box

The boy had his first experience with D&D tonight.

(his sister wasn't quite as enamored)

Verdict: the choose-your-own-adventure style character creation is a quick, easy, fun start-up for ultra-n00bs like my 9-year-old son.  However, it's really only good for introducing one character.  After that, you either have to hope the other players will diverge widely from the path the one first took, or you're going to have to get creative.

Stating the Obvious

I suppose there's a certain point, when you've been gaming or especially GMing for a very long time, that you might take it for granted that other players will have some basic common sense.  So here's a little reminder for today:

If your GM is kind enough to post a detailed map of the game setting, you should probably look at it before asking stupid questions.  Otherwise, you might miss something like a major league baseball stadium outside your front door.

That is all.

Gamer Spawn

There may well be no greater joy for a geeky parent than for one of their geeky children to show an interest in their hobbies.  I have the unique honor of not one, but three wonderful, creative, geeky children that want to GAME!  So of course, this is fully encouraged.

They have long taken an interest in the various dice, minis, and mats that we have about the house, and created their own game systems, rules and settings included.  But Hubby did the honors on Tuesday, of introducing them to their first 'real' game with rules: Wushu.  I've never actually played this one, and didn't this time because i wasn't feeling particularly well,  but you can read all the details, including their character descriptions and first adventures in this post, over at my husband's blog.

Here's an excerpt:

My kids have been begging me to run  one of the roleplaying games that their mother and I play, and after they did their chores and homework, we sat down to make some characters for the setting of their choice. They chose the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender for the setting, loving the idea of being able to control the elements and i chose Wushu for the system. I am been interested in Wushu for the past year or so, but have yet to find a game or players to test it out on. Lucky for me, my kids would be willing to even suffer through the hours long combats that the Palladium system enjoys (that last bit was sarcasm, if you didn't notice).

Back Behind the Screen

The title is inaccurate, considering i do all of my gaming from behind a computer screen these days (and therefore don't have any use of a GM screen), but after three weeks of once again running games of my own, i feel confident enough to announce that i'm filling the role of GM on Saturday nights.

Game: hippie's Supernatural (play-by-chat)
System: Cortex
Day: Saturday
Time: 5pm central
Place: OpenRPG (server announced weekly)
For more information, read over the posts on my game forum.

I currently have two regular players, and a third that joins in as available; this arrangement suits me fine as i'm setting up sessions like episodes, with a new case each week or two, amid a bigger plot line.

Book Review: The Living Dead

The Living Dead
John Joseph Adams (editor)
Night Shade Books
ISBN: 1597801437

An excellent and diverse anthology; definitely not for the squeamish.  The short stories packed into this book (there are 34 of them) cover everything you ever wanted to know about zombies, and then some.  Most of the stories have been published previously, but a good range of authors and mythos are represented--even the most hardcore and well-read zombie enthusiast is sure to find something they haven't seen before.  As much as there's something here for everyone, there's also something here to offend everyone--from the violent, to the vivid, to the just plain gratuitous, you will find plenty of gore, sex, and general human badness.  As should be expected, the recurring theme is not so much about the monsters that threaten to end the world as we know it, but about the people, decisions, and events that could allow it happen.

Help Haiti and Score $1300 in RPGs

Here's the deal: donate $20 to Doctors without Borders through DriveThruRPG, and One Book Shelf Inc. will match the donation AND thank you with a pdf package worth over $1400.