The Internet has been a haven for gamers for a long, long time. Back before www and html, we crouched around Unix boxes, crawling through text-based Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) without a graphic in sight. But you could game with people from everywhere and anywhere, and that made it cool.

Today, the online role-playing opportunities are far more varied. You can boot up your Everquest and take your polygon avatar through rich, detailed landscapes. You can meet your cyber-friends in a chat room for some distance gaming. Some utilties already offer online voice conferencing, and video is surely on the way. "Point the camera at the dice, John. I want to see you roll that!"

Another manifestation of online gaming is the play-by-post. It's descended from the venerable play-by-mail games. Someone finds a bulletin board to host the game on. Many free services provide these. I've even seen them built into freebie web sites. The ones I'm personally most familiar with are Yahoo! Clubs and Yahoo! Groups, and it's my experiences playing and GMing on these sites that informs this article.

Play-by-post games vary as widely as tabletop games. While many of them use their written format as an opportunity to dive into some deep role-playing, others are happy with standard dungeon crawls. In addition to style and tone, expectations of the rules of the game can vary widely, as we'll see. The single most defining factor seems to be GM involvement level. We'll look at games with a tabletop-style GM presence, a more moderate GM presence and no GM presence . We'll also see some of the challenges a virtual GM faces. Finally, there's online player ettiquette.

Play-by-Post Styles

The Virtual Tabletop

The GM of a virtual tabletop play-by-post likes the dice. Players post their intended actions and the GM rolls for them. Posts tend to be very short, since players have to wait to see the results of their actions before continuing on.

I've seen this style tried a few times, and it never seems to work very smoothly. Online gamers usually have to develop patience, but waiting a day or more to find out if you hit the orc gets to be a bit much. It is as fair as an online game can get (if you trust the GM's rolls) though, and has that as an advantage. A virtual tabletop game will be run in a particular system, and the GM may even ask that his PCs email him their character sheets.

The Moderate GM

This GM is involved in her game, but is more freeform than at the tabletop. Within the moderate style, you can see varying degrees of GM control, too, but we'll speak generally.

PCs are encouraged to write longer posts, including the results of their actions. They can write in dialogue with minor NPCs or even control them for parts of the scene. How combat is handled will vary from GM to GM. My personal preference is: the PCs can destroy as many "red shirts" as they like, as long as they leave some heroics for their companions. I decide how badly their actions affect the major villans of the piece. On the other hand, the PCs get to decide if the bad guys hit them or not. Some GMs might control all damage assignment; others might leave it entirely up to the players. This is one of those unwritten game rules that the GM needs to write up in a post and explain to the players.

This is, honestly, my preferred style to run an online game. It's not as restrictive as trying to do it the tabletop way, but allows for some structure and direction. The GM has to be careful to be consistent and fair, though, as do the players. This is diceless, and everyone needs to trust everyone else.

The Absent GM

Some people set up a club, create a character, and wait for Something To Happen. How well this works generally depends on the other players. Sometimes a plot leader/GM steps forward and creates a villian for the players to oppose. Sometimes the characters hang around the inn and tell each other their life stories. Sometimes five different people try to drive the plot in five different directions and end up exchanging nasty posts.

This is one of the more common game types I've seen, and is generally the least successful. There are a bunch of characters, but no plot to move them along. When things drag, there is no one person to whom the responsiblilty falls for getting them moving again. But if a group of role-players who enjoy a round-robin style get together and bounce the plot back and forth between them, this style can work quite well. Such a gathering is rare; see the challenges, below.

Challenges of Play-by-Post Gaming

One of the best things about online gaming is its potential to meet people from all over the world. There are lots and lots of gamers out there on the web. And you will not get along with all of them. Some of them may find your game anyway.

Munchkins

With no rules or guidelines to restrain them, some players go a little crazy. I've seen invincible demon-vampire princes, sons of the god of chaos, indestructible, ultra-powerful characters of all types. They give themselves the largest magic items they can conceive of and the most powerful spells and abilities. They're immune to everything.

In any game with a GM, of course, this player can be softly told that the PC just isn't suited to the game; maybe the demon-vampire prince could be changed in for a Planescape tiefling? He'd still be part demon... It's in the games without GMs that these folks find a haven. No one can tell them no, and the other players soon need to discover their own superpowers to keep up.

If the game is enjoyable, the other players can try talking to the person. If anyone has the power to kick people out of the club, you might try that. If the "kicker-outer" (in Yahoo! terms, the club or group founder) is MIA, you have little recourse. The only tactic I have found effective is to introduce a Toon-esque comedic character. It can take whatever blasts of hellfire they choose to throw and then, covered in char, quip, "That really burns me up." They can call anvils down. They can act so ludicrous that the munchkin, who cannot stand that his or her uber-powerful toy be laughed at, might actually leave. Even if s/he doesn't, well, you get to have some laughs.

On the other hand, depending on the game, the GM might allow leeway to role-play creatures which would be far too unbalancing in a normal game, if they're played with an eye to game balance. They might take a voluntary handicap - youth, inexperience, a reluctance to use innate abilities - to offset their might. As long as no PC steals the spotlight every time, it can work.

I ask my players to think of the game as a novel. Can they see their PC as the hero of a book? Will there be moments of terror and doubt and conflict, or will they easily stride from page to page, slaying things (yawn) without effort? It's a guideline most gamers can relate to.

The Dramatic Duo

They're not overpowered, but they're omnipresent. Either because no one else was posting or because they didn't care, two of your PCs have filled up the bulletin board with one-line posts back and forth, chronicling their angst-filled romantic dialogue.

If you're the GM, your course is clear: make them stop. You could disrupt their meeting with an encounter, but that's not very nice. They're having fun, and that's the point. The problem is that their fun is swamping the bulletin board. Have them carry on their dialogue either over e-mail or instant messenger and then post it in its entirety.

If you're not the GM, you might contact other players to see if they feel the same way. You could politely ask the Duo to stop or move it offline. You don't have the "authority" of a GM, but if they're civilized human beings, they'll try and reach some accomodation with you.

Time

Finding a comfortable rate of posting is very necessary. Some posters will happily check their boards several times a day. Others can only get around to it a few times a week. The trouble arises when you mix the two. The frequent poster gets bored and drifts elsewhere; the infrequent poster feels pressured and gets upset.

This problem can be closely related to how tightly tied together your PCs are. (Group cohesion is discussed further below). If they're all together, having conversations between members can get frustrating if post rates differ wildly.

Most groups fall into a routine; a GM can also try to set one up. In one of my clubs, I try to reply to PC posts on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. If they want a reply, they'd better post before then. Another club I run is more sporadic, with posts cropping up at irregular intervals.

Time is also how much time you're investing in writing posts. This depends on your goals. If you look at your game as a novel in progress, you might post less frequently, but produce rich, detailed ones when you do. If you're just wanting to move things along, you can post short but descriptive posts more rapidly.

Time is also the forward progress of your game. In a word: Slow. In games without a GM, a single day can drag on forever, since no one is willing to declare it "the next day." Even in games with a GM, an important dramatic conversation can take a dozen posts over as many days, all of which occurs in a mere ten minutes of game time.

To move things along, I generally post something announcing that time is passing. If PCs weren't done with actions, they can finish them up, but otherwise, everyone has entered the inn, they've all slept and woken up again, or whatever. Usually no one complains, and if I jumped the gun, the cut-off PC just continues to post. I make it clear that the "moving the plot along" is just for convenience, and if they're not done role-playing a scene, they should be all means continue it.

Group Cohesion

The split party problem is no longer a problem! Or rather, it's a different problem. I run both an ensemble game and a split game. The ensemble game is a typical adventuring party. They stick together and roam the lands, getting into trouble and trying to stop the Bad Guys. Sometimes they splinter, like to read different things in the library, but usually I can deal with all of their actions in a single post.

The other group, on the other hand, are all residents of one small town. They move about it, bumping in to one another occassionally. I have to keep track of their separate timelines and separate actions, and write separate replies for each of them. (I keep this game small!). It feels much more real in some ways - I don't have to invent reasons to keep dissimilar characters together when there's no reason for them to be. But it is more work and more time. Still, it's something I could never do well at the tabletop - the time pressure to finish with one PC and move onto the next would be too great.

Spelling and Grammar

I refuse to be the Grammar Police, but I do insist that my PCs adhere to what they learned in third grade. Occassional misspelled words are to be accepted. A post spel loke this isjust bad. Captial letters start sentences. Sentences end with periods. Sentences are good, and should be used; run-ons are bad and should not. Several paragraphs are easier to read than one huge text-block.

Other indicators will vary from group to group. Usually, quotation marks for speech work just fine. I've used done thoughts in various ways, from nothing, to quotes, to ~tildas like this~. Double tildas can indicate ~~telepathy.~~ I don't like or *more actions,* but that's my personal preference. I try to match the style of sci-fi and fantasy literature rather than MUD or Everquest conventions. But, whatever style you like, you should encourage your players to use it consistently.

They don't have to be another J.R.R. Tolkien, although it has been my pleasure to play with some fine writers. Posts need to be readable and their intent easily understood. Shiny sparkly word-play comes afterwards.

Maintaining Interest

Your tabletop group has it, in some ways, easy. You've all finally assembled; you're all here til 10 pm. Maybe some folks wander out to the kitchen or start to leaf through a comic book, but by and large, the GM has a captive audience. Do the old "handful of dice" trick and suddenly they're all at the table and attentive again.

The online GM has no such ability. Players have babies, go house-shopping, take vacations, get offline lives. Sometimes they'll tell you they'll be offline for a while or permanently; sometimes they just drift away. If the game stops being interesting to them, they'll head for that fridge or comic book, and you can't get them back until they log in again.

My best trick: keep the action or dialogue moving. All of your posts should end requiring some sort of repsonse from the PC. Give an opportunity for action or have an NPC ask a question. If the PC can't figure out what to do next, she won't do anything next, and the game will stall.

This makes ending scenes a problem, as mentioned in the "Time" section. Sometimes the PC will end the scene, which is always helpful. Usually, they even indicate what they're doing next, and you can help stitch the scenes together. For instance, if they write:

"I'm done with you," Dirk spat, turning on his heel. Without a backwards glance, he strode off into the darkness, back towards his room at the inn.

You might reply with:

Still angry with the urchin in the alley, Dirk kicked open the door to his room at the inn. Flopping down on the bed, he fell into a troubled sleep until the dawn woke him. More work today: would he question the mage the urchin mentioned, or shadow the ambassador like he'd planned?

That cues Dirk's player that there are no more encounters today and reminds him of at least two choices of action. (Dirk's player can always say that Dirk decides to chuck it and do something else entirely). Or maybe his room is ransacked, and a new adventure starts that night.

If the PC doesn't seem inclined to end the scene, go ahead and end it for her. The NPC she's talking to goes away. Her horse brings her to the town she's headed for. If it feels like you've reached a stopping point and the PC hasn't explictly stopped or moved on, chances are she's waiting for the GM to tell her it's OK to do so.

Just like in tabletop games, NPCs are invaluable ways to keep things going. If the game has been going on for years (I have one that's over two years old now), people forget what's gone on and what exactly the goals were. As the GM, it's your job to remember them, and NPCs can handily remind the PCs about their options. "So boss, we gonna infiltrate the theives' guild or what?"

Size

Just like a tabletop game, the online game can be too big or too small for a GM's tastes. Ensemble games can be bigger, since the GM doesn't have to reply to every single player individually. But after a certain point, it becomes difficult to remember which player was doing what, where and with whom, even in an ensemble. Six active players are about the most I care to process, but I could probably deal with eight. Their individual posting rates, of course, affect this as well. You'll have to find your own comfort zone.

And a lower limit? Well, with no players, you're writing a story, not playing a game. Some GMs are happy even with a single player. The game will tend to look a lot more like a novel then, with the PC as its hero. Other GMs want to see more interaction between PCs and might not be happy until there are at least three.

It's much, much easier to recruit players than to get rid of them, so add slowly until you're happy with your game. Where to recruit? Join a few clubs and play. When you meet someone whose posting rate, personality, and writing style match what you're looking for, send them an invitation (privately, if you can, via e-mail or instant messenger) to join your game. You might give them a brief, one or two-sentence description of your game's theme. But wait until they've expressed an interest before you send them the 30-page world history you've written.

Play-by-Post Ettiquette

They'd be called "rules" if there were any way to enforce them. There are usually three pillars on which play-by-post games are built.

1) No killing the other characters. This almost always applies between PCs. Depending on the GM, it may extend to between the PCs and GM. I personally won't kill a PC unless I've talked to the player out-of-game and we both agree it's a heroic death, OR if the PC is being exceptionally stupid.

2) No controlling other people's PCs. This is called "autoing" in many circles. In practice, it's usually fine to "auto" someone's PCs for short amounts of time and small, inconsequential actions. If the other PC has come to an NPC's home with the intent of visiting, it is perfectly acceptable in most circles for the GM to put, all in one post, the NPC's greeting, taking the PC inside, settling in, and then beginning the conversation. This means the GM "autoed" the PC by making them go inside the building. Typically, if the PC objects, the scene is just rewritten.

3) No power gaming/munchkining/god-modding. They're all different names for the problem discussed under "Munchkin," above. It really, really saps the fun out of the game for everyone involved.

There are a few other pointers:

When you join a play-by-post club, read at least a dozen or more of the most recent posts. A club named, "The Black Tiger Inn" may have started at the Black Tiger, but has since moved on to a wilderness adventure. If your first post involves your PC walking into the inn and casting a forbidding gaze over the room, you're going to look clueless and be far away from where the fun stuff is.

It can, unfortunately, be a scary world out there. If you're playing a PC of a sex not your own, I find it polite to mention this to the other players - especially if you're playing a character that's going to flirt or otherwise likely to become romantically entangled. Let them know that you're doing this for fun and as a role-playing challenge.

Speaking of those romantic entanglements, different games have different ratings, from PG-13 up to NC-17. Check your hosting site's policies about adult content if you intend to feature it in your game. It's not permitted on Yahoo! hosted sites. And it would be pretty disappointing to log in and find your club deleted.

Conclusion

Hopefully, you've gotten an idea of what online play-by-post can be like. It's not tabletop gaming, that's for sure. Levels, hit points, saving throws - all gone. But in exchange, you get some unique opportunities. Players will write things that they'd never say around a gaming table. Intense emotions, internal struggles, the flavor text you've always wanted to use but thought sounded dumb - they show up beautfully in print.

Excited? Interested? Want to start your own game, or maybe join one? One of the links below might be a good starting point. You can search for a keyword or surf Yahoo!'s categories.

Links

Yahoo! Clubs

Yahoo! Groups

About the Author

I've been playing and GMing RPGs for the past ten years and have been playing-by-post for two. I've been in every sort of play-by-post game mentioned above, from chat-based games with built-in die rollers to aimless freeforms. I formed my first unlisted Yahoo! Club after only a few months of online gaming; I started my second about six months after that. Both have been a source of pleasure for me: I've used them to flesh out my game world, keep my writing skills fresh, meet new people, and try out new ideas.

Both of my clubs are unlisted and membership is at the moment closed; I have all the players I can handle. Please shop around the Yahoo! Clubs RPG section. Look for new and/or small games where you can get in early and help shape the plot. You'll find something fun after a few tries.