"A play-by-forum game based on PotA has been proposed. What do you do?"
In the thread Game Mechanics Practice, we played through a single encounter turn-by-turn here on the forums, as an exercise in seeing how the rules worked. It was rather surreal and I'm wondering if a "proper" game could be played that way.
It was a bit like play-by-mail but with the difference that the PCs were 'open' - rather than being played by particular people, anyone could jump in and play a character for a turn. We kept it going that way more-or-less round the clock for a couple of days, with different people joining in at different times, whenever they happened to be on the forums.
As a trial, I'm willing to DM a game of PotA here on this forum if enough people think it would be interesting and fun. If it seems ot be working and other people are willing to DM for a spell, that's great. I'm not possessive and I have to sleep sometimes. Whatever keeps the momentum going.
The way I see it working is this:
- We would create a new thread called, maybe, "Play-By-Forum Game: Narrative" where the actual game happens, while this thread is used for out-of-character discussions. People dipping into the game can catch up by reading the latest posts in the narrative thread and post their "moves", but ideally that thread should be kept free of "clutter" to make it easier to catch up.
- Anyone can join in or drop out, without formality, just by posting in the Narrative thread.
- There would be five PCs, with backstories hooked into PotA and posted, with character sheets, in the Pregen Repository.
- Within combat encounters, we play turn-by-turn with the DM framing each PC's turn and waiting, say, an hour, for people to suggest what that PC would do. We might say "first suggestion goes" because that keeps the pace going fastest, or, if the game is popular right now and we get lots of people posting, we might say "After an hour, DM rolls to see which one happens". Playing round the clock, it might take one to two days to play out an encounter.
- During exploration, outside of encounters, we could treat the whole party as a unit, with "moves" being more free-form along the lines of "move the narrative forward as you will"
- Interactions with PCs might need to be telescoped; if we played one line of dialogue an hour it would get very tedious. So, you post "We buy a few drinks and ask the bartender for rumours" and the DM summarises what he tells you, for example "The blacksmith down the road saw some ghosts in the forest last night", without you having to pump it out of him.
- When you post a "move", always append a couple of d20 rolls (it's okay, we all trust each other, don't we? ) in case the DM decides that a roll is needed and, if you are making an attack, roll damage dice at the same time (including double dice if it's a crit). Rather than you saying "Fred attack the goblin with his longsword", wait an hour for the DM to say "Roll to hit, you have advantage" and another hour for someone to post "17". then another hour goes by and the DM posts "you hit.", that's hopeless. People will get bored and lose interest (and so will I). Post rolls befire you know if they are needed, in case they are.
Style of Play
- This is not VTT play, it's definitely TotM perhaps augmented by static images. We can post maps and portraits of NPCs, for example, but we won't be moving tokens around a battlemat.
- Personally, I prefer narrative over mechanics so if I'm DMing the game will have that flavour but if other people DM it might change.
- I'm proposiing to use PotA as the basis for the adventure, starting at Level 1 with the intro material but I will freely adapt, change, modify and turn things on their heads depending what the PCs do. So don't complain I'm not following the book. Anything goes, as long as I think it's fun for everyone out there (and I'm sure you will soon tell me if it isn't
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"A play-by-forum game based on PotA has been proposed. What do you do?"