I want to start a new PBP, how do I start?

[Jandolar]

How do I start a new Play By Post adventure? I have a dungeon crawl in mind,and on paper here at the house but don't know how to start it.

[Blazeguard]

Well, I guess, first of all you would probably want to start by posting to see who would be interested in your game. Start a thread, giving a quick intro about your game, what it's about, the 'elevator pitch' so to speak and see who/how many people would be interested.
Once you've established that you have an interested group you would then contact Solomoriah to create a new thread for your game and take it from there.

Here's a few things, off the top of my head, that you will probably want to include in your intro:
- What rules, supplements, and house rules you will be using
- What sort of posting frequency you are looking for (once a day, once a week, etc.)
- What setting the game will be in
- What type of game you are wanting to run (role-playing vs roll-playing, hack-n-slash, etc.)

That should get you off to a pretty good start. I'm sure others will chime in with more suggestions as well.

Good luck!

[seandon4]

Hi: Yup PbP is a fun thing to do. I know you could start one in the BFRPG forum, but I've personally joined several B/X D&D campaigns on rpol.net (role playing on line) and it serves as a good place to find a lot of active players. It also has a dice roller, tracks character sheets profiles, and a directory of popular rule sets (including Labyrinth Lord and Basic Fantasy.) Myth weavers is another one with some activity, though not sure how much compared to rpol.net. Alternatively, off topic, but if you find players wanting something more fast paced, you can check out roll20.net (virtual tabletop); I've run many sessions on it and it runs very well. I also once ran a play-by-email game on yahoo groups, but I sensed that players had a hard time tracking the flow of the game in that format; play-by-post is a bit easier (players can scroll up and down and GM can post pictures, map updates, etc.) Anyway, since you're on BFRPG's forums, I'm guessing you would advertise as OD&D or B/X D&D. Good luck.

[dymondy2k]

I will admit a fondness for rpol.net as well.. It really is a site built around play by post role playing.

[rredmond]

I like to toot Unseen Servant's horn too.

www.unseenservant.us

That is my favorite PbP forum, and I really like the associated die roller. Check it out, the guys are great there. It's smaller than rpol but pretty active, and the folks are welcoming and helpful.

--Ron--

[Blazeguard]

I will admit a fondness for rpol.net as well.. It really is a site built around play by post role playing.

Being relatively new to pbp, I started here and then discovered The Unseen Servant forums. Just recently I joined a game on rpol.net and found the UI very unintuitive and frustrating. I'm not sure if it's just because I was used to these forums but I found that site very difficult to get used to.

[Delver]

You know, that's funny Blaze because I find several other popular PbP forums cumbersome. I've been on rpol.net for a while now, and I really like it. I run a BFRPG game there that I inherited because the original DM went AWOL. I also play in several 1e-ish variant games there. I've tried a few others and keep coming back there for some reason. I have found that players tend to gravitate toward certain games. There is one player who is in three of my games! We had no idea because I inherited two of them and the other I just play in. It was funny to find out.

Another site I just started on is rpgcrossing.com. It is really just a forum with a few gaming plugins. They seem to have a good community over there though and have been helpful and friendly so far...

I've not perused the games here. I should. I'm sure I could really learn a lot. I actually joined this forum with the idea of keeping in touch and following people who are interested in these systems, so I should join a game or at least Lurk.sd

The pace in PbP is slow and it takes real teamwork from dedicated players who are willing to "do stuff", and a dedicated DM who is willing to "hand-wave" and move the story along at times. Finding the right chemistry is difficult and you'll have horrible attrition until that perfect group is found. I would definitely encourage you to allow Lurkers who are sort of a "waiting list" so that when (and I do mean when) someone drops out of your game you can quickly replace them and keep going.

I would also encourage you to make sure your players have some sort of ownership in the story. If that means bending rules or fudging things here and there for the sake of entertainment, by all means do so! This is a GAME and if people aren't having fun (however it is they derive fun from it) then they'll be left unfulfilled and bail on ya. By the same token, make sure that your players know you have expectations of them, not in a controlling way, but that they need to provide ample fodder for the story as well. They are active participants, not simply viewers.

[Metroknight]

I run a play by post game on roll20 mostly because of the interactive map. As the story progresses the players get to move their character tokens about. The chat area holds the last hundred lines of text while the archives hold all of the chat. I just went throught losing most of my group but when i posted an ad for it, I had all the spots filled within hours. Now we will see how many stay with it.

[Blazeguard]

You know, that's funny Blaze because I find several other popular PbP forums cumbersome. I've been on rpol.net for a while now, and I really like it.

What is it that you like about it? It was the UI that I found irritating, more so than the actual site. It took me quite a while just to figure out where the link was to register for a game and then there were some issues with signing up for the game but once I got into it, the game itself was fine but I don't really see how it is different from any other forum site.
If I'm missing something though, I don't want to write it off just because of a bad experience.

[Delver]

There are several things I like about RPOL.net. I'm sorry you had a hard time with it. I guess I haven't had the trouble of finding and joining games because I was invited to the very first one I joined. So from the perspective of a new player that's not used to the site, it may be difficult to find a game, I can't really speak to that. I have simply jumped into the "Wanted-Players" General Forum and in the game description that comes up at the top of the page there is a link to the game wherein usually the GM will have a topic called "RTJ" or "Request to Join". This topic tells what the requirements and expectations might be and then there is a link in the upper right "Request Access". Send that off and the GM will get back to you. You can't just join any game you want... the GM has to add you to the game either as a player or lurker. This keeps spammers at bay entirely as the GM can easily filter the applicants however he sees fit.

Anyways, I have started at least two projects to develop the "ultimate" PbP platform. I've taken the approach of mashing a wiki, a forum, and a blog together and discovered on both occassions that it was too intricate for my players. Obsidian Portal comes close to what I was trying to develop. RPOL.net has some features that I really like. Here they are:

1. One login for the site, and each game (forum) is individualized to your character or characters. Yes, you can play more than one character in each game. Each character has its own avatar and the page is customized for that player. This setup makes it very easy and straightforward to see who is speaking and doing what.

2. There menu bar includes: Character Details (Char sheet), Scratch Pad, Dice Roller, Game Map, & The Cast. Followed by Private Messages. Having all these tools available in a sort of dashboard is nice and so when you login to the site, you don't need to go anywhere else to do anything! The Char sheet is editable by the GM and the Player. The Scratch Pad is your own private place to keep your notes, The dice roller is integrated into the site and is individualized to each character and each game. There are many, many presets for different systems and the GM can tweak the defaults to streamline dicerolling. It makes it easy to cut and paste into your posts. The GM can upload a map to the Game Map area or multiple maps.

3. The individual topic threads remember where you last where and what you've seen, so there are 'first','last', and 'new' links to quickly navigate through the threads.

4. There are all the standard tools for formatting posts, you can edit them, and reference them as well.

5. Running a game as a GM has its own cool stuff, including great character/player/lurker management, languages markup, etc.

All it all, it is a tool developed specifically for gaming and not a forum tool tweaked for gaming. Also, you can personalize your colors, text size etc. to fit your screen or device. One of the coolest features is the mobile app (free) that simply pings you when there is an update to one of your games. I use that all the time!

So ends my review/sales pitch. I also play on rpgcrossing, and I find it hard to keep track of whose who because the avatar/username is the account name and avatar for each post, not the character. There is dice markup and the TT tags are pretty cool, but it is simply a forum that's used for gaming whereas RPOL.net is a standalone gaming tool. I run a BFRPG game over there that I inherited, and it's worked well so far...