[Forum Game interest check] Would you like to play a game?

[JustKneller]

The recent thread about TTRPGs, along with some things happening with my own gaming, along with noticing that there had been a forum game here before has me wondering if there is any interest in doing something like that again. I would run it and use a very simple system anyone can learn in minutes. I'm not sure how many folks are regularly here these days. Also, I have something a little weird in mind...

I've mentioned before that I have been homebrewing for decades (just over 25 years at this point). As time has passed, it has been much more difficult to get a local group together. Life and other priorities seem to take over. I suspect that the hobby also just runs its course for some people who then move on, too. So it goes. A common thing to do for in person tabletop is to run a West Marches campaign. For those who don't know, this is a style of play where sessions usually begin and end at a "safe location" (e.g a tavern) and whoever shows up that week becomes the party for that week's adventure. The episodic format makes rotating characters in and out possible and allows the game to keep going.

Obviously, that doesn't work for play-by-post (PbP). There are no sessions, just asynchronous play. If someone is not going to show up (or stop showing up), it can happen not just at the start of an adventure, but even during a single round of combat. It makes character rotation a little awkward. I've done some PbP with traditional systems and they can be problematic to administer. Turnover is high, despite the portability and ease of use for PbP (you can check in on a phone at any time and some sites are mobile friendly). A single D&D encounter can take months to reconcile. I suspect one of the major forces that kills a PbP is just player fatigue waiting for simple things to resolve that would only take moments at a table.

I'm guilty of it myself. I've rarely had a successful PbP game as a player for these reasons and others. As a GM, my last PbP bottomed out because I had a horrendous job at the time (thankfully, I'm in greener pastures now) that was increasingly taking over my life. Even checking in to run a game became nonviable. Regardless, someone else took over running the game for me and it still dissolved within about a month.

All of this is to say that, over time, I've been working to develop a system specifically for PbP. The traditional tabletop game design that works for a physical table might not have the best features for such a different medium. I didn't want to just find a way to tolerate the pacing and asynchronicity, I wanted to build it into the game to add value. Additionally, I needed to develop a method that does for PbP what West Marches does for tabletop. Players can rotate in and out, and as long as someone shows up, the game can continue.

I believe I've worked it out. I've had a system framework together for a while, but the application hadn't really worked itself out until I started tooling around with Disco Elysium. It provided a simple solution. Being able to rotate out characters at any given time is awkward and immersion breaking unless you're working within a very niche genre where people spontaneously appear and disappear for some reason. However, if the game features a single character and the players engage as fragments of the character's personality, then there's no rotation. The players that show up collectively form our hero's disposition. This "internal" discourse is adjudicated, and play in the world progresses. If players float in and out, it still works since nobody is playing an entity in the world that needs consistency. As long as at least one person shows up, the hero's journey continues.

So, I've been thinking of taking it for a spin and this seems like it might be the place to try. What does everyone/anyone think about this?

 

[OrlonKronsteen]

It’s an intriguing idea and I commend your effort, but it’s just not something I’d be interested in.

I’m sorry it’s hard to keep regular games going for you in RL, btw. It’s unfortunate when you have a passion or interest and can’t generate participation. I had similar experiences back in the day when I’d hoped to get a musical band going.

 

[Antimatter]

I mean, I see a very successful forum game in 2015, https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/40915/rp-castle-greyhawk/p1 (lasted for more than 200 pages, wow; required at least 7 regular posters), but I don't think your idea is something like that, or is it?

 

[JustKneller]

I would say yes and no. I skimmed a fair number of pages in and it appears to be a pretty standard fare PbP game (that's normally what they look like, more or less). I'm assuming/guessing that Lady Rhian is rolling outside the forum, but they could just be arbitrating which is fine as well. I would assume rolling because she referenced basically running BG characters through a published module. I think it might be the 1988 Castle Greyhawk module, but I could be off.

The single character thing is something I've never tried before. I mean I could do every player with their own character, but I figured the single character concept would prevent interruptions and weird adjustments when/if something decides to ghost. You'll noticed on that Greyhawk game that someone is wondering where another player is a few pages in already. This is a relatively common occurrence. When I got to thinking about all the different voices in Disco Elysium, I thought an interesting approach would be to have players play the character's inner voices instead of the character itself. I could then use the resolution system to resolve the differing voices.

Another thing I would do differently is get rid of turn-based combat. It's just sooooooooooo slooooooooooow in PbP and I've seen too much attrition at that stage of the game. Instead, the encounter would have a difficulty depending on the approach. If the check succeeds, then yay for the party. If it fails, then the margin of failure would determine the consequence. Players would know going into a situation approximately where they stand with the risks.

It wouldn't necessarily be a fantasy dungeon crawler, either. I mean it could be. I can work with pretty much any genre. The game would actually start with the voices (players) determining what kind of hero they want to be (i.e. the genre and theme), I would resolve differences, and it would evolve from there.

I'm drafting a write up of the ground rules currently. It's technically in the style of FKR (Free Kriegsspiel Revolution), but if you google it, you're likely to read a lot about how FKR is just whatever the GM says, goes. That's not how I see it or run it, though. I know I'm being a little ambiguous. This is less out of a desire for mystery and more out of just being flexible. If it doesn't fly here, no bigs, I can try this on Myth Weavers (a relatively active PbP forum).