So I've been thinking recently, and was wondering what people here would think of a forum that is essentially a shared (but open) Star Wars universe for running play by post games. The idea is that these games could (with collaboration by the GMs running them) overlap each other, cross over, and/or directly (or indirectly) effect each other.

It's just a very basic idea at the moment, but if it sounds even remotely interesting to you, chime in.

Sounds pretty neat, but it would take a lot of work to do well.

Sounds pretty neat, but it would take a lot of work to do well.

Would it take much more work than regular PbP? I suppose it would create its own canon, of a sort, which all the GMs would have to abide by. So yeah, maybe it would take a bit of work.

You'd have to have, like, a GMOOC thread to handle any planned crossovers/events, and the GM/players would probably have to read every game to make sure details weren't being contradicted. There maybe even have to be an over-GM or organizer that keeps everything straight and works with the existing GMs on metaplots (and potentially tracks crossovers so that interested parties can keep a timeline straight). Each individual GM would also have to be pretty skilled to ensure the whole affair ran smoothly. Balance would be an issue - if one GM awards, on average, more XP (or XP more often), then crossovers would be tricky. If one game progressed at a faster pace, the timeline would be really off. Things would have to be either extremely vague or highly detailed and a bit regimented to accommodate.

It'd be tricky, but doable. All I'm saying. If you/we could pull it off, it'd be a sight to behold...

On this site its possible to have more than 2 people in a private message, that could be a way for the GM's to communicate. Probably worth keeping all games to a single thread and combining IC/OC stuff, just putting OC in parenthesise, to make everyones life a little easier.

Lots of work would need to to into the campaign design too, probably with a single common goal but the methods each group use to help achieve that goal would be different. as an example:

AoR game; the main objective is to destabilise the Empire in a system or sector so the local Government can form an alliance with the Rebelion

Group 1: Space superiority - A bunch of pilots and Techs who move goods/information, take out key objectives, evacuate people in danger. These guys have a few ships or speeders

Group 2: Diplomatic support - they spy, they negotiate and lead, they interact with the locals form government to gutter. These guys probably have a base

Group 3: Tactical - Infiltrators, Soldiers, they hit key targets on the ground, protect important assets, scout and steal information. these guys have all the good gear.

Timing is definitely the big problem though. If one group is more active then they will progress much further, much quicker. But by having groups that are completely independent its probably possible. I think 3-4 PC's would be the limit in each group, Then groups need to be comfortable with skipping over a PC if they are unable to post for a few days, to keep the story moving along.

There's also the idea for a grand roster of all types of characters, probably limiting everyone to one character at first to make it as organized as can be until everything settles, and the groups can be interchangable. That way it's not always a search and destroy mission or a mission to rob a museum done by the same group every few weeks. Can set up a GM screening type deal maybe to ensure you're getting the right kind of GM, maybe something with a "your goal as a GM is this for this situation, your players do this, how do you respond or proceed, for one small tiny example. If you get the answer, "I bring in more NPCs from thin air, because the group outsmarted me." Well, you may have a problem. And, with having specific GMs, could have them also have a character to play elsewhere on the forum if they have the time!

Cool.

Honestly, I hadn't envisioned anything huge. This started with an idea to put up messageboards just for FFG Star Wars role play, but I assume there are some of those out there already. (I haven't found any, but surely there are dedicated boards out there for Edge/Age/F&D, right?) But turning it into one big interconnected universe might prove a more herculean task than I'm up for. Who knows? I'm still thinking it through.

Anyway, based on what people have said here, these are the ideas I'm thinking would need to be implemented.

• To create story interconnectivity, there would have to be communication between GMs. To that end, there would need to be some sort of GM-only boards so they could share ideas, locations, and NPCs.
• GMs might have to be vetted for skill quality.
• Large, galactic-level events would occur on a meta level, but shouldn't directly effect individual games. (Indirectly, sure.)
• XP would have to be standardized per adventure.
• A large campaign world would have to exist before putting this all into play, which would, of course, require a lot of work on the part of the site administration and any GMs involved.

Is it beginning to sound like I'd need to get GMs involved right from the get go, maybe as Forum moderators? I don't know.

Would it just be easier to create yet another Star Wars PbP RP site and live with that simplicity? Do we really need yet another Star Wars PbP RP site out there?

One way to reduce the herculean task of something so vast is to take a minor Sector and center it around there. Maybe moving into neighboring sectors, but having one fully fledged out Sector can still be a huge task within itself.

While this sounds like it would be awesome the cold hard reality is (as some have pointed out) that groups progress through PbP games at a different rate. I really wouldn't want to slow down a game that is going great to wait for another game that is lagging.

Also, coordinating 5-6 players and keeping the game moving can be tough. If two (or, heaven forbid, more) groups were to interact in some way getting that resolved could take ages with, say 12 players and a pair of GMs that all need to have a say. If it were a combat encounter in structured time that would take even longer.

So, the idea sounds awesome, but I think it's very hard to implement.

Unfortunately, I have to again agree with the sentiment Kymrel expressed (oh, Kymrel.. hi!): Some groups are filled with members who post 2-5 times per week. Other groups might really only post something significant once per week, or even less. One game might stall because players have a tough decision to make, or someone has to go on a vacation/honeymoon/trip/just work a lot.

And you can't really do "set XP per adventure" without describing what an adventure is . It's easy to say "when you beat Chronicles of the Gatekeeper, here's this amount of XP, plus the XP from set milestones." But with GMs writing their own content, the flow of plot can be very different, and it becomes hard to say when one adventure ends and the next begins.

Please don't take this as discouragement. I think it's a cool idea, and it can work. We're just (or, at least, I am) just trying to present hiccups you'll have to consider and work through if you want it all to go smoothly. I've learned from implementing ideas that people here told me wouldn't work that you can do a surprising amount with good players and a lot of gusto. It doesn't mean there won't be challenges, though!

Please don't take this as discouragement. I think it's a cool idea, and it can work. We're just (or, at least, I am) just trying to present hiccups you'll have to consider and work through if you want it all to go smoothly. I've learned from implementing ideas that people here told me wouldn't work that you can do a surprising amount with good players and a lot of gusto. It doesn't mean there won't be challenges, though!

No, I understand that. But bouncing it off people here has told me one thing for certain: I don't have the skillset necessary to build a site capable of everything it would need to have in order to be a proper shared-experience PbP site. I think at this point it's an idea I'm going to have to discard in favor of something more doable by someone with my capabilities and connections.

I wonder if you could have an easier time doing this dividing labor up - for example, you might farm out setpieces and NPCs to other approved contributors - and thus free the GM up to actually run the game. Why, an enterprising individual might be able to put together a whole corpus of indexed, original NPCs and set pieces that could not only be used/searched for in the inter-related games, but as a general GM tool that others could leverage for their own tables.

I do think a specific forum that is controlled by the owners of the games makes more sense than hosting here, for a number of reasons. I know there's already a number of pbp forums out there and splintering a community is a real thing, but if they don't offer what you want and need, that's every reason to make something you like. I think the challenge here is going to be putting together a good team and implementing the right controls up front - totally achievable in my mind, but a fair bit of work on the parts of said team. I think this would be herculean, if not sisyphean, for a single person. Please don't let this seem like discouraging news, I think this can definitely be done and be a lot of fun.

One why to keep the players balanced XP wise, might be to have a set amount given out monthly. That way if some players are trapped in a slow or lagging game, they still get the same amount of XP as someone who played in 3 or 4 really fast games. If more dedicated players feel like that isn't fair, they can be reminded that by being in more games they are probably netting far more credits and able to buy better gear, which some might argue is superior to XP gains anywho.

Also instead of trying to make your own website, you might consider setting up a subreddit. I use to play in some Game of Thrones rpg subreddits and they had them highly customized and it worked out pretty well. It could be something worth looking into.

After reading Far Horizons, I really enjoyed the inspiration one Refugee Relief Movement offers. More to the point, I could envision:

* Multiple players on 'teams,' run by their respective GMs. For example, one group may be Bounty Hunters, while another group may be Guardians, etc.

* Each 'team' builds a business from the supplemental rules from said sourcebook. I don't think a 'base' (Strongholds of Resistance) fits well, because (see below)

* Each team's behaviors influence, accelerate, or negate actions from the other teams.

* Drop the settlement on Krant, and the sides of conflict take new dimension.

* Still on Krant, depending on specific timing, an elusive Jedi Knight lies in wait to aid or threaten certain teams.

* This could be introductory adventures, with reflections of history and unique approaches to conflicts in the galaxy.

Would something like this idea work well?

I'd definitely worry about using this site. Not only would our games clutter up the "legitimate" discussions on the sit, our stuff would be drowned in all the "OMG Autofire" and "Theorycraft this movie character as an RPG character!" threads. I kid, there are lots of good threads here, PbP and otherwise. But an undertaking this size would either disrupt - or be heavily disrupted by - regular threads.

RPG.net is great for running individual PbPs (it's what I use), but I can't see a way to really coordinate them. I'm wholly unfamiliar with Reddit, but I could see someone (me?) making a forum for this. A board for IC stuff, a board for OOC threads, setting/wider info board for player use, and a category that only GMs and admins have access to, including threads on NPCs and a place to coordinate... you can always use SWSheets to make character sheets and link them to character pages in a PC Repository thread. There could be a "Player-wide news" thread, especially if the site is awarded XP at set intervals. The only problem is a dice roller... RPG.net has an integrated roller that can post to the site or email results, so it's more or less impossible to cheat. Not sure what other places use...

For dice rolling, if you don’t have a better integrated solution, there’s always orokos.com.

roleplayinggames.net is good because it has an integrated SWRPG dice roller. But i don't know the limitations on GM's there as i only PC. Otherwise orokos is awesome for dice rolls. We could always commandeer one of the Beginner Game forums here for it!

roleplayinggames.net is good because it has an integrated SWRPG dice roller. But i don't know the limitations on GM's there as i only PC. Otherwise orokos is awesome for dice rolls. We could always commandeer one of the Beginner Game forums here for it!

If we're just using a forum with no in-built dice roller anyway , we might as well advertise here and build a dedicated forums. Proboards, for example, are free and super easy. And especially nice if you have an ad-blocker.

RPG.net is great, and I wouldn't say there is a limitation to GMing per se... but if we want player crossover between games (not sure that was requisite or just the occasional even crossover?) then board permissions would be obnoxious. And there'd be no easy way to GMs to keep in touch with each-other. For this project, I wouldn't recommend it. Sadly.

"We." Have I committed to this, now? ****, my fiancee will kill me.

EDIT: Apologies. That was for a direct message and tired brain but it here.

roleplayinggames.net is good because it has an integrated SWRPG dice roller. But i don't know the limitations on GM's there as i only PC. Otherwise orokos is awesome for dice rolls. We could always commandeer one of the Beginner Game forums here for it!

If we're just using a forum with no in-built dice roller anyway , we might as well advertise here and build a dedicated forums. Proboards, for example, are free and super easy. And especially nice if you have an ad-blocker.

RPG.net is great, and I wouldn't say there is a limitation to GMing per se... but if we want player crossover between games (not sure that was requisite or just the occasional even crossover?) then board permissions would be obnoxious. And there'd be no easy way to GMs to keep in touch with each-other. For this project, I wouldn't recommend it. Sadly.

"We." Have I committed to this, now? ****, my fiancee will kill me.

Well...

I have access to hosting and to forum software. I have two pseudo Star Wars related domains from back when I was considering doing a podcast. I've been itching to do something with the domains, and have been tossing ideas around in my head, which is what prompted this thread in the first place.

So... if that's the direction people want to go...

In the past I found a dice roller add-on for phpbb3 forums (a free open-source forum that you can hook in to your hosted domains) that I managed to hack into a FFG Star Wars dice roller using my very basic knowledge of PHP.

So it's not impossible to integrate dice rolling into your forums, but I if I ever need to update the phpbb3 source for that forum, I might run into a load of problems.

In the past I found a dice roller add-on for phpbb3 forums (a free open-source forum that you can hook in to your hosted domains) that I managed to hack into a FFG Star Wars dice roller using my very basic knowledge of PHP.

So it's not impossible to integrate dice rolling into your forums, but I if I ever need to update the phpbb3 source for that forum, I might run into a load of problems.

Do you still have the source for that addon? I generally prefer to use Simple Machines Forums, but phpBB is doable, too.