Hey guys,

I'm going to be starting up a new PbP campaign for my live-play group (we only get in sessions once a month these days and the group is left jonesing for more). I've played in a few PbP campaigns before but have never run one. There are a few resources online that I've gathered (these are below), but many are generic and/or geared to fantasy games.

I'm curious about peoples' experiences with running and/or playing PbP games in FFG's Star Wars: do you have any tips, suggestions, or rules that are specific to the FFG system that I should keep in mind? That others might find useful? Things that worked, things that didn't, and things that you want to try?

EDIT 1: I should have mentioned that I am going to be running this PbP campaign on Obsidian Portal. It will also be a Force and Destiny campaign.

General Resources:

Giant in the Playground

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?257924-Guide-to-Play-by-Post-Games

RPG.net

https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?123714-Play-by-Post-Forum-Rules-and-Guidelines

Roleplaying Tips

https://roleplayingtips.com/tools/guide-to-pbp-pbem/

Stack Exchange

http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/292/are-there-any-tricks-to-a-successful-play-by-post-play-by-e-mail-game

Use http://orokos.com/ for dice rolls, it time stamps the rolls so every roll is out in the open and no one has to wonder if anyone fudged the rolls.

Try to keep the number of NPC initiative slots low, 2 or 3 maximum. It will help keep the game moving during structured encounters.

Because it's your regular group you probably won't have many of the issues common in PBP, such as long absences of people as RL gets in the way

• Keep rolls for things like Perception to a minimum. Is the roll really necessary?

Have a chat with your group about how you want to handle hidden information. PbP makes it much easier to feed information to individual players, and some groups might like the opportunities that creates, while others might prefer to keep everything out in the open.

Building off DurosSpacer's point about rolls, think about how you want to handle "group rolls." At a table, it's not a big deal if you call for a Perception or Knowledge check and everyone else decides they'd like to take a stab at it too, but that can really slow things down in PbP.

Communicate clearly with your players so that they know when you are waiting for someone to post (this is something I really need to be better about). You might be waiting for someone to get their two cents, but everyone else might be waiting for you to move things along to create more opportunities to jump off of.

Some people like to set certain writing standards, such as defining verb tense or point of view or suggesting that posts exceed a certain word count. I'm more lax about that sort of thing, but encouraging people to work on their writing can help you improve the quality of the posts. Just like you might need to encourage people to get into character and act like their character in a live game despite not being an improvisational actor, you might need to encourage people to refine their use of description and dialogue even though they aren't professional writers.

Speaking of description, giving players the freedom to define their surroundings is even more pivotal in PbP than in live games. You don't want a player to feel like they have to barrage you with questions about what the room looks like and who's there before they can make their post. Things run much more smoothly if players feel free to exercise a little authorial control over their surroundings (provided, of course, that they don't use this to insert a deus ex machina into the scene or the like), and not having to provide exhaustive descriptions of their surroundings will make things easier on you. If a player does try to insert something into the scene to give them an advantage, well, that sounds like a great use of a destiny flip to me.

Speaking of destiny flips, give some thought to how you are going to define a "session" in the PbP setting. In live games, the tendency is that you sit down, play for so many hours, and then the session ends there regardless of how far you've gotten into the adventure you planned. PbP makes it easier to have tidy "session" endings that coincide with the resolution of important scenes or objectives, but going months without earning any experience or having an opportunity to refresh once per session abilities can make players restive. PbP games can easily flow organically from one scene to the next, which makes for interesting storytelling, but also puts the onus on you to find/make logical endpoints so that the players have a chance to recharge and reassess where they stand.

These are all great suggestions guys. Thanks so much!

This is all really great advice. I solicited a bunch of advice before I started My Kind of Scum (take a look in the beginner forums if interested) and most of the common pitfalls come from playing with folks that you don't know. You are already starting off in a good spot by porting over your IRL game onto a PbP. A couple of things to reiterate:

- Set a posting cadence. This helps keep the game moving and gets into a good rhythm or else the game will move at a glacial pace

- As DuroSpacer said, you are responsible for lapses. Always leave the PCs with an immediate something to do.

- Similarly to "keeping the extra checks to a minimum" you should also suggest the next step for courses of action. That will cut down on the clarifying posts (which are also a momentum killer).

- Use SWSheets for character sheets, makes it much easier to keep track of what is going on with the PCs.

- Think about using Obsidian Portal for your own personal use to organize NPCs and the like.