I have run a few games in person but none online by post. My players and I have all got married and have busy schedules making meeting up difficult to schedule. How does play-by-post work? Are any games recruiting or do you think I can run one having run one in person? I am nearly always near a computer with internet access so posting should not be difficult except maybe on the weekend.

PBP games basically work by people posting their actions in a thread like this, and then allowing time (usually several days) for the other players to respond to said actions/words. They will use some online dice roller for the skill checks, and post the results for the GM to mediate, and then describe their actions.

Some will use outside chat sources to have a real time conversation, to document it in a faster method, and then post the conversation in it's entireity later. For example, 2 PC's having a discussion about the Force while sitting in a shack (Luke and Ben from New Hope). They might have that conversation all at once, and then just copy paste the full thing. This is usually done if it's expected to be a lengthy conversation, and will have a lot of fast back and forth between the people talking. This allows the conversation to be posted in just 1 post, instead of say 30+, in small little bits.

You can find some good examples of games on this very site. The problem with games run here is that some have only one thread for both In Character and Out of Character chat, making it a little confusing for people not playing in the games. Some very good examples can be found on the Roleplaying Games Network . I play in the Tempest Feud, Friends Like These and The Last Warship, great fun and good games. I don't think any of those is recruiting new players at the moment, and at any rate it might be better if you want to try out a game to find one that's starting up rather than established games where a player has dropped off. Starting your own game is a very good option for you, but if you do, may I suggest you read through a few good examples of games to get a feel for what works and what doesn't?

One thing you must realize going in is that PbP takes time. People might post quickly in the beginning, but real life happens and you should not expect people to post more than once or twice per week. Some post more frequently, which is great, but the slow pace sometimes makes things feel slow. It is both up to the PCs and the GM to push things along so that the game progresses at a good speed.

It is also worth pointing out that due to the slow pace, many GMs give out far larger sums of XP, or dole out XP after a shorter game period (a few encounters perhaps) to give the players a sense of progress with the characters. Character progression is slow enough in PbP even with that, it would be very demoralizing to finish a "session" that took 4-6 months only to get 15 XP.

The dedicated PbP site, Gamers Plane , has an in-forum/in-post roller and very active FFG SWRPG community. You could check out some examples there and join the community if you dig it.

Yeah, I was in a pbp at that site, and it recently fizzled out due to some posters losing steam. It can be tricky, if you are the kind of poster who posts quickly, and a few don't. But it's just how it is. Not sure if there are any chat based star wars sites out there, like there are for stuff like White Wolf's systems. Those tend to be more fast paced, but you run into the issue of only having official content from the GM once a week, or every few days. When that's not happening, it's usually "filler" chat between characters, just doing social hanging out.

Thanks I'll look into those sites.

I've just gotten involved with PBF (play-by-forum) on GamersPlane, but we're using it to supplement an in-person campaign we're running. It's a nice blend to use the forum for mundane things like shopping and planning, and the in-person sessions for more mechanics-heavy stuff like combat (which I've heard takes FOREVER on a forum).

One thing our GM has done is setup a main mission thread, and then a separate solo mission forum for each PC, so that he can work with the to develop when the "team" isn't all together on some mission. I think it's a pretty good setup.

A big question will be how many people do you want in your campaign? Again, I'm new to the forum method, but we've got 5 PCs and that seems like it would be a lot if we were ONLY doing PBF/PBP.

Is there a dedicated forum to do this?

On 4/19/2017 at 3:48 PM, JinFaram said:

I have run a few games in person but none online by post. My players and I have all got married and have busy schedules making meeting up difficult to schedule. How does play-by-post work? Are any games recruiting or do you think I can run one having run one in person? I am nearly always near a computer with internet access so posting should not be difficult except maybe on the weekend.

I'm actually recruiting for new players for a currently active game in order to fill some vacancies that opened up recently. Check the prep thread for requirements.

2 hours ago, andrew28475 said:

Is there a dedicated forum to do this?

There are several PbP games being run on these very forums, primarily in the "Beginner Games" sections under AoR, EotE and F&D at the top of each page.

3 hours ago, andrew28475 said:

Is there a dedicated forum to do this?

There is the above mentioned Gamersplane still.

It's dedicated 100% to PbP, with in-forum character sheets, in-post dice roller for this system, player character avatars (not just user avatars), everything you need to run a game in one site (instead of having to use two or three or more like "some" places, ie here).

Looks like there are something like 15 active games using either the Star Wars setting or a Genesys setting (which is of course basically the same dice system).