Hi,

I'm interested in PbP and I've read a few threads of such games in various forums.

I'm wondering about the "best" approach for managing the dice pool in a such a game as SW RPG or Genesys, or any use of the FFG Narrative Dice System.
This system shines for tabletop gaming, but I wonder how to handle dice pools in a PbP context.

On one hand you want the story to progress as smoothly as possible. You want to avoid having many small posts going back and forth. That is to say giving more freedom to the players that in tabletop gaming, they will be encouraged to anticipate, describe their intent, or even begin to act.
On the other hand, the GM only knows the details and implications of each scene. Letting players build their own dice pool can lead to inconsistencies, or can sometimes override the GM's plans...

I've seen GMs giving a lot of options to the players, naming possible actions and giving difficulty of each check : IMHO this removes the "creative" part for the players and some of the interest of playing an RPG.
I've seen players going forward, carrying over the narration, conducting the scene, assembling a dice pool, resolving a check, and interpreting the result. Wow, that is a lot, and a lot of freedom too... How not to interfere with the GM's plan ?

In other games (like d20), I saw players announcing an action, describing their intent, and throwing a dice according to their "attribute". In such a case, they don't know yet the outcome of the action, because the GM will confront the player roll to the actual "opposition" or difficulty. So the GM takes over and resolves the action.
I think this is good. The problem with a dice pool is that you are supposed to know the good dice *and* the bad dice when you roll them.

I almost never see a player ask for a difficulty, and wait for the answer of the GM before throwing?

Thinking a bit about it I see two possible approaches.

1.
- The player describe the intent and rolls dice with a self made pool (generally average difficulty)
o at that time the player has a "feeling" of what may occur, but cannot be sure of what will happen. We are at the heart of the action, this is realistic in a way.
- The GMs can eventually arrange the pool (adding boosts, or setbacks, or changing difficulty), and finish the resolution of the check. The world can be full of surprises.

2. Use OOC channels for small dialogs. That way the player can ask for the conditions of a check *before* rolling. Maybe that is what OOC threads are for?
In an ideal world, I'd want such dialogs to be set "aside", but they would occur in real time (eg in an instant messaging system). I'd like them to be interlaced with the real "posts" so that anyone can read them.

Since I'm a PbP noob, I may be all the way wrong, and I'd be glad to hear from real players !
How do you do? Are you fully satisfied with your "approach"?
Cheers

In my experience, it's usually what the OOC threads are for: declaring what you wish to do and then getting the difficulty from the GM. I personally find that approach fine: the story is in the story thread, which doesn't get cluttered up with OOC stuff, and since I'm a busy person, I don't mind dropping a message and having the GM respond a while later, since I can respond when I'm not busy.

As for the lack of creativity: some players need choices in order to proceed, but the creativity is where the advantages and threats, triumphs and despairs come in where they add what they can do extra. Other players are encouraged to help figure it out, and the GM has the final say. But the system does require a GM to be flexible enough to do some game-jujitsu and find a way to best use the player's scenes while getting the general story thread running.

Also be sure to use a good online dice roller. The most common one used here is http://orokos.com/ .

Or use discord and one of the nice dice bots!

On 4/19/2018 at 2:35 AM, vLabz said:

1.
- The player describe the intent and rolls dice with a self made pool (generally average difficulty)
o at that time the player has a "feeling" of what may occur, but cannot be sure of what will happen. We are at the heart of the action, this is realistic in a way.
- The GMs can eventually arrange the pool (adding boosts, or setbacks, or changing difficulty), and finish the resolution of the check. The world can be full of surprises.

It's cleanest IMHO to just treat it like you would at the tabletop. Player describes intent, GM gives the difficulty, player can then roll the whole pool together. This is how the rulebook calls out the dice mechanics are supposed to work, and it's part of the social contract of the game. (The surprises, as you say, are in the dice results, not in the GM tossing in some extra dice after the fact)

At any rate, doing it this way has a number of benefits:

• It reinforces good social contract behavior by all parties by keeping an important vestige of the tabletop atmosphere.
• It allows the player, upon being given a difficulty, to either roll or to say "Ah...never mind!" If they roll their positive dice first and **** the consequences, they miss out on what I see as an important "I've got a bad feeling about this" opportunity in play.
• Also if the player rolls the dice first without knowing the difficulty, it can put the GM in an awkward predicament where he might be tempted to try and mitigate the roll one way or the other.
• Most importantly, IMO, is that it reinforces the notion that the GM is the one who determines if something requires a dice roll, and is the one who call for the dice pool. The players don't get to just roll a check for whatever they feel like.

I would also recommend http://orokos.com/ for your rolling needs. Once you get the nomenclature down it's easy to use, it displays the dice and automatically cancels pips for you, and best of all it keeps a record for you that you can use to go back :

Orokos is great for forum based pbp. But discord is so much easier we have free dice bots!

Also, SWSheets.com is a great place to host your character sheets.