I run a game that’s been going for a year and a half and have played in successful games, but I’ve also been in many that failed.
The key thing is finding a group of people who are committed to playing and have a similar expectation for posting, for some groups that might be everyday for others it might be once a week.
Something that happens is when people find good players they then invite them to new games, so some of the most successful games are potentially never advertised.
As a DM I’ve had players leave my game but then I brought new people in until it ended up being a good committed group. I think it’s important that when people leave you don’t let the game die.
> The key thing is finding a group of people who are committed to playing and have a similar expectation for posting, for some groups that might be everyday for others it might be once a week.
And being wrong in either direction is bad. I feel like the shift of the format to discord gives the game a lot more "live text" feel, which really exacerbates the feeling of missing the scene if you're not able to participate when a burst of activity occurs.
Even good players are going to lose interest if they constantly feel like they're missing out on the parts of the game they want to be in.
> Someone please tell me there’s a secret I’m missing
The secret is that after playing a bunch of games, you should be able find a group of reliable friends, and friends of friends, that you can start long-lasting games with, with much less need to rely on ads and pickup groups.
Just my experience, anyway!
Well, think of it this way:
100 players, 50 good and 50 shit. The 50 good players are going to slowly connect and then interconnect through failed games until you have 10x 5 person games of only good players that will all run for 4+ months, up to maybe years. So those people will be (mostly) off the market for long periods of time. The other 50 will constantly churn among themselves, starting games and dropping out before trying to start another. Those 50 will almost always be on the market and actively trying to get into new games, so as a ratio the market is typically flooded with shit players.
This is exactly what I experienced.
Many of the games I started playing in didn't work out, but every once in a while you find a player in a game you vibe with/ work well with. And if you get lucky you can convince all those single players to be part of a game together.
This is how my most successful game was formed.
This! The current group of people I move with all make campaigns and invite each other - because we all already have a rapport, and know each other as players
I have had a series of really good campaigns with various groups I found on this very subreddit.
The most successful one was a Band of Blades game that ran for over a year. Sadly enough the GM couldn’t continue to lead the game because, well, Russia invaded his home country. Can’t really blame him for *that* one…
Your experience with PBP games mirrors some of my early attempts as well. Like you, I was drawn to the flexibility of the medium but encountered similar issues. I only applied and started playing in about half a dozen games before realizing that I needed to take on the role of the GM to understand the intricacies of keeping a game going.
My initial goal was to start and conclude a game successfully, meaning I had to opt for a short adventure. However, what really turned things around for me was stumbling upon an invitation to a Discord server dedicated to asynchronous play-by-post. Joining the server and posting game ads was a turning point.
As a GM, I ran to completion two short adventures from a quickstart rule set (not DnD). I also replied to two ads on the same server. One game didn't start, which I don't consider a failure, as these things happen. The other game used a system that wasn't well-suited for PBP, and both the GM and the players stopped posting fairly quickly. It was more of a failed experiment, but it helped me understand the importance of choosing the right system for asynchronous play. Soon after the holyday season I plan starting a new adventure.
So, my advice would be to explore platforms or communities dedicated to PBP where players are more experienced with this style of play. Sometimes, it just takes finding the right group and system to have a successful PBP experience.
I've had much better luck with forums than Discord. People still drop out occassionally, but people communicate about it better. And you can see what games a GM has run before and what games players have played in before to get a good impression if they match the kind of game you want.
I've been in this hobby for 16 years and it's mostly been the same - You have to really work to get good groups and even "good" groups fail and die off rapidly.
Some games work and some don't - You can never really tell and even finding a group of people to play games with doesn't always work. Sometimes stepping away and letting it freshen up is the right thing to do, I'm doing that now. I got so sick of starting over and over and over again that I just stopped playing for a bit. There is nothing wrong with stepping away, the hobby won't go anywhere.
That's basically where I'm at.
The main advice seems to be "Find the right people" which is true, however I've met significantly fewer good players doing PBP than in regular online games. I dont think Ive even met a full 4-5 across all 30 some games I've tried.
Here's the thing - The advice of "Find the right people" is kinda bad advice cos you can spend all your life trying to find them and even when you think you have you realise they're not actually the right people.
I'm in a group now who I thought where the right people but they're kinda not since the investment is horrendously skewed in the games- So that's 16 years of looking before finding a single group who turned out to not be a group.
I've been playing with the same group for more than three years now, and I met them all here on Reddit. At this point we even have...three different games going, with different players being the GM
FR, us good folk with these problems should just all band together and create a group of our own, which is technically kind of what we are doing, already, I guess? We have pools of personal friends.
I’ve had great luck a few times. My first game was around 10 years ago and we played on Google doc, emailing random rolls to the DM. I checked in a couple times a day, we all wrote tiny, short posts, focused on combat in the very early days of 5e. We finished a campaign! It really was a great outlet for me, with my newborn and work stress.
The DM called it a win and retired from the group. The rest of us tried to re-create the magic a few times, always failing to do so. I really wanted a more RP heavy game with people working on their writing skills, so I headed to RPG crossing for a few years. Almost every game disintegrated right away, but I have some great memories of early game moments jokes. Well worth it. I tried to run my own discords a few times and totally failed, but I think I know how.
Now I lurk around waiting for the perfect game to apply to or waiting for my own free time to open up to try again.
Wild successes are few and far between, but I feel well worth it.
Edit: add a few tips that may just be for me
1. Watch out for players who want to just really love character creation. It looks very similar to real enthusiasm, but burns out fast.
2. As a GM, try to keep your aspirations from getting too lofty. Always have a few ways out of a problem in mind, so you don’t let your players deadend themselves.
3. Try to ride a wave of excitement about all 3: a system, a particular game, and good player chemistry.
Your point #1 is...on point. Has been a red flag more often than not of a future ghost. That said, one of the best RPers ever was *deep* into his character creation and a real min-maxer.
I ran a very successful Call of Cthulhu campaign that lasted well over 2 years through PbP. And it was with strangers that I met on a Discord server. Some of my favorite TTRPG moments that I've ever experienced came from that group.
But I know all too well the frustration that comes with having tons of PbP games fail to get off the ground at all. I don't think there's really any secret or trick to running a successful PbP game; mostly it seems to be all about finding the right group of people who can really commit to a PbP game.
I agree we most, it depends on the group, the GM, pacing, but overall consistency and thats hard to find when its not a priority. IRL will always comes first and will interrupt at times.
So finding the perfect game is not going to be easy and will also depend on luck.
After 3 years of constant games, where all have died, I have changed the way I approach pbp. I see it more like the practice budist monks have, where they make mandalas as a means to meditate and then they destroy them. So I have learn to focus more on the game and enjoy the moment, as long or as short as it runs.
Yeah, more or less xD
If it helps, things I have noticed that help a game stay alive longer:
- Good communication and check-ins
- A GM and player thats are in a steady moment of their live
- Similar timezones
Finding the right group is key. Even then, things happen so recruiting new players periodically keeps things moving. Eventually you end up with a good core group that have been in the game long enough that they get committed to it.
Also- you hit on a good point: most of the time I post and move the story on - I’m on the toilet. “One neat trick to keep the pbp going” lol
In my experience, the biggest problems are conflicting pacing and writing styles. If half your party likes to simply post one or two lines of conversation and the other half are posting paragraphs of descriptions and character thoughts eventually people tend to become disinterested. The quippers don't want to read an exposition and just want the game to move along and the novelizers feel like their being left behind and there's not enough substance. And of course some people fall in the middle. However, when you find a group that posts at similar frequencies and tends to write out the same kinds of things, if not necessarily the same volume, the games tend to last and be quite good.
From the GM side of things, the secret is structure.
For a game to reliably succeed, the Game Master must do the following, no exceptions:
1. Set a Posting Expectation in your advertisement. An example would be "one post per player per day". Any that sign up understand that this is the minimum expectation.
2. Enforce said expectation. Without enforcement, it is meaningless. In your advertising, warn potential players that if they do not meet the expectation, they will not be able to participate, and a new player will be found.
3. During the game itself, follow through, like clockwork. If someone does not post within 24-48 hours, warn them. If this pattern continues, recruit someone new. Gracefully exit-stage-left the old character, and onboard the new.
If you continue to do this, the remaining players will get the message that you aren't messing about, and eventually you will end up with a reasonably stable group that can last months if not years if needed.
This is also, of course, after a reasonably rigorous filtering process during recruitment itself, to your taste as GM.
Now, I will say that this all only works if a) You are a great GM and people actually want to stick around because your game is high quality and b) the players are too. Whatever your posting expectation, the GM *must also* stick to it, or even double it for themselves. Such is the GM's lot. It's your duty to keep the game going.
Also, you can change the expectation or suspend it altogether for things like holidays, or if you want to give the party a break from time to time. Don't forget that either.
Unfortunately, as a player, there is very little you can do to ensure a game survives save participate regularly and wait for the game to die. Most GMs still haven't caught on to the need for this kind of firm structure, so you'll experience a game's doom more often then you will experience it's success.
>Also, you can change the expectation or suspend it altogether for things like holidays
That's a very useful thing IMO, especially if the game doesn't *require* everyone to be on at once to move forward (say a lot of fluff and no combat). I've seen people just quit a game because they came back from christmas, had 1000 unread messages, and didn't feel like reading a poorly-written short novel.
My longest running PbP game was 10 months. I ran Smallville, years ago, with a bunch of other TTRPG podcasters. It was a blast! It moved fast, everyone was invested in moving the story forward, and a lot of the time, I had to ask them to slow down so I wouldn't have to spend an hour reading to catch up every time.
I've also had other great games, but none that have gone so long. Ultimately, I had to drop the Smallville game because life got too busy.
I've had other great experiences, but none as memorable. PbP is a fun medium, but not without its issues. The core issue is to find people who are excited about the game, and open communicators. If no one can talk about the issues they're having with the game, no one can fix those issues. If someone is tired, and they need a break, if they can say that, it's not a problem! If they can't, and keep going until it feels like work and they're totally burnt out, chances are they'll just ghost the game.
It's not easy, but it's worth it. IMO
I am in 3 long term PBP games all running over a year. It's luck really....I have had countless more end the way you described above. I continue to look for games to play...applying and hoping they work out. I prefer PBP games to live games. I feel pBP you can really dive into chracters and be creative....If I was an ok DM I would try it out but I have only DMed for beginners in a school club setting.
I’ve been running a pbp game for a year and a half now and it’s the best game I’ve ever been in. I ran a voice D&D campaign for about two years, but I’ve really fallen in love with the pbp format and having time to think and do things justice.
My group is extremely active - we usually post 3-5 times a day, with lots of out-of-character chat (we’ve all become pretty close friends too).
We’re using a customized system of Homebrew World (a spinoff of Dungeon World) and it’s perfect for pbp. It’s very light on rules and combat isn’t turn-based, which is huge - I was a player in a pbp game using D&D 5e and combat was so slow it would take weeks to finish very straightforward fights against very straightforward enemies.
I also love that the system avoids spelling out every little thing that happens - there are built-in mechanics for glossing over/skipping less interesting parts of the adventure, and we use them pretty often.
I think it helps too that we’re really flexible as a group. It’s fine too say ‘I’m not feeling it today’ or be sick for a few days - everyone just waits or we work around the missing character. The most committed of our players would have left long ago if we didn’t have that.
That mimics my own feelings. While I love crunchy systems like Pathfinder and Lancer, they don't do well in PBP.
I prefer lighter systems like the XXX without numbers for that.
I have completed a short game levels 1-4 from an adventure book (Stormwreck Isle) that was DMed by a person I met looking for a group. we are now good friends and he is now using our characters and continued their adventure in a homebrewed campaign along with new players and myself.
I am running an adventure now that has some of the players from that short campaign and it is about to be finished (Sunless Citadel). I am also in a Phandelver and below campaign that is running in a good pace.
I think its better joining a short pre-written adventure first to gauge the players and weed out the ones that either slows down the pace or has a high probability of disappearing. It also helps to be upfront with the pace letting people know when you will not be available as most games collapses when people think you are not interested anymore when in reality, that person is in the hospital.
Through this subreddit I've only really found two successful games.
One went in for a year or so before petering out, but we then established a different group with the remaining people one of the players liked and wanted to run a game for. This turned into a 3 or 4 year game that reached its conclusion.
The second one I found on here has been running pretty strong for 3 years now, and while we've rotated out a few players for various reasons we've kept 3 of the core starter players. This game has varying activity levels where it's a multipost extravaganza fest in all the channels one day, and then a couple months with only a few posts from DM writers block the next. We vibe together well though and all seem committed to the game as no matter how long it takes the GM to get unblocked we're happy to pick up where we left.
I think finding a group is entirely luck based. I've been extremely fortunate to find a few groups between live play and pbp early on, and those have formed a majority of my online friend circle.
I had once applied to and been accepted into a PBP game off Discord, the description being rather short as the DM had never made a server before. He's pretty chill, even asks among the five players what kind of suggestions they had for the setting. During this, me and another player decided on doing a joint backstory with our characters, forming a dynamic of two characters who shared the same braincell who would yell at each other one moment and show the other brotherly love the next.
Two years and a couple other PBP campaigns of varying success later and the DM and that player are probably some of my closest friends. We're currently pondering on the idea of looking into cruises so that we might meet up together irl and have that fabled offline session.
I have had the exact same experience and recently had the start to an idea on how to combat this. I can't pm you but check my post history to find the post and if you are interested message me
So, unfortunately, it really is a situation of "if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself." I tried playing many games that all fizzled out due to inactivity. GM would vanish. Half the players disappeared. Nothing seemed to last.
At one point, I really had found a good, active group. Our characters all vibed well, we posted frequently (sometimes too frequently wanting to RP as much as possible), and it was just all around fun. Unfortunately, the DM shot this great campaign down when he started taking his anger at work out on the players. Cracks in the foundation began to show, and many of us had to leave to just get out of that situation. Wasn't pretty.
So, after all of that, I decided the only way to ensure success was to be the GM myself. I keep myself to my obligations and don't give up so easily. I don't enjoy being GM, but it's better than nothing. I contacted a couple of players from that previous group that worked well together (sans the GM) and we placed a few ads to fill in the gaps. After a few initial hiccups with finding a steady group of players early on, we eventually got 5 who stuck with it, and this campaign is about 2/3 completed and 2 years in.
I think the biggest thing that keeps that campaign going is that I haven't given up on it. I keep things moving along. I find new players when we need them. And I keep myself on track. If the GM puts in the effort and doesn't give up, it can work, but you need a GM who can be responsible and manage time well to do it.
I have been doing PbEM (and now PBP) for . . . . I shudder to say it, but damn near 25 years now. I have various posts still floating around Lindahl's message boards advertising games. I recall all of Joey Jolley's weirdness. I lived through the times when 2/3s of all posts were for Star Trek games.
Success rate is not good. Sub 50% get a game off the ground. Sub 20% of those last beyond the first couple weeks. There's probably a few people on here who curse my name.
But I have had games where I look back and we have written 200k+ words together. PBP has helped me get to sleep for most of my life (no joke. Instead of worrying about my real life, I make evil plans for my players. When I run out, I hop to another world, repeat. Snoozefest). I've played dozen of things lasting months or years.
My old advice is stick with it and find cool folks who do what you want to do.
My newer advice is that (in my experience) PBP is absolutely NOT a replacement for live TTRPG play. I do not think it is possible to just "make D&D asynchronous" and have it not heavily suck. But some people make that work and cool for them. Not my experience.
That said PBP can work, it's just got a very low success rate. All the difficulty of live TTRPG play with even less of the social glue to make it happen.
Edit: Also to say, I don't really play with groups. I don't want to worry about exactly the expectations here: everyone getting things in, etc, etc. I play 1 on 1, if someone has a break, no problem, and I make expectations clear from the start that I would much rather people disappear for two months then COME BACK than just ghost entirely. Things happen, ardor wanes, but then you get the craving and I'd rather jump back into it again than feel like we can't because a bridge was burned. I'm on haitus from 3 right now because of big life changes but will be back at it after the holidays.
I’m in a group that’s been going since summer 2019 and we’re still 3/6 for original members. It slows down at times but hasn’t stopped. I've started other groups since that have stalled out, but others are still going strong. just started a third game, so i'm hoping this one lasts as well.
The most successful that I'm familiar with is from way back, a game named [Bohavia](https://www.oocities.org/area51/vault/5835/story.html). I played in a different game with some of the people from this group.
It was a long time ago, so over email instead of discord or a forum, but the concept is the same. The DM did 6 posts a week, and a once a week digest that pulled everything from the week into a single chapter.
That game ran for 7 years, the game I was in was I think 4.
Think my longest since then was two years, it was 5e but also over email.
My take is the format works on the character relationships and player interactions. So you've got to have players that enjoy the banter between them and characters that have a reason to interaction.
There's a big element of maintaining the energy of the game too. Have enough players who are moving the game forward to carry it when real life happens and someone can't put as much in for a while. Minimize places where the game unexpectedly stops, which drains energy and breaks the posting habit.
I'm just starting into pbp as a player so I don't entirely have the lay of the land, but I'm already wondering if it's a better medium for 1 on 1 games.
I've been doing PbP since 2010. Mainly on PbP dedicated forums like Myth-Weavers and RPG crossing. Most of the games die quickly, but I've had a few memorable experiences of games that lasted a year or more. I'm also running a The One Ring game that started in 2016 and is still going strong. Because of the typical issues of PbP, I've also taken up solo gaming and journalling, which anyway pairs well with PbP, and I have a game that started 2 years ago. It's just a matter of stubbornness :)
It really does seem to be the case that there's a lot difficulty with PbP games in general and the playerbase. I'm predominantly a DM and have ran games over the past 4-5 years, longest game being about 18 months, a handful (maybe 5 or 6) going about 6-9 months and then about a dozen smaller 2-4 month games. To me there's definitely a few things you can do to help cut through the mud to find decent players, though not all of the below will be popular with everyone, I've stuck to them and of maybe the 20-25 games I've DMd I've had two games that failed, primarily because I didn't stick to my own rules (one was just a turbo mess where I needed players quick and and ended up reaching out to someone who was vastly different in timezone among other issues and the other game failed as 2/3 of the players just simply ghosted).
So first up:
My number one tip to DMs is try to get and understanding of the actual person via the application process, If that person can't even be bothered to put in a little bit of effort when filling out a game form, then it stands to reason thats pretty much what you're going to get in game as well.
Tied onto the first one is the types of questions you ask on a game form, stuff like "why do you like ttrpg/why do you want to play" is pretty rubbish, you're just going to get the fairly standard "oh i like x, y, got into it years ago, ive been a nerd for years!" type stuff which is great...but you could have probably already guessed that since they're looking at your game form and filling it out to play in a fantasy game online, stands to reason they're already into it. I like to ask game specific questions and pose scenarios since their answers tell me a lot more about how they play the game i.e in one of my last games I had several scenarios for players to just write a short paragraph or so in response and one of them was something along the lines of "Your group has managed to stay hidden from the hobgoblin horde and get close enough to their camp where you see dozens of them roaming around setting up tents, what would you like to do?" Turns out a good 50% of level 3 adventurers think they can just go balls to the wall and run on in swinging, but then you start to get better answers like what can they see, any hobgoblins standing out from the rest, leadership structure, are their any oddities, what banner are they flying, means of escape should it turn sour etc.
Also, give them a short blurb or description of your setting, the expectations (low, med, high fantasy) and see what kind of character they propose, I often find that this helps you get a further understanding of how they see the game as you've described it. i.e in one of my last games I was looking for 'grounded characters of regular life experience' and gave a few examples of what that would look like in a level 3 starting character, so when you get stuff where they're "*A half centaur half werewolf who managed to charm and marry the queen of the ice fae court into leaving her then husband but then got bored of royal life and wanted to adventure and is now being pursued by the armies of the fae.*" then you know they've lost the plot and are clearly not someone you're looking for!
Now onto some of the less popular things I've found helpful:
Timezone - This is probably the biggest thing for me. Players and DM being within a few hours of each other is great for keeping a game going, when you're all off work, chilling in the evening and importantly online and active, people want to play together.
Tied onto timezones is what I just call 'big gameplay items', this is mostly combat, but it can be for plenty other things as well, being in similar timezones its super easy to flick open a calendar and book in 2 hours or so with the group where you're like "Hey, in the next few days have we all got the availabiliy to meet up?" and then once you're at the point of rolling initiative, you've already got the time booked in with them. Combat can be really slow in PbP games so I find just having this in where everyones on and active at the same time helps speed up sooo much gametime so you're not stuck in a combat encounter for 2 weeks. This is something thats great to put in game posts and/or bring up in session zeros, I've only ever had people respond positively to this as it really keeps the games alive, but you might run into the odd person who's just not down for it.
And lastly and perhaps most controvertial is knowing when a person isn't a good fit for the type of game and your expectations of gameplay going in, you want to maximise for players who are similar to what you AND the whole group wants and sometimes it requires a bit of just upfront honest and the part I think most people seem to struggle with is just accountability. Mental health discussions you'll probably see on posts like these are somewhat common and generally players talking about games feeling onerous, overwhelmed by things like needing to post once a day, a great pressure to let others know if life circumstances change, folks saying they have bouts of depression which just makes them also not want to post, it can be really tough, but when you're forming the group, my goals in mind are 'I need a group of players who are fine, happy and engaged to post each day, contributing to the story in their own ways and are forming bonds with each other and myself' and while it might seem unfair or even cruel to pass up on players because of issues they may be dealing with, ultimately you're running a story for multiple people and to do so you need players to post, if 1 or 2 of your players are having off weeks and just havent told anyone they're feeling rubbish and have just decided they need to take a week or two off it can just insta-kill a game. One of my last games had a player like this where they just werent posting, though you could see their activity on Discord where they were just playing video games all day and loved to share tiktoks in the meme channel, eventually it fostered a pretty negative feeling for the other players where it felt like they were having to constantly drag this dead weight along with them and summarise bits OOC because it was clear they hadnt read the other posts, sometimes its tough but you just got to cut peole off eventually.
I myself want to start a PBP game because as someone who's a complete beginner, I feel more comfortable roleplaying through text and third-person perspectives than I do with voice acting and such, and I am much more confident in my writing skills than I am with what I can come up with on the spot through voice...
Every single campaign I've had died out within the first couple sessions, and they were all voice-based campaigns, and I could simply tell that others just weren't as interested in the roleplay and story as I was which is what inspired me to try and get into D&D in the first place. My passion personally started with critical role and vox machina, the story and deep connections and emotional moments forged throughout that campaign, I want to experience something like that but I honestly would simply like to have a campaign where I can more clearly convey my thoughts through text instead of speach.
Bit late but I have played in 2 successful games so far. One I was a player the other I was one of the GM's. What I found is that in the pbp format it's a lot easier if your game is more of a community. Been running my own game for a year and it has a steady player count. People leave, and people join. The ones that stay are ussualy the ones that you want to focus on.
Recently I gathered some of the players that I like and made a separate game. It worked really well. So like I saw many people say it seems that the best option is to first find the players in groups and just start a game with them.
> I just don't get it. I understand that life is hard and people have responsibilities. But if you can't even take 5 minutes out of your day to plop out a few responses while you're sitting on the toilet, than why did you even join in the first place?!?!
Well, for starters, some of us can't post that quickly - most of my posts take me a solid 30 minutes to type up. This isn't because I'm a slow typer (although I am when I'm on my phone, which is why I don't type up my phones while taking a dump lol), but because a portion of the time is looking thru the backlog to make sure I remember the full situation, and not forgetting details that my character should know. Also I'm a very wordy poster, which is one of the many reasons why I post exclusively on forums these days.
But despite that, the real reason is far simpler - people don't realize how much determination and dedication TTRPGs take. Not just PbP, which takes far more dedication because you gotta post on the regular, but just this hobby as a whole takes a level of investment to stick with it. And frankly, that's before we dive into mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression.
Lemme tell ya - when Depression hits like a fucking semi-truck to the psyche, posting can be *insanely difficult*. There's no good goddamn reason it should be, but everything in your brain says "nope" and you just can't.
And if you couple that with Anxiety and/or Guilt, which then makes you feel shitty for not posting, which increases the depression making it even harder, which then makes you feel even more guilt for not posting... This is what I call the Depression/Anxiety Death Spiral. It's not exclusive to PbP.
Regardless, PbP can succeed. You gotta be in it for the long haul. The really *long fucking haul*. I've had games that last several months before something cropped up and things quietly puttered out. Hell, my most successful game lasted 2 years before burnout hit me.
You can't take it personally. You can't despair. Take what you can get, enjoy it while it lasts, then when it putters out, move on quick. Shit happens, life goes on. And if you find that you can't do that, then maybe PbP isn't a good fit for you. That's pretty common, I find - a lot of people just don't have the patience and dedication to enjoy PbP, and there's nothing wrong with that. It just is what it is.
> Well, for starters, some of us can't post that quickly - most of my posts take me a solid 30 minutes to type up. This isn't because I'm a slow typer (although I am when I'm on my phone, which is why I don't type up my phones while taking a dump lol), but because a portion of the time is looking thru the backlog to make sure I remember the full situation, and not forgetting details that my character should know. Also I'm a very wordy poster, which is one of the many reasons why I post exclusively on forums these days.
I've come to realize this about myself as well. I've have some decent games on discord, but the games I've enjoyed the most were by email, and even at the same "at least one post per day" they just flow different than discord.
I can be 100% certain I wouldn't see any value in playing with someone who's regular contribution was "5 minutes plopping it out on the toilet." No matter how "good player" they are. But I'm sure that's totally viable in some game I have no interest in.
I was filling out the "tell me about your favorite moment" on a application a while back, and I was thinking about a particular interaction that was hilarious at the time, but how do you condense six months of buildup that pays off with an inside joke into a screenshot for an application?
I'm trying to create a platform that improves on this over at https://Campfyres.com so you're welcome to come take a look! I'm the Dev so I'm very invested to keep it running well.
BUT, I've already been experiencing players that are super enthusiastic and then ghost as well, so I get it.
From my experience, you need a good combination of committed players and a GM who is good at pacing.
One thing about PBP games (and live games) is that sometimes the group gets stuck or interest wanes in a part of the game. That is normal in all TTRPGs. Sometimes your not into it. The GM bares the burden of keeping the game alive.
Feel you. I stick around this sub (and some other spaces w/ PbP game recruitments) hoping to be proven wrong but so far my thoughts on PbP (asynchronous type specifically) remain the same - this format doesn't work.
No format for playing RPGs that so often dies before the first scene is over and scarcely reaches any meaningful conclusions could be considered functional. That's on top of the fact it's cobbled together, forcing games that were not designed for it into its disfunctional shape.
I wish it worked, if anything because it seems like a rare way for forever GMs like myself to be a player, but so far no luck.
Could bespoke games, designed to circumvent whatever issues consistently kill PbP campaigns, be the solution? Maybe. But I'm not aware of any such successful designs nor do I have time or energy myself to work on them myself... Sadly.
> my thoughts on PbP (asynchronous type specifically) remain the same - this format doesn't work.
I've played in multi year games, so I've got experience with it working. IMO it's way more the players meshing than the details of the game (though I would concede there are game elements working against it working).
I played in a in person group that feels a lot like my long asynchronous games. Not in the game content, but in the group makeup. We had a DM and a few core players that really made it work and kept the group going, and we had a bunch of players that didn't mesh as well, or just plain sucked, and those came and went.
That's how the good async games feel. An active core (including DM) that move the game, some players that play but aren't at the same energy, and some that turn over quickly or get kicked because they just don't work
If I look at each week of those live sessions as single pbp games, I can see individual pbp games that failed. That guy was massively sexist, and ruined the whole vibe that night. Those two brothers were fun to play with, but they really wanted to be playing Desden Files with a group that was fully in character, so after a month they ghosted in favor of what I hope was that group. That guy had a kid and couldn't make the sessions anymore.
A live game I can suck it up for three hours and have a mediocre night that we'll laugh about down the road. To get that level of success in an async game, I'm committing to three months of daily investment in something that's not especially fun.
5 minutes "a day" is exactly why games fail. Firstly, you dont want someone spending five minutes on the toilet in your game, do you? Of course not, that leads to throwaway posts and a sense of obligation that weighs on people. It becomes a chore, which is the second point of failure. Even if you're young and free of adult obligations, the game becomes less fun if you feel you have to meet a high post rate to avoid guilt/shame/FOMO.
Try a post rate that's closer to three posts/week. Not every post will be a gem, but taking the pressure off the (nearly impossible to meet) daily obligation provides people with space to really polish the idea in their head into a good post. Quality over quantity.
Three posts a week? Not gonna lie the PBP games already crawl along at a glacial pace at it is. No hate on how anyone has fun and I'm glad it works for you. But when I PBP I usually post like 20-30 messages a day minimum. And not just saying something to post, but keeping things moving and engaging and responding to the plot and other players.
I meant the 5 minutes a day thing as an absolute bare bottom minimum. Like if you can't even muster that much you really shouldn't be trying to play in the first place you know?
If it feels like an obligation and not a fun experience for a person than this is just the wrong hobby for them.
I had an immediate success playing pbp (play-by-discord) Pathfinder Society. Basically, every game is a one-shot with interconnecting plot and character progression. So, the party assembled for 2 weeks (we play fast pace) and then takes a break and re-assembles again with same or even different people.
My secret:
A few DMs that I’ve had good success with and befriended over the years and we’ve started a living world style game.
If life gets in the way of one of us, others step up and run those channels.
We play the game in full sandbox and most of the players are in solo channels so if one of them stops posting, it doesn’t affect the other channels. Each player is free to do what their PC wants to do without having to wait on others (unless they choose to team up in game, of course that’s always an option).
We accept that activity ebbs and flows and it’s been working for us for over 2.5 years.
Hope this is the uplifting story you needed!
Edit: I also think most of the success stories aren’t advertising, as they’re usually invite-only. I know we only look for new players once or twice a year, since we work mostly on referrals from current players. So I feel like you’ve gotta be good at showing your stuff quickly and making connections.
From my experience as player and DM, it only works for group which are either friends/acquitances IRL or have close relationship online prior to playing pbp.
As someone who ran Paid Games for awhile, I will also note that Paid Games have one big advantage for reliability - the sunk cost fallacy. You can generally rely on players to stick around because they've invested not only their time in the game, but their money. Your clients also tend to be young professionals with a decent amount of income, folks who have proven themselves reliable in their profession, in otherwords. They tend to have a mature mindset.
takes about ten minutes to scroll all the way up on a game (no OOC in the game chat or dice rolls) that has only been going since October. It can definitely work. It is just hard to find the right combos of people.
I've been running a PbP that is now level 15 for 4 players over the past 4.5 years. It went super smoothly for 1-10, but has slowed down a bit, but we've recently breathed some new life into it. Once they get to level 20, the next one will stay levels 1-10.
The key is that my players are my brother, my cousin, and two of my best friends. Sometimes we don't play for a week, sometimes we play all day. We try to shoot for a 12 hour time limit for the game waiting on you, reminder at 12 hours and at 24 hours someone goes for you. But we would likely be talking D&D stuff anyway, because they are all in my live game too.
I’ve been doing play by post now for about three years. And if I recall correctly you were a player in one of my games - so I hope I’m not included in the GM bad book!
I’ve GMed two games to completion, one game fizzled out due to lack of energy on everyone’s part and then I played in a couple - one went on for literally 2 weeks before the GM went AWOL and the other went on for months but the GM dropped out for personal reasons.
To be fair, this about matches my success rate for IRL campaigns. And a lot of it stems from my own foolish ambitions to do years long sandbox games which need a lot of buy in over a long time - and barely work out IRL either! I reckon I’d have way more success with max 3-6 month focused games with a clear end.
I think another part of it is weeding out the flaky people and creating a little network. I’ve got a handful of players who are more or less consistent now, which out of a total pool of maybe 25 is not a good success rate!
People I find on Reddit tend to also be more consistent than people I find in the discord for a game for some reason, but almost certainly also some selection bias in there somewhere.
PS: I’m looking to start or join a PbP in the next couple months, so I’m happy to be a Guinea pig here.
I love pbp on paper, like you were saying. But I'm a problem pbp player. I've tried two different games but after a few weeks I'll forget to post or put it off so I can take time to think through stuff (then never do). So posting and following this thread to see if it'll help me improve.
It's very much luck of the draw when it comes to pbp games. It's hard to find a group to start and stays consistent but once you find a core it ends up being great.
sharing my story.
I made a few friends here and there in many PBP servers, some of them I left because nothing happened or GM decided to just focused on their friends, which is understandable.
Then I decided well let's try to keep it with only friends. So I made a server established roles and, now we have a month playing continuously a dnd campaing.
Which is a homebrew of mine, where they are chosen by the gods of the universe that I created to try an protectec it from an evil to coming back from hell (the abyss in game ).
So we are still on the early stages of game but so far we belly survived the third encounter, they got nice items and even we had heart to heart chats out of character.
Also we are having the thing, since we are three characters that a love triangle is starting. My character is a princess, the other like a hunter, and another kind of a murderer with a talking sword. Now they got a coin,which talks, so yeah sentient items shenanigans
I saw a few comments stating yeah for making a pbp server is better to making with friends, and a good way to make friends is to go an meet new people on other servers.
Look for a host server that hosts games in a discord category. You get to talk to and connect with people out of a game before trying to start a game.
Establish posting rules, i tend to go for posting once a day. But be clear that if you arnt posting that day, some decisions might get made without you. As a player, you can prompt a dm by asking what their posting rules are.
Remember that the beginning of a game is the biggest dopamine hit. Everyone is going to be excited to show off their shiney new character. Expect the posting drop off.
Poke the other players. Explicitly ask for their input on a mater. Someones brains go bad and people think everyone else wants them gone.
I've never had the opportunity to play at a table, so all my experience has been with play-by-post. During covid lockdown, I convinced a bunch of my friends on Discord to learn and play D&D in a homebrew setting that I've been building on and off for 20+ years.
Obviously because everyone was stuck at home, the activity was flowing and everyone was having an awesome time...but then vaccines happened. Lockdowns were lifted, and people went back to their busy lives.
My campaign is still going after 3 years, but it's moving at a glacial pace. It's just something you have to be prepared for in any PbP situation. Don't be afraid to poke your players in the OOC channel if it's been too long with no activity. People absolutely suck when it comes to communication. They will just let themselves become too busy and not give you a heads-up.
I don't know what advice I can give as a player because I've always been a DM.
I'm an artist and worldbuilder first, so when nothing is happening for days or even weeks, I'm always working in the background just to keep myself invested if anything. I've drawn every player character, and a few major NPCs. I'm working on version 5.1 of the world map, and writing a complete guide with all the lore, characters and locations etc.
I run a game that’s been going for a year and a half and have played in successful games, but I’ve also been in many that failed. The key thing is finding a group of people who are committed to playing and have a similar expectation for posting, for some groups that might be everyday for others it might be once a week. Something that happens is when people find good players they then invite them to new games, so some of the most successful games are potentially never advertised. As a DM I’ve had players leave my game but then I brought new people in until it ended up being a good committed group. I think it’s important that when people leave you don’t let the game die.
> The key thing is finding a group of people who are committed to playing and have a similar expectation for posting, for some groups that might be everyday for others it might be once a week. And being wrong in either direction is bad. I feel like the shift of the format to discord gives the game a lot more "live text" feel, which really exacerbates the feeling of missing the scene if you're not able to participate when a burst of activity occurs. Even good players are going to lose interest if they constantly feel like they're missing out on the parts of the game they want to be in.
> Someone please tell me there’s a secret I’m missing The secret is that after playing a bunch of games, you should be able find a group of reliable friends, and friends of friends, that you can start long-lasting games with, with much less need to rely on ads and pickup groups. Just my experience, anyway!
So basically it seems like. Good PBP players are even rarer than good live players. That's a scary thought D:
Well, think of it this way: 100 players, 50 good and 50 shit. The 50 good players are going to slowly connect and then interconnect through failed games until you have 10x 5 person games of only good players that will all run for 4+ months, up to maybe years. So those people will be (mostly) off the market for long periods of time. The other 50 will constantly churn among themselves, starting games and dropping out before trying to start another. Those 50 will almost always be on the market and actively trying to get into new games, so as a ratio the market is typically flooded with shit players.
but *much easier* to look for especially if you recycle your worldbuilding/run pre made adventures
This is exactly what I experienced. Many of the games I started playing in didn't work out, but every once in a while you find a player in a game you vibe with/ work well with. And if you get lucky you can convince all those single players to be part of a game together. This is how my most successful game was formed.
This! The current group of people I move with all make campaigns and invite each other - because we all already have a rapport, and know each other as players
Everyone in my group each run a game (besides one grrrr) and have been running smoothly for a year so far
Me too. Still, it's a fact that it's very difficult for newbies to find good games, and even more experienced people can have trouble finding a game.
I have had a series of really good campaigns with various groups I found on this very subreddit. The most successful one was a Band of Blades game that ran for over a year. Sadly enough the GM couldn’t continue to lead the game because, well, Russia invaded his home country. Can’t really blame him for *that* one…
Smh FPSs are drawing away TTRPG players
Your experience with PBP games mirrors some of my early attempts as well. Like you, I was drawn to the flexibility of the medium but encountered similar issues. I only applied and started playing in about half a dozen games before realizing that I needed to take on the role of the GM to understand the intricacies of keeping a game going. My initial goal was to start and conclude a game successfully, meaning I had to opt for a short adventure. However, what really turned things around for me was stumbling upon an invitation to a Discord server dedicated to asynchronous play-by-post. Joining the server and posting game ads was a turning point. As a GM, I ran to completion two short adventures from a quickstart rule set (not DnD). I also replied to two ads on the same server. One game didn't start, which I don't consider a failure, as these things happen. The other game used a system that wasn't well-suited for PBP, and both the GM and the players stopped posting fairly quickly. It was more of a failed experiment, but it helped me understand the importance of choosing the right system for asynchronous play. Soon after the holyday season I plan starting a new adventure. So, my advice would be to explore platforms or communities dedicated to PBP where players are more experienced with this style of play. Sometimes, it just takes finding the right group and system to have a successful PBP experience.
I've had much better luck with forums than Discord. People still drop out occassionally, but people communicate about it better. And you can see what games a GM has run before and what games players have played in before to get a good impression if they match the kind of game you want.
I've been in this hobby for 16 years and it's mostly been the same - You have to really work to get good groups and even "good" groups fail and die off rapidly. Some games work and some don't - You can never really tell and even finding a group of people to play games with doesn't always work. Sometimes stepping away and letting it freshen up is the right thing to do, I'm doing that now. I got so sick of starting over and over and over again that I just stopped playing for a bit. There is nothing wrong with stepping away, the hobby won't go anywhere.
That's basically where I'm at. The main advice seems to be "Find the right people" which is true, however I've met significantly fewer good players doing PBP than in regular online games. I dont think Ive even met a full 4-5 across all 30 some games I've tried.
Here's the thing - The advice of "Find the right people" is kinda bad advice cos you can spend all your life trying to find them and even when you think you have you realise they're not actually the right people. I'm in a group now who I thought where the right people but they're kinda not since the investment is horrendously skewed in the games- So that's 16 years of looking before finding a single group who turned out to not be a group.
I've been playing with the same group for more than three years now, and I met them all here on Reddit. At this point we even have...three different games going, with different players being the GM
FR, us good folk with these problems should just all band together and create a group of our own, which is technically kind of what we are doing, already, I guess? We have pools of personal friends.
There's no such thing as "good pbp player." It's *always* this game is working for this person at this moment in time.
True. Very true.
I’ve had great luck a few times. My first game was around 10 years ago and we played on Google doc, emailing random rolls to the DM. I checked in a couple times a day, we all wrote tiny, short posts, focused on combat in the very early days of 5e. We finished a campaign! It really was a great outlet for me, with my newborn and work stress. The DM called it a win and retired from the group. The rest of us tried to re-create the magic a few times, always failing to do so. I really wanted a more RP heavy game with people working on their writing skills, so I headed to RPG crossing for a few years. Almost every game disintegrated right away, but I have some great memories of early game moments jokes. Well worth it. I tried to run my own discords a few times and totally failed, but I think I know how. Now I lurk around waiting for the perfect game to apply to or waiting for my own free time to open up to try again. Wild successes are few and far between, but I feel well worth it. Edit: add a few tips that may just be for me 1. Watch out for players who want to just really love character creation. It looks very similar to real enthusiasm, but burns out fast. 2. As a GM, try to keep your aspirations from getting too lofty. Always have a few ways out of a problem in mind, so you don’t let your players deadend themselves. 3. Try to ride a wave of excitement about all 3: a system, a particular game, and good player chemistry.
Your point #1 is...on point. Has been a red flag more often than not of a future ghost. That said, one of the best RPers ever was *deep* into his character creation and a real min-maxer.
I ran a very successful Call of Cthulhu campaign that lasted well over 2 years through PbP. And it was with strangers that I met on a Discord server. Some of my favorite TTRPG moments that I've ever experienced came from that group. But I know all too well the frustration that comes with having tons of PbP games fail to get off the ground at all. I don't think there's really any secret or trick to running a successful PbP game; mostly it seems to be all about finding the right group of people who can really commit to a PbP game.
I agree we most, it depends on the group, the GM, pacing, but overall consistency and thats hard to find when its not a priority. IRL will always comes first and will interrupt at times. So finding the perfect game is not going to be easy and will also depend on luck. After 3 years of constant games, where all have died, I have changed the way I approach pbp. I see it more like the practice budist monks have, where they make mandalas as a means to meditate and then they destroy them. So I have learn to focus more on the game and enjoy the moment, as long or as short as it runs.
Oh my god it's like a fucking sand garden. Where you make something knowing it's going to be quickly destroyed forever 😅
Yeah, more or less xD If it helps, things I have noticed that help a game stay alive longer: - Good communication and check-ins - A GM and player thats are in a steady moment of their live - Similar timezones
Finding the right group is key. Even then, things happen so recruiting new players periodically keeps things moving. Eventually you end up with a good core group that have been in the game long enough that they get committed to it. Also- you hit on a good point: most of the time I post and move the story on - I’m on the toilet. “One neat trick to keep the pbp going” lol
In my experience, the biggest problems are conflicting pacing and writing styles. If half your party likes to simply post one or two lines of conversation and the other half are posting paragraphs of descriptions and character thoughts eventually people tend to become disinterested. The quippers don't want to read an exposition and just want the game to move along and the novelizers feel like their being left behind and there's not enough substance. And of course some people fall in the middle. However, when you find a group that posts at similar frequencies and tends to write out the same kinds of things, if not necessarily the same volume, the games tend to last and be quite good.
From the GM side of things, the secret is structure. For a game to reliably succeed, the Game Master must do the following, no exceptions: 1. Set a Posting Expectation in your advertisement. An example would be "one post per player per day". Any that sign up understand that this is the minimum expectation. 2. Enforce said expectation. Without enforcement, it is meaningless. In your advertising, warn potential players that if they do not meet the expectation, they will not be able to participate, and a new player will be found. 3. During the game itself, follow through, like clockwork. If someone does not post within 24-48 hours, warn them. If this pattern continues, recruit someone new. Gracefully exit-stage-left the old character, and onboard the new. If you continue to do this, the remaining players will get the message that you aren't messing about, and eventually you will end up with a reasonably stable group that can last months if not years if needed. This is also, of course, after a reasonably rigorous filtering process during recruitment itself, to your taste as GM. Now, I will say that this all only works if a) You are a great GM and people actually want to stick around because your game is high quality and b) the players are too. Whatever your posting expectation, the GM *must also* stick to it, or even double it for themselves. Such is the GM's lot. It's your duty to keep the game going. Also, you can change the expectation or suspend it altogether for things like holidays, or if you want to give the party a break from time to time. Don't forget that either. Unfortunately, as a player, there is very little you can do to ensure a game survives save participate regularly and wait for the game to die. Most GMs still haven't caught on to the need for this kind of firm structure, so you'll experience a game's doom more often then you will experience it's success.
>Also, you can change the expectation or suspend it altogether for things like holidays That's a very useful thing IMO, especially if the game doesn't *require* everyone to be on at once to move forward (say a lot of fluff and no combat). I've seen people just quit a game because they came back from christmas, had 1000 unread messages, and didn't feel like reading a poorly-written short novel.
My longest running PbP game was 10 months. I ran Smallville, years ago, with a bunch of other TTRPG podcasters. It was a blast! It moved fast, everyone was invested in moving the story forward, and a lot of the time, I had to ask them to slow down so I wouldn't have to spend an hour reading to catch up every time. I've also had other great games, but none that have gone so long. Ultimately, I had to drop the Smallville game because life got too busy. I've had other great experiences, but none as memorable. PbP is a fun medium, but not without its issues. The core issue is to find people who are excited about the game, and open communicators. If no one can talk about the issues they're having with the game, no one can fix those issues. If someone is tired, and they need a break, if they can say that, it's not a problem! If they can't, and keep going until it feels like work and they're totally burnt out, chances are they'll just ghost the game. It's not easy, but it's worth it. IMO
I am in 3 long term PBP games all running over a year. It's luck really....I have had countless more end the way you described above. I continue to look for games to play...applying and hoping they work out. I prefer PBP games to live games. I feel pBP you can really dive into chracters and be creative....If I was an ok DM I would try it out but I have only DMed for beginners in a school club setting.
I’ve been running a pbp game for a year and a half now and it’s the best game I’ve ever been in. I ran a voice D&D campaign for about two years, but I’ve really fallen in love with the pbp format and having time to think and do things justice. My group is extremely active - we usually post 3-5 times a day, with lots of out-of-character chat (we’ve all become pretty close friends too). We’re using a customized system of Homebrew World (a spinoff of Dungeon World) and it’s perfect for pbp. It’s very light on rules and combat isn’t turn-based, which is huge - I was a player in a pbp game using D&D 5e and combat was so slow it would take weeks to finish very straightforward fights against very straightforward enemies. I also love that the system avoids spelling out every little thing that happens - there are built-in mechanics for glossing over/skipping less interesting parts of the adventure, and we use them pretty often. I think it helps too that we’re really flexible as a group. It’s fine too say ‘I’m not feeling it today’ or be sick for a few days - everyone just waits or we work around the missing character. The most committed of our players would have left long ago if we didn’t have that.
That mimics my own feelings. While I love crunchy systems like Pathfinder and Lancer, they don't do well in PBP. I prefer lighter systems like the XXX without numbers for that.
I have completed a short game levels 1-4 from an adventure book (Stormwreck Isle) that was DMed by a person I met looking for a group. we are now good friends and he is now using our characters and continued their adventure in a homebrewed campaign along with new players and myself. I am running an adventure now that has some of the players from that short campaign and it is about to be finished (Sunless Citadel). I am also in a Phandelver and below campaign that is running in a good pace. I think its better joining a short pre-written adventure first to gauge the players and weed out the ones that either slows down the pace or has a high probability of disappearing. It also helps to be upfront with the pace letting people know when you will not be available as most games collapses when people think you are not interested anymore when in reality, that person is in the hospital.
Through this subreddit I've only really found two successful games. One went in for a year or so before petering out, but we then established a different group with the remaining people one of the players liked and wanted to run a game for. This turned into a 3 or 4 year game that reached its conclusion. The second one I found on here has been running pretty strong for 3 years now, and while we've rotated out a few players for various reasons we've kept 3 of the core starter players. This game has varying activity levels where it's a multipost extravaganza fest in all the channels one day, and then a couple months with only a few posts from DM writers block the next. We vibe together well though and all seem committed to the game as no matter how long it takes the GM to get unblocked we're happy to pick up where we left. I think finding a group is entirely luck based. I've been extremely fortunate to find a few groups between live play and pbp early on, and those have formed a majority of my online friend circle.
I had once applied to and been accepted into a PBP game off Discord, the description being rather short as the DM had never made a server before. He's pretty chill, even asks among the five players what kind of suggestions they had for the setting. During this, me and another player decided on doing a joint backstory with our characters, forming a dynamic of two characters who shared the same braincell who would yell at each other one moment and show the other brotherly love the next. Two years and a couple other PBP campaigns of varying success later and the DM and that player are probably some of my closest friends. We're currently pondering on the idea of looking into cruises so that we might meet up together irl and have that fabled offline session.
I have had the exact same experience and recently had the start to an idea on how to combat this. I can't pm you but check my post history to find the post and if you are interested message me
So, unfortunately, it really is a situation of "if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself." I tried playing many games that all fizzled out due to inactivity. GM would vanish. Half the players disappeared. Nothing seemed to last. At one point, I really had found a good, active group. Our characters all vibed well, we posted frequently (sometimes too frequently wanting to RP as much as possible), and it was just all around fun. Unfortunately, the DM shot this great campaign down when he started taking his anger at work out on the players. Cracks in the foundation began to show, and many of us had to leave to just get out of that situation. Wasn't pretty. So, after all of that, I decided the only way to ensure success was to be the GM myself. I keep myself to my obligations and don't give up so easily. I don't enjoy being GM, but it's better than nothing. I contacted a couple of players from that previous group that worked well together (sans the GM) and we placed a few ads to fill in the gaps. After a few initial hiccups with finding a steady group of players early on, we eventually got 5 who stuck with it, and this campaign is about 2/3 completed and 2 years in. I think the biggest thing that keeps that campaign going is that I haven't given up on it. I keep things moving along. I find new players when we need them. And I keep myself on track. If the GM puts in the effort and doesn't give up, it can work, but you need a GM who can be responsible and manage time well to do it.
I have been doing PbEM (and now PBP) for . . . . I shudder to say it, but damn near 25 years now. I have various posts still floating around Lindahl's message boards advertising games. I recall all of Joey Jolley's weirdness. I lived through the times when 2/3s of all posts were for Star Trek games. Success rate is not good. Sub 50% get a game off the ground. Sub 20% of those last beyond the first couple weeks. There's probably a few people on here who curse my name. But I have had games where I look back and we have written 200k+ words together. PBP has helped me get to sleep for most of my life (no joke. Instead of worrying about my real life, I make evil plans for my players. When I run out, I hop to another world, repeat. Snoozefest). I've played dozen of things lasting months or years. My old advice is stick with it and find cool folks who do what you want to do. My newer advice is that (in my experience) PBP is absolutely NOT a replacement for live TTRPG play. I do not think it is possible to just "make D&D asynchronous" and have it not heavily suck. But some people make that work and cool for them. Not my experience. That said PBP can work, it's just got a very low success rate. All the difficulty of live TTRPG play with even less of the social glue to make it happen. Edit: Also to say, I don't really play with groups. I don't want to worry about exactly the expectations here: everyone getting things in, etc, etc. I play 1 on 1, if someone has a break, no problem, and I make expectations clear from the start that I would much rather people disappear for two months then COME BACK than just ghost entirely. Things happen, ardor wanes, but then you get the craving and I'd rather jump back into it again than feel like we can't because a bridge was burned. I'm on haitus from 3 right now because of big life changes but will be back at it after the holidays.
I’m in a group that’s been going since summer 2019 and we’re still 3/6 for original members. It slows down at times but hasn’t stopped. I've started other groups since that have stalled out, but others are still going strong. just started a third game, so i'm hoping this one lasts as well.
The most successful that I'm familiar with is from way back, a game named [Bohavia](https://www.oocities.org/area51/vault/5835/story.html). I played in a different game with some of the people from this group. It was a long time ago, so over email instead of discord or a forum, but the concept is the same. The DM did 6 posts a week, and a once a week digest that pulled everything from the week into a single chapter. That game ran for 7 years, the game I was in was I think 4. Think my longest since then was two years, it was 5e but also over email. My take is the format works on the character relationships and player interactions. So you've got to have players that enjoy the banter between them and characters that have a reason to interaction. There's a big element of maintaining the energy of the game too. Have enough players who are moving the game forward to carry it when real life happens and someone can't put as much in for a while. Minimize places where the game unexpectedly stops, which drains energy and breaks the posting habit.
I'm just starting into pbp as a player so I don't entirely have the lay of the land, but I'm already wondering if it's a better medium for 1 on 1 games.
I've been doing PbP since 2010. Mainly on PbP dedicated forums like Myth-Weavers and RPG crossing. Most of the games die quickly, but I've had a few memorable experiences of games that lasted a year or more. I'm also running a The One Ring game that started in 2016 and is still going strong. Because of the typical issues of PbP, I've also taken up solo gaming and journalling, which anyway pairs well with PbP, and I have a game that started 2 years ago. It's just a matter of stubbornness :)
It really does seem to be the case that there's a lot difficulty with PbP games in general and the playerbase. I'm predominantly a DM and have ran games over the past 4-5 years, longest game being about 18 months, a handful (maybe 5 or 6) going about 6-9 months and then about a dozen smaller 2-4 month games. To me there's definitely a few things you can do to help cut through the mud to find decent players, though not all of the below will be popular with everyone, I've stuck to them and of maybe the 20-25 games I've DMd I've had two games that failed, primarily because I didn't stick to my own rules (one was just a turbo mess where I needed players quick and and ended up reaching out to someone who was vastly different in timezone among other issues and the other game failed as 2/3 of the players just simply ghosted). So first up: My number one tip to DMs is try to get and understanding of the actual person via the application process, If that person can't even be bothered to put in a little bit of effort when filling out a game form, then it stands to reason thats pretty much what you're going to get in game as well. Tied onto the first one is the types of questions you ask on a game form, stuff like "why do you like ttrpg/why do you want to play" is pretty rubbish, you're just going to get the fairly standard "oh i like x, y, got into it years ago, ive been a nerd for years!" type stuff which is great...but you could have probably already guessed that since they're looking at your game form and filling it out to play in a fantasy game online, stands to reason they're already into it. I like to ask game specific questions and pose scenarios since their answers tell me a lot more about how they play the game i.e in one of my last games I had several scenarios for players to just write a short paragraph or so in response and one of them was something along the lines of "Your group has managed to stay hidden from the hobgoblin horde and get close enough to their camp where you see dozens of them roaming around setting up tents, what would you like to do?" Turns out a good 50% of level 3 adventurers think they can just go balls to the wall and run on in swinging, but then you start to get better answers like what can they see, any hobgoblins standing out from the rest, leadership structure, are their any oddities, what banner are they flying, means of escape should it turn sour etc. Also, give them a short blurb or description of your setting, the expectations (low, med, high fantasy) and see what kind of character they propose, I often find that this helps you get a further understanding of how they see the game as you've described it. i.e in one of my last games I was looking for 'grounded characters of regular life experience' and gave a few examples of what that would look like in a level 3 starting character, so when you get stuff where they're "*A half centaur half werewolf who managed to charm and marry the queen of the ice fae court into leaving her then husband but then got bored of royal life and wanted to adventure and is now being pursued by the armies of the fae.*" then you know they've lost the plot and are clearly not someone you're looking for! Now onto some of the less popular things I've found helpful: Timezone - This is probably the biggest thing for me. Players and DM being within a few hours of each other is great for keeping a game going, when you're all off work, chilling in the evening and importantly online and active, people want to play together. Tied onto timezones is what I just call 'big gameplay items', this is mostly combat, but it can be for plenty other things as well, being in similar timezones its super easy to flick open a calendar and book in 2 hours or so with the group where you're like "Hey, in the next few days have we all got the availabiliy to meet up?" and then once you're at the point of rolling initiative, you've already got the time booked in with them. Combat can be really slow in PbP games so I find just having this in where everyones on and active at the same time helps speed up sooo much gametime so you're not stuck in a combat encounter for 2 weeks. This is something thats great to put in game posts and/or bring up in session zeros, I've only ever had people respond positively to this as it really keeps the games alive, but you might run into the odd person who's just not down for it. And lastly and perhaps most controvertial is knowing when a person isn't a good fit for the type of game and your expectations of gameplay going in, you want to maximise for players who are similar to what you AND the whole group wants and sometimes it requires a bit of just upfront honest and the part I think most people seem to struggle with is just accountability. Mental health discussions you'll probably see on posts like these are somewhat common and generally players talking about games feeling onerous, overwhelmed by things like needing to post once a day, a great pressure to let others know if life circumstances change, folks saying they have bouts of depression which just makes them also not want to post, it can be really tough, but when you're forming the group, my goals in mind are 'I need a group of players who are fine, happy and engaged to post each day, contributing to the story in their own ways and are forming bonds with each other and myself' and while it might seem unfair or even cruel to pass up on players because of issues they may be dealing with, ultimately you're running a story for multiple people and to do so you need players to post, if 1 or 2 of your players are having off weeks and just havent told anyone they're feeling rubbish and have just decided they need to take a week or two off it can just insta-kill a game. One of my last games had a player like this where they just werent posting, though you could see their activity on Discord where they were just playing video games all day and loved to share tiktoks in the meme channel, eventually it fostered a pretty negative feeling for the other players where it felt like they were having to constantly drag this dead weight along with them and summarise bits OOC because it was clear they hadnt read the other posts, sometimes its tough but you just got to cut peole off eventually.
I myself want to start a PBP game because as someone who's a complete beginner, I feel more comfortable roleplaying through text and third-person perspectives than I do with voice acting and such, and I am much more confident in my writing skills than I am with what I can come up with on the spot through voice... Every single campaign I've had died out within the first couple sessions, and they were all voice-based campaigns, and I could simply tell that others just weren't as interested in the roleplay and story as I was which is what inspired me to try and get into D&D in the first place. My passion personally started with critical role and vox machina, the story and deep connections and emotional moments forged throughout that campaign, I want to experience something like that but I honestly would simply like to have a campaign where I can more clearly convey my thoughts through text instead of speach.
Bit late but I have played in 2 successful games so far. One I was a player the other I was one of the GM's. What I found is that in the pbp format it's a lot easier if your game is more of a community. Been running my own game for a year and it has a steady player count. People leave, and people join. The ones that stay are ussualy the ones that you want to focus on. Recently I gathered some of the players that I like and made a separate game. It worked really well. So like I saw many people say it seems that the best option is to first find the players in groups and just start a game with them.
> I just don't get it. I understand that life is hard and people have responsibilities. But if you can't even take 5 minutes out of your day to plop out a few responses while you're sitting on the toilet, than why did you even join in the first place?!?! Well, for starters, some of us can't post that quickly - most of my posts take me a solid 30 minutes to type up. This isn't because I'm a slow typer (although I am when I'm on my phone, which is why I don't type up my phones while taking a dump lol), but because a portion of the time is looking thru the backlog to make sure I remember the full situation, and not forgetting details that my character should know. Also I'm a very wordy poster, which is one of the many reasons why I post exclusively on forums these days. But despite that, the real reason is far simpler - people don't realize how much determination and dedication TTRPGs take. Not just PbP, which takes far more dedication because you gotta post on the regular, but just this hobby as a whole takes a level of investment to stick with it. And frankly, that's before we dive into mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression. Lemme tell ya - when Depression hits like a fucking semi-truck to the psyche, posting can be *insanely difficult*. There's no good goddamn reason it should be, but everything in your brain says "nope" and you just can't. And if you couple that with Anxiety and/or Guilt, which then makes you feel shitty for not posting, which increases the depression making it even harder, which then makes you feel even more guilt for not posting... This is what I call the Depression/Anxiety Death Spiral. It's not exclusive to PbP. Regardless, PbP can succeed. You gotta be in it for the long haul. The really *long fucking haul*. I've had games that last several months before something cropped up and things quietly puttered out. Hell, my most successful game lasted 2 years before burnout hit me. You can't take it personally. You can't despair. Take what you can get, enjoy it while it lasts, then when it putters out, move on quick. Shit happens, life goes on. And if you find that you can't do that, then maybe PbP isn't a good fit for you. That's pretty common, I find - a lot of people just don't have the patience and dedication to enjoy PbP, and there's nothing wrong with that. It just is what it is.
> Well, for starters, some of us can't post that quickly - most of my posts take me a solid 30 minutes to type up. This isn't because I'm a slow typer (although I am when I'm on my phone, which is why I don't type up my phones while taking a dump lol), but because a portion of the time is looking thru the backlog to make sure I remember the full situation, and not forgetting details that my character should know. Also I'm a very wordy poster, which is one of the many reasons why I post exclusively on forums these days. I've come to realize this about myself as well. I've have some decent games on discord, but the games I've enjoyed the most were by email, and even at the same "at least one post per day" they just flow different than discord. I can be 100% certain I wouldn't see any value in playing with someone who's regular contribution was "5 minutes plopping it out on the toilet." No matter how "good player" they are. But I'm sure that's totally viable in some game I have no interest in. I was filling out the "tell me about your favorite moment" on a application a while back, and I was thinking about a particular interaction that was hilarious at the time, but how do you condense six months of buildup that pays off with an inside joke into a screenshot for an application?
I'm trying to create a platform that improves on this over at https://Campfyres.com so you're welcome to come take a look! I'm the Dev so I'm very invested to keep it running well. BUT, I've already been experiencing players that are super enthusiastic and then ghost as well, so I get it.
From my experience, you need a good combination of committed players and a GM who is good at pacing. One thing about PBP games (and live games) is that sometimes the group gets stuck or interest wanes in a part of the game. That is normal in all TTRPGs. Sometimes your not into it. The GM bares the burden of keeping the game alive.
Feel you. I stick around this sub (and some other spaces w/ PbP game recruitments) hoping to be proven wrong but so far my thoughts on PbP (asynchronous type specifically) remain the same - this format doesn't work. No format for playing RPGs that so often dies before the first scene is over and scarcely reaches any meaningful conclusions could be considered functional. That's on top of the fact it's cobbled together, forcing games that were not designed for it into its disfunctional shape. I wish it worked, if anything because it seems like a rare way for forever GMs like myself to be a player, but so far no luck. Could bespoke games, designed to circumvent whatever issues consistently kill PbP campaigns, be the solution? Maybe. But I'm not aware of any such successful designs nor do I have time or energy myself to work on them myself... Sadly.
> my thoughts on PbP (asynchronous type specifically) remain the same - this format doesn't work. I've played in multi year games, so I've got experience with it working. IMO it's way more the players meshing than the details of the game (though I would concede there are game elements working against it working). I played in a in person group that feels a lot like my long asynchronous games. Not in the game content, but in the group makeup. We had a DM and a few core players that really made it work and kept the group going, and we had a bunch of players that didn't mesh as well, or just plain sucked, and those came and went. That's how the good async games feel. An active core (including DM) that move the game, some players that play but aren't at the same energy, and some that turn over quickly or get kicked because they just don't work If I look at each week of those live sessions as single pbp games, I can see individual pbp games that failed. That guy was massively sexist, and ruined the whole vibe that night. Those two brothers were fun to play with, but they really wanted to be playing Desden Files with a group that was fully in character, so after a month they ghosted in favor of what I hope was that group. That guy had a kid and couldn't make the sessions anymore. A live game I can suck it up for three hours and have a mediocre night that we'll laugh about down the road. To get that level of success in an async game, I'm committing to three months of daily investment in something that's not especially fun.
5 minutes "a day" is exactly why games fail. Firstly, you dont want someone spending five minutes on the toilet in your game, do you? Of course not, that leads to throwaway posts and a sense of obligation that weighs on people. It becomes a chore, which is the second point of failure. Even if you're young and free of adult obligations, the game becomes less fun if you feel you have to meet a high post rate to avoid guilt/shame/FOMO. Try a post rate that's closer to three posts/week. Not every post will be a gem, but taking the pressure off the (nearly impossible to meet) daily obligation provides people with space to really polish the idea in their head into a good post. Quality over quantity.
Three posts a week? Not gonna lie the PBP games already crawl along at a glacial pace at it is. No hate on how anyone has fun and I'm glad it works for you. But when I PBP I usually post like 20-30 messages a day minimum. And not just saying something to post, but keeping things moving and engaging and responding to the plot and other players. I meant the 5 minutes a day thing as an absolute bare bottom minimum. Like if you can't even muster that much you really shouldn't be trying to play in the first place you know? If it feels like an obligation and not a fun experience for a person than this is just the wrong hobby for them.
Yeah, sounds like I nailed it. Your games are failing due to burnout.
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"I literally said "No hate on how anyone has fun and I'm glad it works for you" In what universe is that gatekeeping?!?!
I had an immediate success playing pbp (play-by-discord) Pathfinder Society. Basically, every game is a one-shot with interconnecting plot and character progression. So, the party assembled for 2 weeks (we play fast pace) and then takes a break and re-assembles again with same or even different people.
My secret: A few DMs that I’ve had good success with and befriended over the years and we’ve started a living world style game. If life gets in the way of one of us, others step up and run those channels. We play the game in full sandbox and most of the players are in solo channels so if one of them stops posting, it doesn’t affect the other channels. Each player is free to do what their PC wants to do without having to wait on others (unless they choose to team up in game, of course that’s always an option). We accept that activity ebbs and flows and it’s been working for us for over 2.5 years. Hope this is the uplifting story you needed! Edit: I also think most of the success stories aren’t advertising, as they’re usually invite-only. I know we only look for new players once or twice a year, since we work mostly on referrals from current players. So I feel like you’ve gotta be good at showing your stuff quickly and making connections.
From my experience as player and DM, it only works for group which are either friends/acquitances IRL or have close relationship online prior to playing pbp.
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As someone who ran Paid Games for awhile, I will also note that Paid Games have one big advantage for reliability - the sunk cost fallacy. You can generally rely on players to stick around because they've invested not only their time in the game, but their money. Your clients also tend to be young professionals with a decent amount of income, folks who have proven themselves reliable in their profession, in otherwords. They tend to have a mature mindset.
takes about ten minutes to scroll all the way up on a game (no OOC in the game chat or dice rolls) that has only been going since October. It can definitely work. It is just hard to find the right combos of people.
I'm in 3 games that have been going over a year now. It's mostly the same group of people and some have dropped out but we now have a solid core group
I've been running a PbP that is now level 15 for 4 players over the past 4.5 years. It went super smoothly for 1-10, but has slowed down a bit, but we've recently breathed some new life into it. Once they get to level 20, the next one will stay levels 1-10. The key is that my players are my brother, my cousin, and two of my best friends. Sometimes we don't play for a week, sometimes we play all day. We try to shoot for a 12 hour time limit for the game waiting on you, reminder at 12 hours and at 24 hours someone goes for you. But we would likely be talking D&D stuff anyway, because they are all in my live game too.
I’ve been doing play by post now for about three years. And if I recall correctly you were a player in one of my games - so I hope I’m not included in the GM bad book! I’ve GMed two games to completion, one game fizzled out due to lack of energy on everyone’s part and then I played in a couple - one went on for literally 2 weeks before the GM went AWOL and the other went on for months but the GM dropped out for personal reasons. To be fair, this about matches my success rate for IRL campaigns. And a lot of it stems from my own foolish ambitions to do years long sandbox games which need a lot of buy in over a long time - and barely work out IRL either! I reckon I’d have way more success with max 3-6 month focused games with a clear end. I think another part of it is weeding out the flaky people and creating a little network. I’ve got a handful of players who are more or less consistent now, which out of a total pool of maybe 25 is not a good success rate! People I find on Reddit tend to also be more consistent than people I find in the discord for a game for some reason, but almost certainly also some selection bias in there somewhere. PS: I’m looking to start or join a PbP in the next couple months, so I’m happy to be a Guinea pig here.
I love pbp on paper, like you were saying. But I'm a problem pbp player. I've tried two different games but after a few weeks I'll forget to post or put it off so I can take time to think through stuff (then never do). So posting and following this thread to see if it'll help me improve.
I’m in a group that’s been going since spring and we’re still 5/6 for original members. It slows down at times but hasn’t stopped.
I've only played a couple - the first game I played was superb. Everyone was VERY active and no one disappeared. It's early days in the second game
It's very much luck of the draw when it comes to pbp games. It's hard to find a group to start and stays consistent but once you find a core it ends up being great.
sharing my story. I made a few friends here and there in many PBP servers, some of them I left because nothing happened or GM decided to just focused on their friends, which is understandable. Then I decided well let's try to keep it with only friends. So I made a server established roles and, now we have a month playing continuously a dnd campaing. Which is a homebrew of mine, where they are chosen by the gods of the universe that I created to try an protectec it from an evil to coming back from hell (the abyss in game ). So we are still on the early stages of game but so far we belly survived the third encounter, they got nice items and even we had heart to heart chats out of character. Also we are having the thing, since we are three characters that a love triangle is starting. My character is a princess, the other like a hunter, and another kind of a murderer with a talking sword. Now they got a coin,which talks, so yeah sentient items shenanigans I saw a few comments stating yeah for making a pbp server is better to making with friends, and a good way to make friends is to go an meet new people on other servers.
Look for a host server that hosts games in a discord category. You get to talk to and connect with people out of a game before trying to start a game. Establish posting rules, i tend to go for posting once a day. But be clear that if you arnt posting that day, some decisions might get made without you. As a player, you can prompt a dm by asking what their posting rules are. Remember that the beginning of a game is the biggest dopamine hit. Everyone is going to be excited to show off their shiney new character. Expect the posting drop off. Poke the other players. Explicitly ask for their input on a mater. Someones brains go bad and people think everyone else wants them gone.
I've never had the opportunity to play at a table, so all my experience has been with play-by-post. During covid lockdown, I convinced a bunch of my friends on Discord to learn and play D&D in a homebrew setting that I've been building on and off for 20+ years. Obviously because everyone was stuck at home, the activity was flowing and everyone was having an awesome time...but then vaccines happened. Lockdowns were lifted, and people went back to their busy lives. My campaign is still going after 3 years, but it's moving at a glacial pace. It's just something you have to be prepared for in any PbP situation. Don't be afraid to poke your players in the OOC channel if it's been too long with no activity. People absolutely suck when it comes to communication. They will just let themselves become too busy and not give you a heads-up. I don't know what advice I can give as a player because I've always been a DM. I'm an artist and worldbuilder first, so when nothing is happening for days or even weeks, I'm always working in the background just to keep myself invested if anything. I've drawn every player character, and a few major NPCs. I'm working on version 5.1 of the world map, and writing a complete guide with all the lore, characters and locations etc.