Campaign Styles

[L.Craig]

Has anyone ran a campaign using face to face and PBEM. I was wondering how its worked for people. Im starting a new campaign, the problem is 3 of our players including myself recently had new babies so our time to game face to face is becoming somewhat limited. Im thinking of running a PBEM game where we will still play face to face once a month. so if anybody has any suggestions on how to run this let me know.

[TheQuestionMan]

No, but it sounds like an intriguing idea.

Hmmm...

QM

[Cougar]

Has anyone ran a campaign using face to face and PBEM. I was wondering how its worked for people. Im starting a new campaign, the problem is 3 of our players including myself recently had new babies so our time to game face to face is becoming somewhat limited. Im thinking of running a PBEM game where we will still play face to face once a month. so if anybody has any suggestions on how to run this let me know.

I ran a game where a bunch of set up (character background incidents and some pre-game interaction) was done via email and it segued fairly nicely into the game.

Seems to me that this would afford a good opportunity for focusing on the individual characters and their backgrounds in the email and then getting into the big stuff the group has to handle together in person. Kind of like email is the character's solo book (Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, etc.) and the face-to-face game is the group book (the Avengers).

Paul

[TheRavenIs]

Ay the moment the GM of our long lasting face-to-face has started a PBEM for one of our teams in that game world, we have had a change in players and also not being able to get together as often so we use it as a way to still game when we can't get together face-to-face.

[concord]

I guess you can say that the Wardens Chronicles is part face-to-face and part PBEM...

We game face-to-face every other week and communicate via email or instant messaging between sessions...

Here is the link for the current version on the campaign...

http://wardens.angeva.com/wardens4/wardens4.asp

The session logs are the face-to-face part and the downtime logs are the between sessions part... the logs are a bit behind as I have been having health issues and the campaign has been on hiatus...

Here are the Rules of Engagement for between sessions...

Please remember when using email and IM... if I don't get an electronic copy of an encounter or conversation, it did not happen...

You can talk and plan all you want to, but if you want it to happen as a downtime or character activity, I need an electronic copy of it...

If it is something you plan on doing during a session, then you can spring it on me face to face... but please don't hand me a ten page letter at the start of a session and say this is what we are doing...

[Trebuchet]

During a recent story arc in our MidGuard campaign, we did some role-playing stuff and "group meetings" by e-mail where everyone replied as if they were their characters sitting around the conference table. It worked very well; enough so that we've done some other "pre-story" setups online to save FtF time.

I think your idea has definite potential.

[Spiral]

During a recent story arc in our MidGuard campaign, we did some role-playing stuff and "group meetings" by e-mail where everyone replied as if they were their characters sitting around the conference table. It worked very well; enough so that we've done some other "pre-story" setups online to save FtF time.

I think your idea has definite potential.

My group has done this also and it works well as long as you can get them to read their emails. I give the ones who reply at least 1 EXP point or something.

[Savinien]

RCU has done this in the past and concurrently. The roster of the Champions of Justice is large enough some characters on the team are only available in the online version of the game.

Some stories and set-up are done through online means and some sessions are played face-to-face. I think it has worked fairly well so far.

[CBikle]

In our game we've done this largely to handle in-between game investigation and role-playing. Also for adventure prologues and setting up the plot hook.

Saves a lot of time by allowing you to take care of the more mundane details OOG that normally eat up actual game time.

[zornwil]

We've mixed in PBEM a bit. Basically it's been informal, based on followups and comments after games resulting in sudden PBEM. It's worked quite well. However, when we were going to deliberately do play-by-post, it bogged down largely because the F2F games for that supers campaign were on hold so that diminished excitement plus it was hostage to I guess a schedule conflict or two plus some posting issues. But aside from that it's been a good way to do some things between F2F sessions. And for those characters doing lots of side activities it works well. Often I use PBEM to see what's going on in the PCs lives outside of the group.

[Rapier]

Eh. I can't stand PBEM. It's never worked for me.

Monday - Email goes out that it's SpaceLasses action.
Tuesday - wait
Wednesday - wait
Thursday - wait
Friday - wait
Saturday - SpaceLass take a half move and holds her remaing half-action to defend.

I WAITED for THAT!?!

I'm sure it can work well in some instances and with the right players, but I've no interest in it. If you can't do face-to-face there are oodles of internet options available these days. If you can't do either, I'd probably just read a book. It's a lot better on the digestion!

[Zed-F]

There are 2 general solutions to that, Rapier.

1) Join lots of PBEMs or PBPs at the same time so there's always something coming into your mailbox. Can get overwhelming if you're not careful, especially if you run into a time crunch in RL.

2) Join PBEMs or PBPs that try to maintain a regular posting rate. Often this is once a day, for some games with people whose RL jobs/lives allow it, it can be a lot more.

[LadyChaos]

Portable cribs. You may think I jest, but that's what we all did 15 years ago and my kid grew up just fine. And, she's a gamer!

It only works if the people you play with like and/or tolerate kids. You may need to switch gaming locations to a house that's been child-proofed later on.

Congratulations on the new DNPC, by the way.

As far as PBEM, I haven't done that in years. In fact, back then it was plain old PBM. My GM and I often take care of in-character stuff that would bog down the games via email. Since it's just the two of us, though, the turnaround time is not a problem.

[Kenn]

RCU has done this in the past and concurrently. The roster of the Champions of Justice is large enough some characters on the team are only available in the online version of the game.

Some stories and set-up are done through online means and some sessions are played face-to-face. I think it has worked fairly well so far.

What he said.

[Peregrine]

Rule 0 for PBeM Gaming: You cannot pace the flow of events like tabletop (or a novel, or, worst of all, "like real life") - the turnaround time is too slow. You have to pace like TV or the movies.

Think of it this way: you have Character Time (or Story Time; same thing), and you have Audience Time. Character Time is the rate at which events (changes) happen from the characters' POV. Audience Time is the rate at which events (changes) happen from the audience's POV. Regardless of medium (face to face, play by chat, PbEM, etc.) if events (changes) do not take place in Audience Time, you will lose your audience. PBeM moves so slowly that events have to happen quickly - you really can't do segment-by-segment Hero combat in PBeM. In fact, combat of any kind needs to be severely abstracted.

PBeM works best for "talky-talky" scenes/storylines, and scene jumps have to be significant - after you resolve one significant (to the story/plot/character(s)) situation, you move on to the next with little if any transition beyond the minimum "time passes, you change locations, stuff happens elsewhere".

I've seen a lot of PBeM games founder and die because the GM didn't realize the foregoing. (I've also seen one GM friend of mine start multiple PBeM games only to have them die on him because he's in a thematic rut, and has been for almost 15 years... but I digress.)