L.Craig Posted July 15, 2006 Report Share Posted July 15, 2006 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheQuestionMan Posted July 15, 2006 Report Share Posted July 15, 2006 Re: Campaign Styles No, but it sounds like an intriguing idea. Hmmm... QM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Cougar Posted July 15, 2006 Report Share Posted July 15, 2006 Re: Campaign Styles Has anyone ran a campaign using face to face and PBEM. I was wondering how its worked for people. Im starting a new campaign' date=' 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.[/quote'] 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheRavenIs Posted July 15, 2006 Report Share Posted July 15, 2006 Re: Campaign Styles 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
concord Posted July 15, 2006 Report Share Posted July 15, 2006 Re: Campaign Styles 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... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebuchet Posted July 16, 2006 Report Share Posted July 16, 2006 Re: Campaign Styles 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spiral Posted July 16, 2006 Report Share Posted July 16, 2006 Re: Campaign Styles 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savinien Posted July 18, 2006 Report Share Posted July 18, 2006 Re: Campaign Styles 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CBikle Posted July 18, 2006 Report Share Posted July 18, 2006 Re: Campaign Styles 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zornwil Posted August 25, 2006 Report Share Posted August 25, 2006 Re: Campaign Styles 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rapier Posted August 25, 2006 Report Share Posted August 25, 2006 Re: Campaign Styles 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! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zed-F Posted August 25, 2006 Report Share Posted August 25, 2006 Re: Campaign Styles 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LadyChaos Posted August 25, 2006 Report Share Posted August 25, 2006 Re: Campaign Styles 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenn Posted August 25, 2006 Report Share Posted August 25, 2006 Re: Campaign Styles 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peregrine Posted August 25, 2006 Report Share Posted August 25, 2006 Re: Campaign Styles 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.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zornwil Posted August 25, 2006 Report Share Posted August 25, 2006 Re: Campaign Styles Yeah, I am thinking of something more octaNe-ish in approach if I were to really run ongoing combat in PBEM, as that bogs down so incredibly rapidly trying to do it detailed. I've seen GMs do it unsuccessfully and successfully, but even successfully the pace is just too slow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killer Shrike Posted August 26, 2006 Report Share Posted August 26, 2006 Re: Campaign Styles I will warn that running a PBP / PBEM is actually much harder and more time consuming for the GM, or at least I found it to be so. On the other hand, you don't need as much new material as often because the pace of the game is so sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow. Whether thats a pro or con for you, Ill leave to your discretion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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