[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by ericthered

What makes a good Play by Post game?

I'm not really very experienced in PBP, but I'm going to answer anyway. Take my responses with the appropriate grain of salt.

Note well that the opinions expressed below are all my opinions. I am not stating anyone else's opinions. Least of all, dear reader, am I trying to express your opinions.

Genre: Fantasy, DF, Science Fiction, Supers, Space Opera and others. Which make you say "I've got to play this", and which do you particularly avoid?

I don't care much for Supers or Space Opera as genres in any medium, and I fear that dungeoncrawls have too much detailed action for the slow medium of PBP. I love well-thought-out SF and fantasy, ill-considered bags of cliché less so. I'd like to give horror a go in PBP, and I'd fall of my chair in excitement at the chance to play a Cliffhangers PBP with a good GM.

Activities Planned: Do you prefer solving puzzles? or is it combat that enthuses you? How important is character development? Is negotiation an enjoyable part of play?

I like investigation and exploration. Characterisation is fun. Character development is appropriate to a dramatic game with dynamic protagonists, not to a procedural game with iconic protagonists. I find that in PBP negotiation slows to an unbearable crawl while you are waiting sometimes days for responses.

Supplement materials: Which sets of rules make or break a PbP game for you? This includes Cinematic vs Realistic, G:Magic, Thuamology, Supers, Psionic Powers, DF, MH, MA, and so forth.

Rules in general don't excite me much.

Plot: how important is the plot? do you avoid games without it, and only go for ideas that sound cool? do you prefer just wandering around letting characters make their own decisions? And is this question even an issue?

Plot is absolutely crucial, plot is what it is all about. Which is to say, the events of the game ought to have a complete set of connections by cause-and-effect. Character actions should be well-motivated. Events should happen for reasons.

Power Level: Do you love working with mounds of points? is such a prospect dull to you? does it matter by genre? similarly, (but not the same) do you enjoy being world shakers, or do you want to deal with peers? or is this even an issue?

Mounds of points bore me and I think that tight point constraints lead to unrealistic and unconvincing builds and players playing characters they aren't happy with. I don't like playing world-shakers because I find that high stakes make the choices too clear and sacrifices too obvious. Working at a human scale is a lot more satisfactory. I like characters to be powerful enough in relation to the issues that they are dealing with to have freedom of action and to have the outcomes on the table depend on their efforts, but I don't like the stakes to be much more important than people's lives.

House Rules: Are they annoying or wonderful? If depends, what determines this? or are they just all par for the course?

If they simplify play they are good for PBP. If they complicate it, the opposite.

Gaming Group: Different players and GMs cause games to behave differently. when using PbP on this forum, how important is who is already playing in the game, or GMing it?

Very much so, to me.

Other issues: what other issues strongly effect how well a pbp game runs?

I have found it problematic when there is a large difference between the rates at which different players post. A game that is supposed to go three turns a week runs poorly when only player posts only twice a week and another three times per day.