rowyn | Entries tagged with pbem

Update: Game is currently full! Feel free to email if you would like to get on the waitlist should any spots open. n_n

It's been a long time since I ran a play-by-email roleplaying game, and I want to do so again.

Here are the core ideas for the new game:

* The main plot is ROMANCE and RELATIONSHIPS. This will be a game about characters falling in love and forming strong personal bonds with other characters (PCs and NPCs).
* The game will have subplots that revolve around other things -- defeating bad guys, averting disasters, rescuing people from danger, etc. -- but these will be (a) subplots and (b) not serious threats to the safety and well-being of the PCs. Players will never be required to come up with brilliant plans or solve mysteries or unravel puzzles in order to overcome obstacles.
* Nobody has to pick Just One Significant Other: polyamory is fine. Monoamory is fine too if you want to go that route.
* Queer characters of all flavors are encouraged.
* PC vs PC actions are generally discouraged and actively trying to harm other PCs is prohibited.

My PBEM games tend to start strong and then peter out over the course of a few months, so this is something to bear in mind. The purpose is to enjoy the ride, not to get to a particular destination. n_n

PCs:
* The PCs are all extra-dimensional aliens
* Players get to make up the species and culture for their own character (or you can make up a species/culture to share with other players, as you prefer.) You can be a dragon or furry or shapeshifter or whatever you like. Looking exactly like a human is discouraged, but elves or Star-Trek-alien looks are fine.
* Do bear in mind this is a romance-oriented game. Making a PC that would be repugnant to you is discouraged.
* There is no need for PCs to be perfect or flawless, but they should be generally well-meaning and sympathetic.
* Each PC gets unique powers. These should be thematic (eg, "all my powers are connected to electricity" or "I control plants in various unnatural ways" or "I am a shapeshifter", etc.) and versatile. Themes should not be overly broad (eg, "I cast magic spells, which can do whatever I think would be useful in a given situation" is too broad.)
** Powers can have combat effects but your powers should be more versatile than just fighting. Fighting will not be played out in detail or with die rolls. This is a romance game; any combat is just going to be to provide drama and backdrop.
** Players will make up their characters together to avoid unwanted overlap in abilities and so that everyone has roughly the same power level.
** Alien species are, in general, much tougher and harder to hurt than humans.
* The PC species/nations are members of the Interdimensional Alliance, a group designed to promote peace, stability, and inter-species cooperation across the interdimensional network
** Historically speaking, "promoting peace, stability and cooperation" has not gone as well as the IA would like. But they are all working VERY HARD ON THIS OKAY
* The PCs are a small group of good friends who have been attending the Interdimensional Alliance University. IAU has secured an internship for them on a world that is a recent addition to the IA: Earth.
** Earth is considered a kind of paradise by most of the IA worlds.
*** It's full of humans, who are regarded as natural experts on bonding, forming strong relationships, cooperating, and maintaining peace.
*** Humans will make friends with anything! Animals, aliens, computers, rocks, whatever, they just want to be friends. SO PURE.
*** There are BILLIONS of humans living on JUST ONE WORLD and they haven't wiped each other out! It's AMAZING.
*** Humans are also super-adorable, just the cutest things
*** And they are SO HUMBLE! They have no idea how great they are! (Typical human: "Literally the most terrifying thing about the aliens is that they think WE are a good example of international harmony.")
*** One theory on humanity's unusually cooperative nature is that they're so fragile they can't risk getting into fights with each other. Or maybe it's that they're too cute to fight each other? SO ADORABLE.
* The IA has been trying to protect Earth from being overwhelmed by (a) interdimensional visitors who are eager to experience HOW COOL humans are and (b) interdimensional invaders who might hurt humanity and/or convince humanity to wall themselves off from the IA. So the PCs all consider themselves very fortunate to secure visas to Earth.
* The PCs are ambassadors, on Earth to show humanity that other dimensions have people who are good and helpful.
* Despite the IA's wish to shield Earth from the worst of other dimensions, Earth does have some aliens already. Several years ago, Earth took in a number of refugees during an interdimensional crisis. ("See how wonderful humans are??? They'd barely even discovered other dimensions and they opened their world to help other sapients!")
* Players are encouraged to provide the GM with their character's goals, the conflicts their characters might have while on Earth, and challenges that would interest the player. This is a game about relationships, so conflicts exist just to give PCs an excuse to meet people and interact with them in a fun framework. Conflicts can be things like "my anti-social younger sibling has followed me to Earth and now I have to keep them from causing trouble" or "I want to defend Earth from evil extra-dimensional enemies" or "I want to work with humans in search-and-rescue" or "My power makes solving mysteries easier so I want to do that".
* PCs should pick a role/job on Earth. You might be attending classes at an American university, or you might be working with a charity, or a first-responders team, or doing engineering, or some other job that your power set makes you well-suited to. Your PC's role is another place to find people with whom to build relationships.
* Although the PCs are all on internships courtesy of an academy, PCs are not required to be young adults. You can be a non-traditional student.
* If players have particular preferences -- "I want to play a catgirl who falls in love with a dragon" -- do let the GM know. This applies to tropes that you like, too ("I want to do 'enemies-to-lovers'" or "I like hurt/comfort" or "can we have them check into a hotel and they have to share a room but there's ONLY ONE BED???"
* In the past, my PBEMs have all been "post whenever you like, as much or as little as you like, try to check in at least once every day or two". I will probably stick to this unless all my players want a different format. If players know that they are likely to have a certain response rate, you may think about baking that into your character concept. "I tend to respond furiously for a few weeks and then fall completely out of the loop for a week, so I will play a hyperactive ferret with bouts of narcolepsy." Or "I am going to respond every other day, consistently, no matter what everyone else is doing, so I will play an Ent-like character who doesn't understand why this hyperactive ferret is in such a rush all the time." Or "I'm afraid I might have to drop out partway through, but I want the option of rejoining if so, so I will start my character out with 'potential for family emergencies that may recall them home for an indefinite period'."

Setting
Alternate Earth, aka the World of Lightness
Differences from the Earth we all know and are stuck on:
- No global pandemic
- No terrible politics
+ Occasional problems with rogue extradimensional aliens
+ In the early 2000s, humans in general gained a very low-grade psychic power of "empathy". Humans are now unusually good at both distinguishing and valuing the feelings of others. This led to decreases into xenophobia and generally made people kinder to one another. No one knows for sure what happened or how or if it could be done again; the prevailing theory is that an avant-garde social-networking experiment turned really WEIRD at some point.
+ In 2012, Earth took in ~150,000 extradimensional refugees, who were escaping from a war that laid waste to seventeen worlds. Most of these refugees are now living in the American midwest, although there are some spread through the rest of the world. These refugees represent many different species and different cultures within those species. They've integrated with human society much better than one would expect.

~

I will run for 1-5 players. More specifics about the game will evolve from interaction with the players -- I want to know what kinds of characters and subplots and suchlike people are interested in within this framework. If you'd like to play, drop a comment / private message / email. My gmail account is ladyrowyn.

Thanks!

I finished the first draft of Birthright today! \o/

It needs All The Editing still: this is the roughest draft I've ever finished. But I told myself that I would take a break from this book once I finished the draft, so I do not plan to begin editing it for at least a month or so.

I talked to Bard about its book series, Mating Flight, and it struck me that an astral dragon mating flight might make for a fun RP setting. For those not familiar with the setting (available at Amazon! First book here! also serialized on

sythyry), a "mating flight" consists of 9 dragons: 3 females, 6 males. The females compete for the right to choose first for a husband among the males, and the males compete to be the first dragon chosen. The dragons have vast magical and physical powers, and are stereotypically interested in hoarding rare and valuable items, in controlling territory (which only mated pairs may do), and in amassing honor (more-or-less defined as "demonstrating one's physical prowess" and "respecting the rules of draconic society".) The mating flights stereotypically compete based on physical and sexual prowess.

If I ran this as a game, players would make up some of the dragons on the flight, and NPCs would fill out the rest.

I will see how much interest there is and then decide if I want to run it, and talk to the players about how they want the game structured. Some possible options:

Mating flight entanglements and competition: PCs compete with other dragons of the same sex for the highest position in the flight and the highest-quality mate.

Mating flight trainwreck from within: for whatever reasons, the PCs and/or NPCs are unfit for a standard competition. Dragons try to hide their faults and make a show of it, and the story is mostly about "will they succeed in disguising their weaknesses or will they have to find a way to make the life they want work?"

Mating flight trainwreck from without: External forces derail the mating flight, forcing the dragons to deal with the petty problems of other people, instead of their own petty problems.

Other possibilities also open!

Note: while the mating flights do compete on sex, I would not expect the game to have explicit sex any more than the books do. It'd be about relationships and character choices, not erotica.

I backed the Kickstarter for Storium ages ago, and never gave the site a try. So I might try running a game there. Use of the site is free, though I think there's some advantages to having a paid account. If Storium looks too awkward to use, I'll use a Google group for it, as I've done in the past. In either case, it'll be a play-by-post game, and I'd expect players to post once or more per day.Past experience has been that my games run with great enthusiasm for a few weeks and then peter out before the story arc is complete. So think of it as about the journey, not the destination. O:)

If you'd be interested in playing an astral dragon, leave a comment! Or you can email me (my Gmail account is LadyRowyn) or tweet me on Twitter, or whatever's convenient.

This will be a PBEM RPG because my neuroses are rather incompatible with synchronous play. Apologies to those of you who don't like asynchronous play. :/

I've got two concepts I'd like to run, and I'll give more details about both of them under the cut-tag. Short version of each:

* Power Enslaved: The PCs are god-like beings held captive by NPCs, their powers largely controlled by their masters. The campaign will be about the PCs figuring out the details of their situation and what they decide to do about it.
* Three Forks: A World Tree game set in the lower branches, where a new prime colony-city is attempting to live more-or-less peacefully with its nonprime neighbors. The campaign will be about the PCs living and working in this area and generally trying to preserve this peace. PCs may be either primes or nonprimes.

Both games will run rules-light: I plan to avoid die rolls and combat situations. Gameplay will revolve around what the players decide to do within the constraints of the game (choosing to help faction A instead of B, for example). I want the game to be varied based on player choice and ingenuity rather than die rolls.

The Three Forks game will use World Tree rules when it's necessary to involve them. (Including beta rules created by the Blooms for playing various nonprime races). For the Powers Enslaved game, I'll write up a general character generation guideline by which you'll make up your character and have an idea what your PC can and cannot do. Close situations may be resolved by die rolls, but mostly you'll be able to describe what your character does and only need GM feedback to give information about the results or NPC reactions and so forth.

My experiences with PC vs PC conflict have been largely bad, so characters will be designed with the intent that the PCs will get along reasonably well and not have opposing goals.

If you're interested in playing, please leave a comment below or email me (my gmail account is LadyRowyn) with the following:

a) Which setting(s) you're willing to play in
b) Which setting you'd prefer (if you have a preference).

Thanks!
( Setting Details! )

Both PBEMs I've been in had no formal limit on posting. In both of them had phases where the list generated 100+ posts per day. (I don't think either ever hit 200 in a day, but I wouldn't swear to it.)

koogrr called it "drinking from the firehose."

terrycloth once described it as 'the tendency for PBEM to eat your life'.

I actually enjoy having my real life consumed by a fantasy one, but I recognize that not everyone does. (Lut, for example, dislikes having my RL overwritten by my VR. =D )

There are various factors that are likely to make my next game naturally have less traffic than the previous ones:

* I'm likely to set aside hours where I won't be posting -- probably from 8 or 9PM to 7AM CDT. This will ensure that Lut has my attention for a few non-sleeping hours every day. :) This won't be hard-and-fast -- I might toss off quick emails just before bed -- but I won't be spending four hours every night writing email for the game, either. Which, um, I have been known to do in the past. ^_^;;

* Since the game will only encompass 24 hours +/- of in-game time, I expect little if any time-bubbling. When Honored stopped having time-bubbles, list traffic dropped from 150+ emails per day to 30-. There were other factors lowering traffic on Honored at that time, though.

* There'll be fewer PCs in this game than in Honored (which started with six) or +Terrible Butterflies+ (which started with five). I'm expecting to cap this game at four PCs and there's a reasonable chance I'll run with fewer than that. I may have other people playing NPC-ish roles if I get any volunteers for that. I'll talk about this more in a separate post.

Another point to bear in mind: "number of posts per day" is the easiest metric to pull out, but it's not the most accurate one to describe volume. Some PBEM posts set scenes or contained responses to several different previous posts, and these might have several hundred words of new text. Others were only a sentence. I'd guess that the typical PBEM message is about the same length as a typical pose on a MUCK -- maybe a hundred words. I'm thinking that a hundred posts would be about equivalent to a chapter in a book or a short MUCK log.

To sum up: I really don't know what sort of traffic my next game will generate. The issues posed by traffic levels vary, too, depending on player habits and expectations (both IC and OOC). Some examples to consider:

* X, Y and Z are having an active conversation one evening when they're all at their computers. A fourth PC, played by A, is technically in the scene but for whatever reason he's not checking his email so his PC isn't talking. The ensuing conversation is similar to a MUCK log, with each comment in its own post. The next morning, A checks his email and sees 90 new messages. If you are A, will this bother you?

* A responds to 20 of the messages from the flurry last night, inserting his PC into the conversation and re-starting some discussions that X, Y and Z had settled. If you are X, Y or Z, will this bother you?

* The party leader goes with the plan X, Y and Z worked out the night before. The GM starts responding as if it were unfolding, even though X and Y would like to change the plan based on A's insights. Is this a problem?

* Does your reaction vary based on the time lapsed? For example, what if the conversation between X, Y and Z takes place over three days, and then A responds, as opposed to responding 10 hours later? Does it matter if A is regularly delayed in responding, or if this is a rare occurence? Likewise, does it matter if X, Y and Z are often much more active than A or if that only happens now and again?

* Examples of how IC expectations can impact this: if A is playing a PC who has no background in the subject X, Y and Z were discussing, A will care less that he "missed" the conversation than he would if his PC were the party expert. If X's PC is a very cautious sort who hates taking action without thorough consideration first, he will probably be happier about having A extend the conversation than he would if his PC were impatient and eager to get to the action.

I want to note that feeling some or all of these things could be annoying is perfectly reasonable and normal. Yes, it's a game and it would be lovely if all of us could be sublimely indifferent to all of its quirks and oddities, but the truth is if we didn't care about such things we probably wouldn't care about playing at all.

What I want to do now is try to set expectations of what's "normal". Some possible questions for those thinking of playing: what volume of traffic do you think would be too much? Just right? Not enough? (You can answer in terms of either "for the whole list" or "per participant", whichever you feel is more accurate.) If traffic on the list goes over what you consider "too much", how would you want to resolve that? What if it's too little? How much of a concern to you is this likely to pose -- ie, would you be okay if you're making one post a day while others do ten, or vice versa?*

I know that some of you have little experience with PBEMs, so this is asking for guesses in the dark. And the truth is even people with some experience aren't going to know what will work this game. So I'm not going to be surprised or offended if you get into playing and find your feelings change. This isn't the final word, but a starting place. Also, if some of you are thinking "10 posts a day is too many" and others "less than 30 is too few", then I'll know now it's probably better not to put you in the same game together. :)

* You don't have to answer all of these, and feel free to make comments on any related topics. I'll answer these questions myself in a later comment to this post, but I want other people to give their answers first so they'll have slightly less bias. :)