Email roleplaying.

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I'm guessing there are some here who've tried this. It seemed for a while that when my cyberpunk/ad&d group disbanded, we'd have to go on with email roleplaying. Due to the obvious difficulties involved in it, we postponed the idea until a few months ago when my friend scheduled a new starting date for a new cyberpunk campaign. With as many of our old folks as we could manage, and a few new ones to add. I haven't started it yet, as our first game was last weekend and I hadn't had the time for preparing my "native to the city" character that's supposed to know a lot more than the others. Anyway, my gaming group seems to be together again now, most of it at least. And I've no worries for that. But the email idea did leave me wondering.

So what experiences have you had of "PnP" roleplaying by email? Are you doing so currently? Are you interested in starting a game? I'm asking because quite honestly, I'm interested. If you have a game going and would give a chance for someone interested in mailing at least around 2-3 times a week (I can't promise more for sure, though usually I probably will able to mail far more than that)? Or if someone is interested in starting one. I only have the most basic version of cyberpunk rulebooks, and nothing related to d&d, so I'd hardly make a GM. But I'd be in it for a player role if anyone was starting one?

 

I think PBEM is an amazingly stupid idea when forums and IRC are so much easier.

 

Agreed on that. But email, though much slower, is far more flexible than IRC. And forums are put at a slight disadvantage due to the public nature of the game.

A forum game would be good if we decreed that only people from (A) to (G) can take part in it. And the character creation and all would be seriously done. And with rules like one post per "turn", and pre-set dates for when the GM would come along and see the game moved forward.

I haven't ever really try this so I wouldn't know. Just that the public forum RPG's don't really appeal to me for a lot of reasons. Least not being the lack of real choice in your character and the direction the story is evolving to. And of course the fact that due to so many players and the distant nature of the game, immersion is far more difficult than it should be.

 

As odd as it sounds, I'd like to see how it might work too. But I've never done any roleplaying before. (No PnP experience either)

2-3 replies/week? I wonder how much one can say in one reply, because it sounds like it'll take a month to finish one battle.

 

Well the rules would have to be adapted of course. It'd take a year to finish one battle if it was done in the traditional PnP style. We've actually had ideas of trying the "fast-pace" system in our cyberpunk as well. Basicly it means that the GM rolls a number of dice before the game begins to pre-determine the results for this and that. Of course there are always random factors but they can be solved with the normal methods. Otherwise, instead of seeing what each will do in each of their turns and rolling the dice inbetween, the players will just make the most basic desicions of what it is they would do, as quickly as possible. The GM then adapts those desicions and re-interprets them as much as needed so the battles are done quickly and neatly.

The few times we've played with the idea (believe me, it's a very simplified version I just told you) it has come out great. But it's obvious it requires a GM who's apt to plan things beforehand, who's very good at improvisation, and who is a master at storytelling. Otherwise the feel of the battle (which is an important part of a RPG afterall) will suffer way too much.

 

PBeM is a great thing. Before I joined the Navy, I was part of a great PBeM game called SpellMaster. The Moderator of the game Tom(GOD) is a computer programmer and developed an engine for fights and such. The Roleplaying was open ended and had first writers privlage. Other than that you could do whatever you wanted. The game might still be running but I don't know. Here's the link:

http://www.lemuria.org/

have fun