PbP "Going through the motions" ?

[Roughtrade]

2 hours ago, cailano said:

Don't want to derail the conversation.

I thought that was the conversation. (Insert Smile Emoji Here)

Games come and go. Sometimes the GM has a good group but the GM drops the ball. Sometimes everyone jumps in really active during creation and then fall apart during the first month of play. It isn't ever really anyone's fault. Dreck happens. I think I am a curse on one of the best GMs on Myth. Every time I get into one of his games, the players seem to run into life issues and stop posting. I've killed two high level 3.5 games and two Shadowrun games, just by joining it seems.
 

And while that is sort of a joke, it just illustrates that sometimes you can have everything come together perfect and a game can still stumble and peter out. Call it the luck of the draw or whatever.

On 1/7/2024 at 1:37 PM, RedMax said:

a GM will describe the situation, everyone chimes in with a move, a roll, a quip, and then the GM plays out the scene and we're on to the next room

What to one player feels like "going through the motions" is another player's version of "I want to golram finish one of these damn APs for once" focus. And I can sympathize with both. Attrition is a real thing. Play by Post is inflicted with it more heavily than other formats. There is a real drive to "Let us get something accomplished" and it runs directly counter to those who want to explore the writing and more prosaic advantages which PbP can allow.

 

[Papa Bear]

I hate jumping into threads a few pages in like this because I read a lot of good things and by the time I get to post, I forget all the points I wanted to make/add onto. I'm not the sharpest pencil in the carton of eggs.

I don't know if my players like it or not, but I like to have a few NPCs that I can interact with my players in Roleplay instead of just being a GM from on high narrating a scene. Its at least more fun for me 😜. I am proud to say that more of my games have lasted to the 'end' than have failed. That said, I'm 50/50 so far as a GM since joining MW. 2 still running, 2 petering out.

[Lord Foul]

6 hours ago, Papa Bear said:

I don't know if my players like it or not, but I like to have a few NPCs that I can interact with my players in Roleplay instead of just being a GM from on high narrating a scene. Its at least more fun for me 😜.

As a player I think having NPCs around to interact with adds so much to the game, and is particularly useful for PBP games to give the GM additional ways to encourage and prompt player activity. It's a delicate balance, though, and can be overdone, with the result that the real player characters can become overly dependent on advice from the NPCs. So long as the NPCs don't start to 'take over' narrative control of the game, it is usually a very positive thing.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

7 hours ago, Papa Bear said:

That said, I'm 50/50 so far as a GM since joining MW. 2 still running, 2 petering out.

I think I'm 0 for 3. All totally my fault.

[RedMax]

5 hours ago, Lord Foul said:

As a player I think having NPCs around to interact with adds so much to the game, and is particularly useful for PBP games to give the GM additional ways to encourage and prompt player activity. It's a delicate balance, though, and can be overdone, with the result that the real player characters can become overly dependent on advice from the NPCs. So long as the NPCs don't start to 'take over' narrative control of the game, it is usually a very positive thing.

 

Love this. I have recurring NPCs around for exposition, and they are of varying reliability, which entertains me endlessly!

[cailano]

I love the points about NPCs. I used to always make sure I had a pet NPC in every major scene to help steer the game, point out stuff the PCs might have missed, and convey information.

These days, I don't lean on that idea quite so hard as I've learned to trust my player's ability to figure things out more, but those NPCs tend to get themselves in trouble anyway, and they're often in a scene organically.

[Papa Bear]

13 hours ago, Lord Foul said:

It's a delicate balance, though, and can be overdone, with the result that the real player characters can become overly dependent on advice from the NPCs. So long as the NPCs don't start to 'take over' narrative control of the game

So true. I try to make solo NPCs have little to no knowledge or have obvious motivations in stereotypes, such as a barbarian who is always pushing for blood and guts so the players take what they say with a grain of salt, and mostly just there to interact. Depending on the group make-up, if I can swing it, add two or three additional NPCs that I have argue various points against each other. I'm sure my players figure me out soon enough and probably can see tells in my NPC arguments but I think it helps the players not necessarily feel railroaded... but I don't know. Maybe that's why some players have dropped out of my games. Its hard to say.

My point with the NPCs is to interact with the players so the feeding information is useful, but a distant second in my GM toolbag.

As I mentioned before, I enjoy it. Hopefully me having fun trickles down to the players having fun. :)

[forcemagnitude]

On 1/11/2024 at 1:45 PM, Roughtrade said:

Re: Discord

It only works if everyone uses it. And I hate it.

When I have time for Myth-Writing, I am at my computer doing writing. I sometimes check in the Forum Games from an iPad while idle at something else, but I make time to write for games. I do not need one more thing on my phone or iPad claiming attention when I am away from the computer. Even if I uploaded Discord on my phone, I would keep it turned off.

I was in a game where the GM used Discord chat with two other players but did not update his game with decisions made for the three of us not using Discord. It was frustrating. Even if I had used his Discord it would have been frustrating. Our time zones were several hours out of sync, and unless you were on Discord when the GM was, you didn't get an answer any faster than if you had used OOC on Myth.

In Addition. OOC posts and old messages are easier to track on the forums. Scrolling back through conversations on Discord which often seem to include stupid memes and who knows what crap is annoying. A post on the Forum that I feel is important I can quote and put in my own character thread so that I can refer to it easily without an hour of searching.

Fortunately, discord has this exact same functionality. You can bookmark any post.

Quote

I don't know if my players like it or not, but I like to have a few NPCs that I can interact with my players in Roleplay

What's the alternative? How would you run a game where the PCs are the only characters?

Edited January 16 by forcemagnitude (see edit history)

[Roughtrade]

On 1/12/2024 at 5:20 PM, Papa Bear said:

or have obvious motivations in stereotypes,

I do try to have NPCs with obvious motivations, but I also try to have them with different opinions/styles. It can make exposition dumps less awkward. Instead of "GM-Editor" voice explaining the options available, having two NPCs argue over which approach is best suited to the next encounter provides the information as a discussion which the PCs can interact with and ask questions.

[Roughtrade]

50 minutes ago, forcemagnitude said:

You can bookmark any post.

It is not the same. Here, I can copy/paste something I feel is important right into my character thread. I can link back to the appropriate section of In Character thread or the OOC Thread if I want. The search function on Discord is very limited in comparison.

[forcemagnitude]

2 hours ago, Roughtrade said:

It is not the same. Here, I can copy/paste something I feel is important right into my character thread. I can link back to the appropriate section of In Character thread or the OOC Thread if I want. The search function on Discord is very limited in comparison.

I'm not talking about the search function.

[Roughtrade]

44 minutes ago, forcemagnitude said:

I'm not talking about the search function

I was. Bookmarking, finding old posts, tracking quotes.
Getting pendantic and debating semantics is less than helpful.

Discord is great for what it can do.
Finding old messages is not one of those things.

As an archive repository, Baldr is better. If a game using Discord also updates on the game then it’s great, but my experience has been that keeping things updated is not always successful.

[Lord Foul]

1 hour ago, Roughtrade said:

Getting pendantic

You mean pedantic. 😀

[cailano]

9 minutes ago, Lord Foul said:

You mean pedantic. 😀

And now we've completely lost the thread, lol.

[Lord Foul]

Sorry, I just couldn't resist that one.