Play By Post at RPG level

Intro Play-by-post (PBP) is used very effectively at faction/army level in wargaming. It feels natural to send out orders, to wait for their results to come back, to see not all of them were perfectly followed due to unexpected obstacles or your lieutenants taking some interpretive liberties. Issues start at single-character level, however. In this post, I’ll try to draft them out and provide directions for possible solutions.

While this is a post focused on designing both adventures and games/systems for play-by-post at RPG level, it ended up having quite a few general good advice regarding scenario design that’s applicable for in-person/synchronous games as well, so I hope this can be useful for any GM/referee.

Finally, this is a blogpost coming from the FFR (Free Faction Roleplay) community. It’ll reference a number of games that happened in it and will attempt to sum up our collective insights. The games are accessible for perusal to outsiders via Discord archives, feel free to join us at the main server.

PBP Design Paradigm

Generally speaking, PBP (asynchronous posting) roleplay games peter out quickly due to slow, uneven pacing and the game being ill-structured for what it attempts. Here are some design principles that I’ve found alleviate some of those issues:

- Make informed choices the heart of the game (the ICI doctrine presents somewhat similar take)

- Limit the amount of inputs required to make an impact while keeping density of information intact (i.e. the fewer messages/updates the better)

- Keep a steady pacing (weekly impactful turns, clarifications, diplomacy and such in-between)

- Enable players to roleplay in-character between the updates without bogging down the resolution

This paradigm was used to cook up FFR (i.e. roleplay-focused Kriegsspiel/Matrix for large-scale faction games), now let’s try to apply it to single-character roleplay.

Order Interpretation

Orders given by the player to lieutenants or soldiers can be misconstrued, or they might take some liberties when dealing with unforeseen circumstances. However, when you apply the same principles to the player character (PC), you run into the issue of taking away the player's authority over their character, but also of running said character contrary to their own design.

In something like Warcraft, a peon is going to chop a tree if you command him to. He’ll be unfazed by a soldier cutting him up, and will keep on chopping the tree until the player explicitly orders him to stop. What is more reasonable in a PBP game? To expect the player to write out “if the peon is attacked, he’ll retreat to the castle” or for the player to expect that the peon will retreat and won’t just die chopping wood? I believe the player shouldn’t be expected to make a 20-page code document just to not have their character utterly break down at a single unexpected event.

There’s obviously a limit as to how far you can take it, but in a perfect world, the way to resolve orders is to model pc/npc behaviour in a way that makes sense in the world. I’ll try to sketch out a couple of principles to make this feasible for the referee:

- As a referee, you should understand the kits of all the PCs and NPCs involved, and ideally know how the battle can possibly go. This is fairly straightforward but in a system like Pathfinder/D&D that has literal thousands of spells, this can get out of hand both for the player and referee if they want to resolve a multi-turn combat over a single set of orders. This feeds into the next point.

- Limit the amount of moving parts - in FFR we design our own scenarios, and as a referee you want to limit the amount of moving parts, like spells/powers/units/etc. each player (and sometimes NPC) has access to. Design the maximum amount of tools the player can have as if you would run a battle where it’s everyone versus everyone and every single asset is brought to bear with a 5-paragraph set of else-if statement orders. You’re going to run that battle on turn 4-6.

Moreover: you can be liberal with what the players can do with each tool, reward them for creativity but enforce themes/tags/whatever limiting factors make sense. This will keep the game interesting while not bogging it down with complex resolution.

Finally, this principle is absolutely crucial for PvP. It’s unreasonable to assume the player is going to learn thousands of spells and every possible interaction between them for their own and for enemy kits and attempt to anticipate every possible interaction in an elif-code combat statement.

- If you take over the reins, make only simple, reactive adjustments, like attacking > running away, hitting with weapon A > hitting with weapon B. There’s one more element to it: the character should make decisions that make sense for them. A peasant might break down and flee, a soldier will switch weapons to more effective ones, an engineer will focus on self-preservation while a cultist may not.

- Anticipate possible points of divergence and ask about hypothetical situations before you resolve (What if the civilian tried to attack you? If you’re overwhelmed - do you want to fight until death or flee?)
Take note that asking very pointed questions may indicate certain facts about the engagement that you may want to keep hidden from the player. Try to diffuse those questions with others, or ask them in roundabout ways.

- Decide on when to make pauses - if the situation changes very drastically (a hidden force joins in, a cataclysm strikes, traps go off) it may be necessary to simply pause and get new sets of orders from everyone.

In short, when resolving, try to err on the side of the players, try to model the world rather than mechanically resolving order sets like code, and finally make sure to avoid bias in PvP.

Compression

In order to limit inputs, it may be necessary to restructure your prepared content and how it’s presented. We’ll call it compression or “zooming out”.

In order to accomplish this more easily, try to break your “dungeon”, “adventure” or “mission” into its constituent parts, and understand what their purpose is.

- Is this part a puzzle for them to figure out?

- Is it an obstacle supposed to tax their resources and increase tension?

- Is it meant to reveal some hidden truth or useful lore?

All three are not mutually exclusive for a given part. Like, a puzzle can reveal lore, or a battle can tax resources and be a puzzle both. There can probably be more purposes but these are the most common and obvious.

If you want to limit input in a puzzle, present all the available information right away, and ensure they’re aware of the tools they have at their disposal. Your puzzle shouldn’t be diminished by this. If it requires vagueness and meandering on your part, perhaps you should consider restructuring it.

With combat - you can handle it as a puzzle, in which you should apply the above. Alternatively, you can handle it as resource tax, in which case you can simply ask the players if they engage with the threat (or circumvent it somehow/run away) and tax their resources accordingly.

With traps, it’s twofold. Ask your players how they’re exploring; make sure to ask them about the possible obstacles - doors, chasms, chests, etc. If what they’re doing allows them to avoid it, they are safe, otherwise their resources are taxed or you roll death saves. Alternatively, the trap can be presented as a puzzle, in which case address the above.

Information, if it’s crucial, should simply be given to the player. If it’s not, you can have it gated behind players asking about it or investigating some kind of secret.

If you want to limit input in exploration, present the possible locations/rooms, with basic descriptions, in a list, and allow players to pick which they want to explore. You can limit the amount they get to explore 

I’ll give you three examples of scenes set in a way that’s more friendly to play-by-post.

This exploration example is from Fall of Leaves.

—

Here's other places you will find in the Weather Factory once you cross the threshold:

- Machinery-filled hall. It looks like you'd insert various things into it.

- Something that looks like a closet at the back end of the above hall.

- Workshop filled with papers and possibly prototypes.

- A closed door, sounds of muffled conversation are coming from within.

Once you explore one, the Factory will know of your intrusion.

At 2nd it may try to expel you.

At 3rd, your way out will be cut off.

Let me know which places you want to explore before you head down the shortest path into the core.

—

The wider purpose of this is to prepare the players for a choice they’ll be making at the heart of the facility, or possibly arm them for a confrontation should they make that particular choice.

Here is an example of exploration/puzzle from Weird Wanderings by Mike from sheepandsorcery.

—

The Black Crown is held in a silver vault whose door requires three Rubies to enter.

These Rubies can be collected by completing challenges in the House. Beware, a huge knight in silver armor stalks the halls. This Silver Knight bears a shield with a conjoined moon and sun. It will attack you if it finds you but perhaps it can be swayed to give you more time.

Within this place you find:

- A black cat fleeing down a long pale hall. It is swift and skittish. It has a ruby on it's collar.

- A towering black statue of a fearsome queen. A swarm of pale twisted goblin supplicants surround it perpetually praising it and begging to be destroyed. They will defend the statue with their lives. The statue has a ruby in its tall spiky crown.

- A single ruby glitters from the heights of the tallest minaret. The only way to access it is to fly or climb the smooth white tower. But giant ravens circle in the sky above.

- A labyrinth of checkered halls and mirrors hides a ruby at it's center, but it's nearly impossible to navigate. Two competing songs echo throughout: a soft, warm melody hummed low and comforting. And a violin sharp and quick and ambitious.

- A single skill in a giant pile of black and white skulls hides a ruby eye. Sifting through them will take a long time and be very laborious.

Each of these sites you will visit on your dungeon turn. There is a time sensitive element here so I'm going to have to keep a strict turn order. If you spend too long in any of these, it will cost you your turn.

—

You can see an exploration and a puzzle limited by a clock mechanic. The points of interest are little puzzles in their own right, each takes time to visit and explore however.

Here is an example of combat/puzzle from Golden Music Box.

—

The following is true about the Wizard Island Fortress which you must conquer to get to the music box:

- They say Scar (master of the fortress) is unkillable.

- Scar has a feathered friend that kills off whoever wanders the fortress alone.

- The Crater Lake is impassable due to a thing that lives in it. Maybe Scar's deal with it could be undercut?

- The Music Box puts whoever listens to sleep, and it plays in Scar's room unceasingly.

- The fortress is guarded by a large garrison made up of various tribes Scar conquered or that joined him willingly. Not all of them get well together.

—

You can see here that I’ve provided multiple direct obstacles to the players. The core difference between mine and Mike’s puzzles is that Mike’s puzzles need to be solved, while some of mine can be circumvented (they are obstacles more than puzzles).

Pacing

It’s important to structure your turns/updates in such a way that they feel substantial. Here are some tools and advice for it:

- A player could get tokens/actions every week that represent their resources, time and effort. This should always be more than one, but not more than 3-4. You naturally don’t want to be resolving 10+ distinct actions every week.

- They can spend those on research, projects, expeditions, missions or whatnot; the token spends are turned in at the end of the turn (or earlier in case of research - to give actionable info as soon as possible). Naturally if you want to zoom-in and resolve an adventure in-depth, a player shouldn’t be able to generate more than one of those per week.

- Every action should have a tangible, substantial outcome.

This cannot be overstated. If a player goes on a mission, have it resolved the same turn. If a player establishes an asset, let them have it next turn, provided they have all they need for it. If a player is looking for info, give it to them. Don’t make a player waste an entire week on a trap or a failed roll - this is also partly why we’re limiting the tokens to around three, so that the player doesn’t turn in 20 ineffective actions, but 3 substantial ones.

Every turn should change the playing field. Players should feel the outcome of their choices, they should see new opportunities stemming from them, or see old opportunities lost. Tension should be racked up, unresolved issues should bite them in the back, they should celebrate triumph or pick themselves up after a fall, all depending on their choices.

Consider this - getting a +1 on a weapon in a d20 system is not a substantial outcome. If it takes the player a whole real-life week just to get a minuscule mechanical upgrade, perhaps something went wrong in your design?

Consider how you can make things more interesting and impactful. Maybe instead of getting +1 to a weapon’s attack roll, they’re imbuing it with the fire within the heart of a flamewyrm they’ve killed earlier on? Maybe they’re making fireproof armour out of its scales? Try to give your players new options rather than just improving existing ones, or make those improvements truly substantial.

Individual Stories

As opposed to a single collective story.

This is probably the most crucial element regarding scenario design in this writeup. A real-time game favours a collective story, where every player is part of a group and the group acts together, either forging their story more loosely (as a sandbox) or following some more predetermined lines. The opposite is true in PBP - it thrives when every player has got their own thing going at their own pace, and when players’ stories cross but aren’t bound together. This is something PBP can uniquely do, and what would be either impossible or require far more effort in a real-time game.

A number of games have been ran to reach this conclusion, each with varying success: Dawnchaser’s Journey (a game about various factions of a single fleet headed on an expedition) and Echoes (a mystery game about a number of soviet soldiers stuck in an abandoned numbers station) had collective stories and didn’t go quite as well. 

Dawnchaser was, above all, slowed down particularly by requiring input from various players before a given situation could be resolved, not just at the level of a battle but a puzzle (for example, a puzzle required 2 specific faction kits, which meant if faction A and B had the necessary kits, but faction C discovered the puzzle, they had to reach out to the other factions, get the orders from them, those had to be in turn resolved before faction C could proceed, etc.)

Conversely, Weird Wanderings (pseudo arthurian fantasy), The Queen's Sleepless City (psychedelic fantasy), and Crownless (arcanepunk) have all at some level succeeded precisely because each adventure/puzzle was designed such that everyone had their own individual stories and they faced challenges they themselves could resolve. Various stories intertwined at various levels and players could help each other out, but cooperation wasn’t necessary. This made Wanderings in particular thrive.

A curious case was Prelude to Flood (a play on Pathologic, about the last human city in the middle of the apocalypse with PCs each having different ideas on how to save it), which balanced somewhere between a collective and individual story. Every player had their own storyline, but they eventually naturally converged and joined up to follow a particular salvation plan.

Generally speaking, scenarios where every PC is doing their own thing, but with mechanics for them to join or help each other (summons or whatnot), but not requiring other players’ input for anything, are probably the way to go.

Roles, not Classes

This is applicable to in-person games as well as PBP: rather than giving players disjointed mechanical parts of a character - like class, background, or system-based tools – give them a role in the world which is not just a coherent whole of these parts, but in fact far more.

A role is a unique place in the world. There should be, say, only one alchemist, only one veteran warrior or commander, only one necromancer. Don’t think of those as just mechanical differences – roles determine a character’s place in the world via niche and turf.

Niche is an active aspect – this is the stuff in the world that the character can explore, expand, or conquer thanks to their abilities and specialties. For an alchemist, this would be new ingredients to find, new potions to make and new uses to find for potions already known. It’s looking into various means of acquiring recipes, either by research, discipleship, or bargaining. 

Every role should have its unique niche, ideally the more unique the better, as this creates more personal scenarios and more interesting solutions to puzzles (via more unique character abilities).

In a collective story, a niche would mean usefulness to the team - common roleplay slang would have roles like “healer,” ”tank,” ”face,” etc. but in an individual story it’s far more. In an individual story, a fighter will resolve problems the way a fighter does. He won’t need a “face”, he punches people in the face. Moreover, you can have roles like “the town’s only healer” or “mercenary from a far-away land” with all the implications thereof.

Turf is the passive aspect – these are the things (assets or liabilities) that belong to the character, are part of their “faction”, that the character has to defend or damage to which would hurt the character also. For our alchemist, this could mean the guild they’re a part of, or their individual master. It could mean them being responsible for the health of the villagers in the place they’re staying in, or the precarious position they’re in when a lord demands they teach them how to make gold out of lead.

Turf is very often overlooked or used as a thin excuse or cheap shock value (your child/partner/parent was kidnapped, now go do the adventure), where in more local scenarios it has a chance to give player choices substantial weight. Perhaps the alchemist must choose between healing the village or furthering their magnum opus? Or perhaps the thief screwing people over while giving nothing to the community ends up with a lot of enemies and no friends?

Conversely, games focused on travel often suffer from very limited turf (this had been another issue of Dawnchaser) – players screw someone over and skip town. This is remedied by making elements of the story more global. Perhaps the lord of the realm takes interest in them, and has agents in the towns they visit? Perhaps there’s someone they know in this new town and they need to rescue them from trouble? Perhaps our alchemist’s guild has branches in some of the towns, each with its own opportunities or troubles?

Roles should be opened up with certain tensions. Perhaps the alchemist’s supplies have run out, and the only route to getting more goes through mortal danger or moral compromise? Perhaps the soldier returns home from a lost war and must hide from the invaders? Perhaps the chief of the Weather Factory discovers a nascent god in its bowels? 

Be careful about overdoing it – having these tensions push for PVP or split the party into their own little adventures have a substantial chance to go sideways.

Conclusion

I hope this arms you with some tools and good advice. Don’t treat this as dogma, since every table has its own preferences and circumstances, but I strongly suggest you follow this if you’re running your first PBP RPG game.