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pbp Roleplaying update

Copyright; 2002-2014 by Aurigas Aldbaron LLC. All rights reserved. No reproductions without permission.

I confess I was sceptical when I started playing pbp games as I have said before here Getting back into Spacemaster. I must now say I am really enjoying it.

After the character creation process I actually started roleplaying 10 days ago and during that time there have been 56 posts back and forth so that is five or six a day. I imagine that would be more if we were in the same timezone but I am kind of glad now that I am 7hrs displaced. I have a very addictive personality and I could see this becoming a real draw.

The most striking thing about pbp roleplaying is that the NPCs are so much better and realistic than I am used to. Now this could just be down to the hardwork of the GM but I actually think it is more a factor of the game format. In traditional roleplaying games almost everything is verbal with maybe a few player handouts. No one really wants to be having habitual lengthy conversations between two NPCs. I am certainly  guilty of saying:

“<insert name here> thanks the barmaid and brings the drinks over to your table.”

The pbp ‘norm’ seems to be to relay the entire conversation with the description of the body language. That minor interaction can then convey more about the world and culture in which you are living. I don’t think there is the same pressure to move the game on and progress the adventure because the written responses are more considered and do not have to be off the cuff. I know I cannot do accents, almost everyone in the world seems to come from the west country or the Indian subcontinent with almost nowhere in between.

So far so good, the plot is unfolding before the character and threat of imminent death looms large with is just what you like to see in your PCs future.

More next time…

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Getting PBP notifications

Copyright; 2002-2014 by Aurigas Aldbaron LLC. All rights reserved. No reproductions without permission.

As I wrote earlier, this is my first full weekend of PBP (Play by Post) and Spacemaster. The game I am playing is being played out via the rpol.net. One of the weaknesses of the system or so it seems so far is the lack of notifications. You can enable email alerts up to every 15 minutes, but that took a couple of false starts to get going, the conf email went straight to junk and then it insisted on sending alerts for every single forum on the site and then I eventually tamed to to only show alerts from the game I am in. It is not the most intuitive interface I have ever come across.

Since setting up the alerts I have had one email about two hours ago and then nothing so that doesn’t seem that promising.

Rpol does offer RDF, RSS and atom feeds. I thought maybe I could add the feed to feedly and then have that notify me whenever there was an update but yes technically that works but you have to manually make it go and refresh the feed. I am after something to tell me as soon as GM Joe updates my game thread. Every 15 minutes doesn’t sound very long but there is only a limited window when we are both awake at the same time. I would kind of like to make the most of that time but also not be having to hit F5 refresh every two minutes to see if the game has moved on.

If I find a solution to this then I post an update.

Posted on

Getting back into Spacemaster

Copyright; 2002-2014 by Aurigas Aldbaron LLC. All rights reserved. No reproductions without permission.

This weekend is the first time I have ‘played’ Spacemaster in probably 25 years and it is the first time I have ever done any play by post (pbp).

As you can probably guess I am playing Spacemaster by post. I am not going to give any game details away as this is not my game and the GM really doesn’t want any meta gaming and I respect that.

I have tried remote gaming in the past and never really felt that happy with it. It isn’t the same as all being there together with the banter and reminiscing over past successes, failures and moments of pure stupidity. I am actually quite looking forward to this. It is a new game, with very different character creation rules than I am used to, in a new setting, using a new gaming format and with a new GM I have never met and don’t even know the name of.

I ‘met’ the GM on the iron crown forums when a discussion turned to online roleplaying and he invited me to join this new game.  In my day ‘play by post’ meant stamped letters arriving once or twice a week if you were lucky but of course now it means forum posts and these take seconds. I am massively out of timezone with the GM (It sounds really imporsonal calling him ‘the GM’ so from now on he will be GM Joe as that is his nom de plume on the game forums).

I am kind of glad in a way that I am 7 or 8 hours out of step as I imagine this could get really addictive really quickly. The game started in ernest this weekend and I was posting last thing at night and then it was one of the first things I was checking in the morning. If I was in the same timezone as GM Joe I could see this spiralling to tens of posts a day. Right now I am all alone, not having met the other characters so it is very much one on one solo play.

I have to say that my first impressions are very positive and it is quite fun being a coomplete noobie again!