I’m looking at running a PbtA game (either AW, Monsterhearts or Monster of the Week) on a friend’s PbP website, but a previous experience of running MotW over IRC has left me uncertain about running *World games in online text-based format.
I know there are plenty of PbtA games run as PbPs though, so it’s definitely doable. Does anyone have any tips for a newbie MC about running PbtA games over PbP? I’d really appreciate the help!
I know Richard Rogers runs tons of PbP Apocalypse World games. Any advice, Rich?
For general advice on how to run any play by post I wrote this recently
http://ramblingsofjacobanddelos.com/2015/03/02/i-play-by-post-and-so-can-you/
As for *World PbP advice:
Come up with a consistent way to roll dice. Decide if you want to (As the MC) ask for rolls, or can the players just decide what makes sense and go ahead and roll without checking with you first. If you can check the forum whenever and will do so a bunch during the day, then I’d go the former, but if you only check once or twice a day, I’d suggest having them roll the moves without a prompt. This will speed things up and you can always go back if someone derps up and rolls the wrong move.
I read Delos Adamski article recently, some good learning there. Let me think on it and get back to you, Robert Ruthven
(thanks for the ping, Mark Diaz Truman)
Holy shit my readers are real!
Develop a cautious approach to Read a Person, particularly players reading other players. Meaning, players should not wait to divulge information about their characters motivations or feelings, as that constitutes 90% of what players can post about. Just don’t feel bad if the Read person moves get neglected.
The very basic level of how I MC Apocalypse World on PBP:
Gather a group of excited players.
Have a conversation about expected post rates.
Opening scenes – split them up into singles or pairs (I do this in separate threads, oen for each scene, stolen from Christopher Weeks)
As scenes progress, cross PCs over with each other and have events from one scene affect the others when possible.
Sometimes bring them all together, for a brief action. I don’t have “big scenes” last long, or slow posters will cause the scene to crawl.
Mix the singles and pairs around so everyone gets scenes together.
When I MC, I imagine I’m the editor-in-chief at a comic book publisher. I look at each PC as the star of their own comic, and I run with their stories until there are events that impact the others. This allows for asynchronous play and posting, and it keeps me active. Then I do my best to rah rah between scenes to help motivate players to keep up on the other threads, but it isn’t required. The rah rah happens in a thread called Table Chatter or the like.
Sometimes there will be issues with timelines, but a willing and eager group can work through and around that.
Also, it’s helpful to have non-forum methods of contact with each player so you can reach out to them about posts, ask questions, check in, that kind of stuff. The primo method I’ve found is having a GChat going with the whole group, it’s awesomely fun.
Thanks all, just posting the interest thread right now. ^_^