Would anyone be willing to run a Play-by-post game of Masks? My schedule is too unpredictable right now to guarantee I’ll be free a specific evening on a regular basis.
If not, I’m willing to be GM, but please be aware that while I’m sure chargen will go fine, actually running the game would be a bit of a learning experience for me at first.
I would be interested in taking part, I would prefer to play rather then GM as the PBP format is new to me.
Edit: yeah, I’m willing to GM as long as the players are a little patient. Tries to ignore the thunder crack that happens every time I say that
I’m already running a weekly game and don’t want to cross the GMing streams, but I’d love to hop on the player roster. FWIW, I’ve found Masks to be one of the most GM-friendly games I’ve ever run.
Yeah, I really loved the GM section. Very clear advice on how to structure things.
Also, regarding play by post, there are really 2 advantages: people don’t need the same schedule, and people can think through how they post things a bit more.
On the downside, pacing is an issue. Combat can bog down easily, especially for systems that have lots of counter-rolls (I’m now having flashbacks to the attempted Legends of the Wulin game I was in…), but it’s a risk in general whenever 1 person ends up needing to wait for another’s response. Also, there’s an increased chance of a player (or even a GM) of disappearing, which causes problems.
Yeah, my experience has been that the player (and GM) attrition rate is really high during the first couple of scenes. Folks who stick around beyond that threshold are usually good for the long haul.
PbtA games don’t have the counter-roll problem, but there is the similar (possibly worse) counter-narration problem; since there are no ’rounds’ to speak of, players can’t really write a buffer of posts for the GM to deal with; instead, the GM is supposed to narrate how the world reacts after every PC’s action, ideally before anyone else acts.
To help with pacing, I’ve found that it’s a good idea to let the players jump the gun a bit, following one another’s actions and narrating within the limits of reason, with the GM posting when they can and including corrections/retcons as necessary. It’s somewhat against PbtA best practices, but I think it’s a good compromise for the format change.
Thanks for the suggestions!
And yeah, I definitely think that what are best practices for a game need to take medium into account. For example, the concept of “session” doesn’t translate into PbP easily.
That’s true too. X number of scenes (say, three ish depending on length) is a pretty good approximation of a session, since that’s something that matters mechanically. I’ve seen some GMs setting a real world time frame like one week per session, but it doesn’t work very well ime.
Been having a ball in the play-by-post I’m in now, and in all candor I have NO idea how exactly our MC decides when a session is over. The 3-ish rule sounds like a good rule of thumb.
Yeah, I’ve heard worse. 🙂
Are you also interested in playing, or just commenting on PbP? (which would be fine, btw)
Nicholas Never I’m hesitant to commit to MCing, but I could do that in amongst the job search if folks don’t mind a mostly-new-to-PbtA ref. Or playing, since I have a Champions character who could easily more or less convert.
Cool 🙂
We’ll see how things go.
Nicholas Never Scary thing is, I have a bee in my bonnet about doing a Masks game one of these years that rolls over to a Worlds In Peril game after everybody ‘grows up’. No idea if it’d work, but it’d be fun to try.
Also, while it probably wouldn’t work for Masks, the idea of doing a ‘twenty five years later’ game with the first round PCs as major NPCs for the new generation came up…
Is it too late for me to get in on this? (If so, that’s totally fine)
Henry de Veuve I like the cut of your jib and I’m very curious how that would turn out.
Sebastian Baker ….I don’t think so? This has been pretty unorganized so far. But there seems to be 5 people involved in some way:
1) Me
2) Sebastian
3) Henry
4) James
5) Jeremy
hmm… must think…
Henry de Veuve I’ve had this very thought as well. But I’m holding off getting world’s in peril until I’ve given this a chance. The other thing I’m possibly going to do us run this for some younger kids and run an adult game in the same continuity. But I’m not sure the system to use for adult game. Might be mutants and masterminds as a couple in my group are familiar with it but not so invested that I couldn’t suggest a alternative.
I would be interested in a pbp game as well. Only about 50 pages in to book though.
What site were you going to use? Rpg crossing is only one I’ve tried but I’m sure there are lots
llothos The game I’m in is run as a shared folder on google drive. I’ve had some good results with Tavern Keeper, if we prefer a forum, or rpol.
Just looked into tavern keeper and it seems like it’s a dead project. They mentioned in July 2014 that they would be switching to open source but don’t see any other posts since. But I guess the servers are still running
llothos It’s still quite live. 🙂
For various reasons, if I ended up running it, it would be over at rpg.net. I realize that may not sit well with some.
That said, I need to read up on Tavern Keeper, and if someone else runs, I’m perfectly happy with the game being wherever, as long as it’s free 🙂
Nicholas Never Yeah, that’s usually my number one concern. Budget issues and all that. (laugh) Anyway, assuming we have 4 players and one MC, which playbooks do folks want?
Rpgcrossing.com is decent and free. Built in dice rolling. In char and ooc speech among other stuff. No experience with either tavern keeper or rpg.net – Roleplaying Games & More – RPGnet on that front so can’t compare to say which ones better
Had an account on rpg.net years ago; I remember it being all right, so far as no-bells-and-whistles message boards go. Haven’t used any of the other sites mentioned here, but I’m cool with whatever. As said, provided its free, but I’ve never seen any message boards that charge for access anyway.
Something has come up, it looks like I probably won’t have time for this in the near future. Sorry to drop out before we even start, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Have fun guys!
Sorry to see you go, Sebastian. And to answer Henry de Veuve’s question, if the playtest books are an option I’d really like to play a Reformed. Otherwise I’m pretty evenly split between Transformed, Protege and Outsider.
James Etheridge I think that might be do-able!
Sebastian Baker Indeed–hope all goes well, and maybe we’ll catch up with you some other time! Good hunting, amigo.
I’m likely the MC Henry de Veuve mentioned way earlier.
…Sessions end when it narratively makes sense, in part, but mostly it’s when the document we use starts getting unwieldy due to length and there’s a reasonable stopping point. (it’s run on Google Docs, each session is its own document. Works incredibly well)
Greg Trent That would be correct, sir! You are my one and only Masks MC at the moment…
(reads)
Ah. Yeah. That’d do it as an explanation for the cutoff.
Reply, additional: while I’m compiling a few notes and trying to decide how to cobble this baby together, what sort of tone do folks prefer?
(As Mr. Trent could tell you, I tend toward the light-hearted side of things…)
So long as the appropriate time is given to developing complex relationships, engaging in interpersonal drama and examining both heroes and villains as real people, I’m pretty okay with any tone, and I think playbook choices are going to steer the feel of the game more than anything else. Though I think Young Justice is a good target to aim for; there are lighthearted elements but it rarely gets goofy, and there are darker elements but it rarely gets 90s antihero-y. I think trying to stick to just one end of the spectrum would be a bit of a disservice when you can have a Beacon and a Doomed on the same team, know what I mean?
Edit: and speaking of playbooks, I’ve been thinking and narrowing down concepts some more and I’m now split between either a Reformed or a Nova. I know I want to play a speedster who has hurt people in the past and is trying to make up for it by being a hero; I’m just not sure if I want them to be someone who made a lot of bad choices and still has one foot in their old life, or if they’ve been reckless with powers they can barely understand and control and people have gotten hurt as a result.
James Etheridge Young Justice and/or Teen Titans (the original series, not the silliness that is Teen Titans Go) is my go-to binge-watch source material. 😀
Is this still open?
Theoretically, since we haven’t started. (Everyone got reeeeeally quiet so I’m not sure if they’re waiting on me or just drifted off…)
It was the former, but when you went dark for a month I kinda figured this was dead and ended up signing on with a different play-by-post game. May or may not have the time/headspace for another.
(sigh) I asked what other people were interested in playing and what tone they wanted (see posts upthread from Sep 27 and 29), and nobody but you answered. Alas.
C’est la vie. There were like half a dozen people who said they were maybe interested in running but little in the way of actual “yes I’m actually going to run a game,” so I wouldn’t be surprised if folks just wrote the thread off on that basis too. Also it seems like Google+ stops notifying you about new replies to a post if you haven’t replied yourself in a while, so early interested parties might not have even been aware that you were stepping up.
Anyway, if you still want to run a game, try starting a new post? Sure to get interested parties that way.
As you say, that’s how it goes. And I’d rather have the project die out from under me BEFORE I put the whole thing together over on tavern-keeper (or wherever).
(ETA all of which said, I’m probably going to get one going soon anyway! Because Masks is just too cool like that.)
Henry de Veuve Late to the party, but did you end up running this Pbp, and would there still be a spot?
Kai Seemayer Not yet I haven’t! This little thing called Real Life landed on me with both hobnail boots…but I still have ambitions in that direction, especially a little hack based on the Ministry of Thunder campaign frame from the Monkey RPG.
UPDATE: okay, got an interest check up on Tavern Keeper. Will add one here as well.