Forum-based freeform roleplaying?

Ron Hammack

All I know about it is that it exists. I'd like to learn more. Can anyone tell me about their experiences with that style of play, or point me toward some web resources about it?

JDCorley

I've been involved with a ton of these things...discussed it before here too. I'll find the threads if I can...any specific questions?

Here are a couple of Yahoo Groups that might help:

Comic RPG Recruitment HQ
Roleplaying Ads Central
Roleplaying Yellowpages
All Genre RPG Recruitment Centre

The main thing that I want to point out is that there are enormous divides and enormous variety in this community. For example, the Star Trek "simmers" have been doing their thing since the early days of PBEMs. Task Force 93 is a pretty typical example. Then you've got Yahoogroups people, which are like PBEMs, and forum types, who emphasize length of posts a lot more than, for example, IM RP groups....it's the frickin' jungle out there, I love it.

JDCorley

Here are some threads/discussions we've had here previously, paging through them I can see there are some good links in there too:

Playing in Canon
A discussion of a Rolepages forum post.

I referenced it in a thread about character identification.

Ron Hammack

I've done some online collaborative writing that failed badly. I suspect if we'd approached them as Games instead of Writing Projects things would have gone better, but I don't know anything about the techniques used in these kinds of games.

jprussell

I'm not sure if this fits with your "freeform" requirement, but I'm playing in a play by post game that is basically a 'standard' tabletop RPG, but with the interactions happening over private messages and the occasional AIM live chat, which are then compiled into a post that everybody can read. So, we have a GM and players, we roll dice (or use a computer roller) and compare results, et cetera. I'd warn you that our game tends to be pretty 'slow motion' - it'll take at least a week to get through a scene usually, but this could change if the game you find has an aggressive posting deadline!

I also know that Legend of the Five Rings runs an 'official' play by post game at least once a year, to help determine the cannon in their ongoing storyline, if that's your sort of thing.

Christian_Griffen

Here's an old thread that might get you started:
Freeform Roleplaying

Christian_Griffen

And here's the best resource of them all:

Elf Only Inn

JDCorley

Posted By: Ron HammackI've done some online collaborative writing that failed badly. I suspect if we'd approached them as Games instead of Writing Projects things would have gone better, but I don't know anything about the techniques used in these kinds of games.

Well, most of these games, from the perspective of the game organizer, are also failures, in that they do not go as long as they want and usually drizzle off into nothing. The development of techniques has been haphazard at best - remember that the vast majority these games are essentially illegal under the current US copyright regime, so the only place they can thrive is free locations or under a patron.

Christian_Griffen

Jason's experience is true to the degree that he's talking about games with one person running it for a set group.

My experience with forum gaming, however, is about places with hundreds of players, no set GMs, no set groups, and 80% spontaneous play with whoever happens to be around (the other 20% are scheduled scenes between friends or guild members). And that worked beautifully, for years and years.

misuba

Also the cost of failure for PbP freeform is so low that nothing really needs to evolve to prevent it. If a game goes south for whatever reason, you can probably get a new one going with 8 people in half an hour (assuming you have some friends in the scene).

Paul_T

Does anyone have enough knowledge and care enough to start a thread listing/explaining some of the techniques and rules used in such play?

I've seen some emphasis on synchronicity, for instance: specific rules about lengths of posts and frequency of posting.