The Future of PBEM & USENET RPGs From: afabbro@umich.edu (Andrew Philip Fabbro) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 1994 21:00:55 +0000 I'd like to vent some ideas on PBEM gaming-- problems and an idea for a solution. Despite numerous attempts, I've always been disappointed by PBEM role-playing, but I'm not willing to give up on the idea just yet. Judging by the inundation of mail any prospective PBEM GM receives when advertising a new game, there are a lot of people on the net who want to try it as well. Here are my ideas-- please reply with yours. Problems with "traditional" PBEM gaming --------------------------------------- A traditional PBEM game is one in which the GM sends out updates that players respond to. The GM compiles the responses, and then sends out a new game update, ad infinitum. There are some variations on this theme, but that's what most PBEM games boil down to. Typically, everyone starts with very high expectations and enthusiasm. The GM and players put in a great effort at start. Then one of several things happens: (*) players come to a dialogue- or combat-intensive section and the game bogs down into a month or more of short posts in which 2 minutes of face-to-face play is expanded into three weeks' e-mail. (*) players and GM are smart enough to avoid the above and try to compensate by posting if-then trees of possible actions that even Sid Meier would be overwhelmed by, reducing role- playing to a kind of wargaming. (*) someone gets burned out. The GM is the most likely candidate, but players also fall victim to this. One week they're willing to spend an hour or two drawing ASCII maps with their posts, and the next they're writing terse "I go with Shenandor, wherever he goes" posts. (*) Or, most likely, the game doesn't live up to everybody's expectations due to that old bottleneck: the GM update. Updates are just too darn slow-- a short diversion into a bar requires a week or two to play out. Worse, only part of the party goes into the bar and something interesting happens therein...the other plays, still saddled in the middle of town, have to wait while the bar-hoppers resolve things. This might only be ten or fifteen minutes in a face-to-face game where uninvolved players read back issues of Challenge, but it can stretch into weeks of inactivity in a PBEM. Next time someone wants to go off alone, everyone admonishes him not to do it because it will slow things down...so much for escaping to a realm of imagination. (*) the GM runs out of time. Finals or Mr(s) Right comes along, the siren call of a night out with the boys/girls is more tempting than writing out updates, etc. Or, (s)he goes on vacation for a couple weeks and comes back to players who've gone on to other things. (*) one or more players run out of time. "PBEM? No problem, just take 5-10 minutes while I check my mail." Then they discover that writing out responses takes longer, especially if you're going to try and do any <gasp> role-playing. This usually moves the game into the "GM nagging" phase, in which the GM has to write constant nagging notes ("come on, guys, get your turns into me"), which certainly takes the magic out of things. The final death throes are not far off... I'll be the first to admit my own failings in this regard-- I've committed virtually all of these sins as both player and GM. Yet I still think there are many worthwhile advantages in PBEM play...the question is, how to avoid these problems? Two Imperfect But Often-Suggested Solutions ------------------------------------------- One idea often proposed is PBEMing only when all involved can write and respond to daily updates. This frequency would certainly go a long way towards making things tolerable, but you need very committed GMs and players. This is usually not practical. Another is normal PBEM play, with IRC play when the group gets to "intense" parts. The obvious problem is that it's difficult to predict when things will get "intense" (the life of a repo man is always intense, but that's another story). Presumably, the players and GM would have to be on 24-hour IRC standby, or able to negotiate a time when they could get together and IRC-- coordinating schedules has never been easy or enjoyable. And what if one player can't make it? Mixing PBEM and IRC seems problematic to me, unless the group was primarily IRC players who used PBEM play between sessions. Alternatively... ---------------- Another idea is the old "I start a story and you continue it", modified for RPG play. I've seen this done on local BBSes and on GEnie's games roundtable some years ago. It's presently being done on alt.starfleet.rpg, albeit with GMs and administrators. This is essentially GM-less storytelling (small S, no trademark). Every player is a story-writer with equal rights to the narrative and characters. Each player would create a new character upon entering the PBEM, but that character would be communal property (more on this later). The GM would act as a storyline seeder of last resort, but would mostly be just another story-writer. "Updates" would be in simple text form-- you write a sentence, a paragraph, and page of fiction, just as if the reader had turned the page from the last update to yours. Advantages ---------- (*) Your ship crash-lands on a planet...no need to wait 24-48 hours for the GM to post an update about what you find. Just keep the story going-- invent the natives, throw in some plot elements, whatever. Greedo Starslayer needs to bribe the policeman to make it to the ship in time...does he make it? You decide! And then write it up. A blazing firefight-- is Leia the Lascivious Lillaputian wounded? Or does she save the day with her crack shooting? Whatever moves the story along. No dice, no combat scenes lasting 3 weeks. In other words, players are free to invent new alien races, psionic powers, governments, secret societies, new technology, time/space anomalies, long-lost relatives, skeletons in characters' closets, diseases, ailments, technical malfunctions, etc., as long as the story is advanced coherently and enjoyably. (*) No need for the party to all stick together. No need for secret posts-- all players could read what all other characters are doing. (*) As many characters as you like. Want to take a break from Pilate Properbore, your fastidious star pilot? Invent a wise- cracking NPC bartender at the next tavern. In fact, all characters would in effect be PCs, since everyone would have equal control. With little effort, a whole universe could be populated, allowing for unlimited expansion. And if one player has exams, tuberculosis, or puppy love, the game doesn't grind to a halt. He would simply have to do some catch-up reading when he comes back to the game. Disadvantages ------------- (*) "I just read the last update and Bob wrote that Maggie Meteormuncher shot the policeman-- now, as Maggie's creator, I can tell you that she would *never* do that, owing to her extreme deference to authority..." Obviously, one possible problem area would be a player becoming incensed when someone else writes something about "his" character they don't like. This could be avoided by stating at the outset that all characters are communal property. Alternatively, something from object-oriented programming could be borrowed-- most data on the character would be public, with the character's innermost thoughts and ultimate reality held by the creator. But I think pure communality would be better. (*) bad role-players. Bob the Barbaric Belorussian can't eat a Magic Velomint and suddenly become Dark Lord Zharkon, Galaxy Eater, for example. Likewise, players must be able to tell a story in which things don't always work out for their characters-- Han Duo's hyperdrive can't work *every* time (unless it's part of the story), Sherry Shotgun can't hit *every* time with her pistol at extreme range while being tackled, etc. (*) how to incorporate a sense of danger, fear, excitement, etc? (*) start-up. Unless players used a pregenerated universe (Star Trek/Wars, Tolkein, Greyhawk, Tulsa by Night, etc.) the game's originator(s) would have to spend some time writing up something about the universe so that the other GMs-- i.e., all the other participants -- can coherently move the story forward. Otherwise someone would be stuck fielding a lot of "We leap into our speeder and make the jump to hyperspace. Say, do speeders have jump drives? Are we using hyperspace or warp drives in this game?" I don't think this would be impossible, but it would take a little time. A Traveller RPG would need to generate an initial sector or borrow one from source material, a D&D RPG would need to outline an initial campaign world or make sure that everyone had a copy of Al-Qadim, etc. Yeah, but that's been tried before on USENET... ----------------------------------------------- And it's still being tried, on alt.starfleet.rpg, among other places. Some of the USENET rpg groups were simply places for travellers to come and tell stories of their adventures...which quickly boiled down to a bunch of people posting their fiction which no one else read (so I'm told-- I've never read those groups). Or, they operated on a non-communal-character basis with more GM intervention, such as is done on alt.starfleet.rpg, though not all of a.s.r. is run the same. I haven't read it long enough to see how well this works. I still have this nagging suspicion that the GM-update mechanism is a bottleneck, unless you're committed to very frequent updates. The a.s.r. FAQs state that some degree of patience is required. (Unfortunately, a.s.r. has erupted into a rather bitter flamewar at present). A.s.r. is run with a very elaborate administrative structure, but then, they have dozens (hundreds?) of players. The group is is very interesting in concept and (excepting current events) it seems to function well. Of course, not everyone wants to play in the Star Trek universe-- I wonder why no one else has done this with other genres/settings. It would be very easy to test a new a.s.r.-style group on one of the unused alt groups (either one of the rpg-intended groups that's died off, or any random alt.adjective.noun.verb.verb.verb group that hasn't been used in years). Obviously, this sort of game would be more enjoyable the more people were involved. But the flip side is that it would take only one pimply-faced munchkin to ruin things, which is why I'm uncertain if USENET would be an appropriate forum. Unless you had some sort of administrative mechanism, of course. Public play (i.e., USENET) does have the advantage of allowing many potential players to see what's going on and perhaps join in. I suppose if the goal was simply to recruit new players, posting recent updates in digest format to relevant newsgroups would be sufficient. The Vision Thing ---------------- Well, I've rambled from traditional PBEM play to story-writing to USENET rpgs. I think there's a tremendous potential in the last two, assuming there are enough interested players. With administrative supervision by a GM, something like this could blossum into listserver (newsgroup?) with multiple story threads. New players would simply check in, read the FAQ, create a character, and start writing. Or, it could simply stay a friendly campaign among 3 or 4 people. What do you think? I'd like to get some critiques, feedback, and suggestions before moving from the conceptual to the experimental stage... Andrew Fabbro afabbro@umich.edu ITD User Services U-Michigan ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SPACEBALLS the .sig Referenced By Up