Hello all,

I'd like to begin by saying "thank you" to you all. You guys have been a great community to work with. Little to no problems ever seem to arise on this section of the forums, everyone seems to get along so bloody well. You guys are awesome. I'm posting in this section since I think it is the most visible to anyone who is already doing any posting down here.

But the reason I'd like to have a discussion about the Play-by-Post and RPG sections of the community is because we are an incredibly small community by most forum standards. I think in part, RPG games feel incredibly daunting to break into and the whole place feels very closed off to anyone who isn't a part of the community already. The other games, like Mafia aid in being a bit more accessible, which is a good thing. Even so, there are currently few games going on, and the section feels a bit lacking.

Perhaps this is on myself, Scarlet and Sapper. While we stop by, play some games and interact, I don't think we've had frank discussions nearly enough about what you all want out of these forums. So, I'd like to open the floor to discussing what you guys want here, what the moderator community can do for you, and I'd really like to hear some ideas of how to drum up a bit more activity down here in our awesome corner of the internet. This is your forum, so you guys tell us what you want out of it.

Thank you,
-Kiki-Jiki

I'm not a big RPer anymore, but I think running more strategy-type games would certainly help. things like mafia and coup are good examples. mafia unfortunately is suffering because we don't have enough players to really build a community of it, but some smaller deception strategy games might help if we could get more of those running. then people who are here might see the mafia threads and go "hey what's all this about then I wot" and then boom new mafia players

I think at some point Bounty Hunter told me that he tried to recruit a little from GitP, but it didn't go well. Honestly, I don't know where to go to recruit people or drum up interest. If this site actually had a revenue like adds, I'd say take out banner add space to get the word out. I dunno.

~SE++

Do you have any suggestions on what games could be run?

not really, that's not my area of expertise. I've enjoyed Resistance in the past, which we've had here. Dethy's fun but mostly a logic game and also requires you to know how to play mafia.

Drumming up interest is almost the easy part (you just have to convince people to come by and take a look), maintaining interest is hard. Once we've convinced someone to come by and take a look, how do we keep them coming back for more? For me, a big reward in play by post games that kept me coming back was the ability to create lasting things, whether that be characters in an evolving D&D story or memorable Mafia games that people would forever reflect back on in fondness, etcetera. I think it would help tremendously if we came up with some kind of game that allowed new players to get involved with easily, but also allowed them to create something that might have a lasting impression on the forums themselves. There's also the notion of longevity of games. I've been involved with three D&D games so far on these forums, all of which kind of just sputtered to a halt with no closure for the characters or story that I worked hard on developing. I think we should encourage DMs and players alike who are faced with a game that seems to be falling apart to find some kind of way of concluding it on the spot. Lastly, I think it would be a great idea if we started up a roleplaying game that allows for players and DMs to come and go as they please, adding to the overall lore of an ongoing story that is interconnected here in these forums. We create our own "World of Greyhawk", for example, and then have many DMs running games that all take place within that world.

Just a few ideas I have.

we have the M:EM as a backdrop if they're ok with us using their work as fodder for roleplaying, which I'd be willing to bet they are.

What is M:EM?

I think he's talking about the Magic: Expanded Multiverse forum a few up from here.

That's actually not a bad idea.

If someone were to run a roleplaying game, like D&D, that takes place within the M:EM, that might generate more interest in users who are active in the Magic forums above but seldom come to the PBP forums down here.

Must look into this...

Would it be a free form, or within a certain system? Honestly, I would probably say it'd be best as a freeform, but with so many planes and people moving around, I have no idea how it would work except for multiple threads, one for each plane and a lot of work from the M:EMbers.

~SE++

Hey, called in from the M:EM here. In general, I'd be fine trying to work on tie-in material, even if it;s got to be played fast and loose for reasons of mechanics (all too many RPG adaptations of other settings, particularly magic, hit snags I feel in trying to replicate matters like color too closely)

***

I've tried to crack into D&D on the forums a couple times and... actually it's kinda vexing. It's a different beast from how I've usually played in meatspace, which tends towards a ton of table talk and banter and relatively little (though still some) thespian flair, where I feel like on the forums you're encouraged to actually RP as much as possible. It's not a bad thing (quite the opposite, I think), I just think I may have earned an ill reputation for being "the quiet one" as I try to jump track in my head, and I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize if it's hurt any games.

***

In general, I gravitate towards more structured RPGs myself, the above potentially being the reason. But I could see how freeform would work. After all...

*clears throat*

We can look back at, in many ways, the origins of the community that spawned the M:EM -- the Novels & Storylines forum of Wizards of the Coast. No, not Flavor and Storylines. That came later, after the First Dark Days that stripped the Novels tag away. Back in '01 when all was new, the N&S Crowd started arguing (in the friendliest of manners) about who would win in the upcoming conclusion of the Weatherlight Saga. They set up a War Game to decide for themselves, and the poster Shadow264 set up Shadow's Bar -- neutral ground for the wargamers. The interactions of the Bar and Wargame threads spread farther and farther until the mods of those days saw fit to fission them from the N&S boards -- the Coalition Wargame got its own forum, as did "Terisare City", an entire region of freeform RP.

I could see something like Terisare living again here, perhaps Planes of the Multiverse as people suggest...

I will say though, while it had front page billing for many years, it was never quite as vibrant as when it was people just... doing stuff. Technically off topic stuff, but stuff. It's HARD to have something grow when it's not growing organically. But of course you have to try, or you're stuck just waiting for a perfect storm scenario.

I think it should probably start small. Pick one world to test waters, then start building up from there.


As for attracting people from outside the forum, I remember when D&D 5e was launched, BH went to reddit looking for players to play a campaign here. We quickly filled 2 parties. Maybe we could expand on that, making NGA a medium for running PBP games, and start advertising it outside of the forum.

Personally, I have no problem with people using my stuff for things like this, although I have little interest in joining in myself and even less time to do so. Still, if people think my stuff would be useful in this sort of environment, I'd be fine seeing it, and I could certainly answer any questions people might have.

Have fun.

I think the M:EM worlds would make for great role playing, but we'd have to be careful not to drift from their canon. Maybe everything could be done as a series of "What If?" alternate worlds. Or we could just do things in Rabiah since there's a thousand Rabiahs and nobody's going to miss one.

Just chiming in here. Most of you probably don't know me, but I originally hail from what was once one of the Wizards Community's most active and reclusive roleplaying communities (Gleemax Roleplaying). We once ran a promotion in conjunction with the Magic: Expanded Multiverse forum back in 2011 where they came up with a setting and then both communities came together and freeform RPed in it.

I just thought I'd let you know that something along those lines has been done before to mild success. If you end up doing something similar, I'll probably be interested.

Re outside interest in and the dauntingness of the RPG community:

Speaking for myself, I have never even seen a game of D&D played, much less ever played it myself, so that's one avenue that I have no idea how to start walking down. Tevish once, long ago, showed a character sheet with all the non-essential/non-tweakable stats and boxes blacked out and I remember still being kind of lost. Freeform RPs are more a matter of subject matter for me, as I only really have a mental background for M:tG and therefore either don't know how to operate in a D&D style of world or simply don't have the interest in such a place. Mafia is another issue altogether, since I have a) had no experience in either mafia types of games or even deception types of games (I have played very few multiplayer anything, video, board, or otherwise), and b) I am rather put-off by the idea that most of the game is not actually done "on the board" as it were. The only forum games I've been able to play through completion have essentially run themselves by having absolutely everything happen on the "game board" which players posted at the end of their posts.

On that note, there is an entirely separate issue of trepidation on my part due to the games I have or have tried to be a part of. Tevish already noted the Coalition Wargame, which I would like to note did get reincarnated on these forums but died due to reasons I can't fully wrap my head around but which I'm positive had to do with negligent GMs. A freeform RP that I tried to get into on the Map of the Planes group back on the mothership died after a few posts because of the GM disappearing. Yxoque tried to start an hybrid RP of some kind that was going to use stats but in an undefined way, but they never followed through and I still have a character sheet stashed away for a game that never got out of the concept stage. As I already said, the only forum games I've ever been a part of -- the "flavorful voting games" that were once run by Skibo_the_First on the mothership, plus one which Yanmato and I successfully ran -- were designed to run smoothly without a GM as long as players kept up with their moves and posted an updated game board as it were (that is, the life points of the factions). The point I am trying to make is that I don't really trust anything that is supposed to need a singular person to act as an overseer for when or how things happen.

Re using M:EM material as RPG settings:

I think most M:EMbers wouldn't object to seeing our settings being used, although the same issues arise as when dealing with an RPG set on a canon plane -- namely, things like keeping the planeswalkers from a single plane as close to 0 as possible, not destroying the plane(s), not using natives in races other than those found on the plane in question, and not creating new races for fits and giggles (although we're obviously more flexible than canon in that regard).

Logistically speaking, I can't personally see it being too much work on our part if people want to set up RPGs on our worlds. All our accepted works are easily found in our Archive (which I try to stay on top of), and now even moreso due to the Index thread; and most of our planes and characters also have wiki pages for people wanting to read up about them. Of course, I don't know what kind of input you all might need from us in this endeavor. As Rubik has noted, something like this has already been attempted and, from my recollection, not much was needed from our end, although I don't actually know what became of that. I believe it died at some point from inactivity.

I'd like to make a final note that, for a long time now, I've wanted to make another flavorful voting game like I mentioned earlier, and in fact have the vague outlines for one set on Mercadia, but I've not been able to complete it and want to read the novel Mercadian Masques before really committing to a plane I have almost no real knowledge of. I mention this because, being the stickler for rules that I am, I never had any intention of posting it anywhere than the PBP area here.

I think, if we do RPing in the M:EM we have to all agree that it's non-canon. fan fiction, if you will. like how doing a Harry Potter RPG doesn't change the content of the books. we wouldn't be writing M:EM material, just playing around with it.


I've always been interested in those from a design perspective. if you want a hand with the more mechanical side of it, or just want to bounce thoughts off someone, feel free to hit me up.

If I ever get free time, I would be happy to host a game or two here.

Just for fun, I found I still have that image, or rather two-image comparison

First, the majority of a character sheet's functional area (character I ran in a short lived game on the forums)



Second, the essentials



It's a massive oversimplification though. There will still be a number of choices to make (Feats, skills), but the point was that a TON of the stats in D&D are derived.


***

On right, on topic... ah... M:EM has a lot of good campaign worlds. Jakkard springs to mind since it's understandable as a western.