MOMENTUM

Our single, primary, overriding, goal will be maintaining momentum. In my experience, momentum is the most reliable indicator of a Play-by-Post (PbP) game's success. And, also in my experience, one of the easiest ways to lose momentum is to treat a PbP game like a tabletop game. Around a table, in real time, we can hash out a plan, discuss next steps, ask questions, tell another player they should do something, and it's done. On PbP, with hours or days between posts, back-and-forth discussion should be avoided whenever possible.

For my part, this means I will:

• Start new scenes as far into the action as possible.
• End a scene as soon as the stakes are resolved, even if things are still happening. This includes combat. If the tension point of an encounter has passed, I might say "And you guys finish off the last few orcs with no trouble" and move on so we don't spend a week mathematically confirming a foregone conclusion.
• End every scene with at least one clear and obvious option for what to do next (which doesn't mean you have to do that thing, of course, but if a scene ends and you can't figure out what to do next, I've messed up).
• Avoid any situation where one particular player needs to do something for the story to progress.
• In every post of every scene, ensure there's something active and immediate for you to react to. On tabletop, it's fine to say "You enter the basement, it's dark and there's a furnace at the back" and you ask questions and roll dice until you see the glowing green light in the corner but instead I would frame the scene with you already in the basement, at the green light, with it doing something you need to react to right away.

For your part, try to keep in mind:

• If a scene starts too far in or ends before you were done, don't panic. If you can't shimmy it into your next post ("Before they leave the cave, Bill lets the last orc go so he can tell his tribe the tale"), please just let me know (publicly or via PM). There are lots of ways to manage this, from a retcon to a sidebar, and I'd rather push forward 20 times and backtrack five rather than stall out 15 times being overcautious.
• Try not to end a post such that one particular character/player needs to respond in order to move forward. Sometimes this is unavoidable, but if you can avoid it, do so.
• Avoid tactical pre-planning like an incurable disease. Nothing will sink a game faster than five people trying to plan a heist in this format. I will pretty much never hand you a situation that requires a tactical plan to solve and, if find yourselves starting a tactical plan, I'd much rather you just took a run at it and we can all figure it out as you go along (that being said, I do have a few tools we can use to make this sort of thing work, so if a heist presents itself and everyone's excited about it, we can talk about it then).

Ask Forgiveness Rather than Permission
If you can't move forward unless you know something about the scene, or the world, or the environment, default to telling me rather than asking me.

Is it raining? Does the innkeeper have a daughter? Is the king short? Does the kingdom of Mercadia have a busy port? Do you have a cousin living nearby? You tell me. Make up something that's some combination of fun, interesting, and reasonable, and just go with it Even if you're not sure it's okay, default to doing it anyway (maybe with an OC note checking-in with me).

Clearly there's a line here ("Do I have a Staff of Infinite Wishes hidden in my underwear?") but so long as we all stay in-genre and within the established narrative scope of the game, we should be okay. And if you go too far or mess up something I had in mind? No big deal. We can backtrack, retcon or work out a compromise.

Again, far better we keep moving forward and have to backtrack once in a while rather than keep stalling out when we don't have to.

For PvP, Always Ask Permission
The one major exception to the above is any kind of Player vs Player (PvP) conflict. Any conflict between PC's (emotional, social, physical) should be discussed ahead of time and proceed only if all parties have given enthusiastic consent. When there's doubt if something counts as 'PvP Conflict' assume it is and ask first. This is the one place where stalling out is better for the game than pushing forward.

My intention here is not to stifle or prevent inter-party conflict. Often that can lead to some really complex and interesting stories. But ask first. This is true both for general conflicts ("My character mistrusts Wizards, so sometimes she's going to think you're lying when when you're not."), or single scene conflicts ("What if, in this scene, I decide you can't be trusted because you're a noble?") or even whole story-lines ("Maybe my character secretly suspects you're a spy for the Lord Wizard guy and grows increasingly paranoid about you as we go along?").

If the other player(s) isn't 100% on board, then we don't proceed. So please don't pitch an idea if you'd be upset at being told no. And if someone pitches you something, and you don't feel comfortable tell them no, loop me in and I'll happily mediate.

I know it's Weird, but Trust me
In my experience, all of this feels really weird if you're not used to it. Players are not accustomed to the authority to help create the game world and it's normal to be unsure where the limits are. And it can feel strange to discuss and decide story beats ahead of time rather than let them unfold organically. And both can pierce the immersion and lose that sense of verisimilitude.

But that's fine! It's allowed to be weird. It's allowed to remind you sometimes that this is just a game. In my experience, once we all get used to them, and better at them, and over time create our own unique social contract, it leads to a much more fluid and interesting environment.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:10, Wed 01 Mar 2023.

NUTS AND BOLTS

1. I have a complicated and chaotic RL, and so my posting rate is all over the place. I try to manage two or three posts per week. Sometimes I get a little more, often a little less. I'll always try to keep you updated if I think I'll be away for a few days, but I can't always. But I promise I'll always be back.

2. In terms of posting conventions:

• I expect everyone to post with reasonably decent levels of grammar and spelling. Because I often have to tuck posts in between RL stuff, I tend to have a lot of typos, so I won't be all up in your business about minutiae. But everyone should cover the basics: capitalize words, use quotations marks for speech, italics for thoughts, run everything through a spellcheck, no walls of text, that sort of thing.
• I tend to waver back and forth between present and past tense (sometimes in the same post). I don't really care which one you use (or even if you're consistent), just be comprehensible.
• I don't format my dialogue. Don't, and won't, even if you ask me to. I find the ubiquity of that convention strange but I've long-since given up complaining about it. You may format your dialogue if you like but please pick something with good contrast so it doesn't strain anyone's eyes. Please still use quotation marks and commas and all the usual trappings, even if your dialogue is coloured.
• I don't have a post length minimum or maximum. Or a required posting rate. Just try to match the energy of whatever's going on. Try not to post way more often, or way less often, or way longer, or way shorter, than everyone else. I find games settle into a rhythm as they go along.

3. Everyone is expected to remain courteous at all times and attempt to resolve potential conflict through empathy and de-escalation. If someone does or says something that causes an issue, assume it was a reasonable, honest mistake and address it in that spirit. This goes for me too! I've been doing this a long time and I'm very good at it but I can take a wrong step same as anyone. And, in fact, since cutting corners and moving fast is my primary game parameter, it's almost inevitable that I'll run over someone's toes eventually. Anything in the game can be edited, rolled-back, retconned, deleted, or worked around, and the game will be fine so long as we avoid animosity between us.

4. This probably goes without saying, but just in case: I won't tolerate any racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, queerphobia, ageism, ableism or any other sort of weaponized, systemized prejudice, either implicit or explicit, from the players or the PC's.

5. In the game world, there are no divisions or expectations based on gender presentation, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other markers of personal identity. A little bit of fantasy racism (of the "Elves are better than Dwarves" variety) is fine, but in general everyone will accept your stated (or apparent) identity and make no assumptions about you as a result. None of this is likely to be a major story factor, but it will inform the background. So, if a beefy, sweaty, beer swilling woman kisses her tiny, mousy, perfumed husband goodbye on her way to work, no one will raise an eyebrow. And if you tell someone they fight like a girl, and they say "Which girl?" you'll know why.
This message was last edited by the GM at 01:57, Sat 13 Apr.

ALIGNMENT

In my experience with D&D, Alignment is one of those things that people often have strong, unarticulated assumptions about. In RL, whenever I play around a table with strangers, my Session 0 always includes a quick rundown on how Alignment works at the table.

I usually do it in PbP games too. I just forgot this time.

It's a tricky thing because we all know that morals are subjective (or at least debatable), but in D&D Alignment is actually part of the laws of physics, dictating how certain magic effects you and your whole afterlife.

(and also, in my opinion, the way prior editions characterized the various Alignments was both invalid and unhelpful in a way that has completely unnecessarily echoed through time)

So it's weird. And it's above my paygrade to resolve that weirdness.

For me, I see Alignment as a world-view. Alignment is a description of the way your character feels about certain things, not a prescription that says you must act a certain way. You're Chaotic Evil because you choose to kill kittens. You don't have HAVE to kill kittens because you're Chaotic Evil.

A lot of it comes down to a 'strong' versus 'weak' interpretation of the axes. A 'strong' interpretation says you need to be specifically dedicated to the cause of Law/Chaos/Good/Evil/Neutrality as an ideal in and of itself. A 'weak' interpretation says that you're just doing normal person stuff for normal person reasons, and your alignment is just the way you think the world generally works.

So, for me:

"Lawful" people generally feel that things work better (and/or generally prefer) when there are more rules rather than less. I would prefer this to be called "Order."

"Chaotic" people generally feel that things work better (and/or generally prefer) when there are fewer rules. I would prefer this to be called "Freedom."

"Good" people generally feel that things work better (and/or generally prefer) when people follow some semblance of Judeo-Christian values (no murder, no stealing, no lying, respect the community and its members, etc).

"Evil" people either have a specific value system that's contrary to the Judeo-Christian tradition, or they have no value system at all (possibly aside from their own advancement).

"Neutral" could be dedicated to balance between the extremes, or they just don't care one way or the other.

There are, of course, exception. Celestials, Demons, Devils, Modrons, True Dragons, would all be much more tightly entwined with their Alignment. But even then that doesn't a Gold Dragon would never lie, or that a Pit Fiend must kill every kitten it sees.

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns. I know this topic can be, not only divisive, but suddenly and unexpectedly divisive. So anything I can do to nip that in the bud is time well-spent.
This message was last updated by the GM at 14:36, Mon 04 Sept 2023.