Play by Post RPG's: Reflections after a year of gaming

A little over a year ago, I created an account at a site called dndonlinegames (now called RPGCrossing.com) to give play by post a try.  As a friend on that site has put it, my life is full of family, and so it is impossible at this point for me to schedule time for gaming with actual people around a table.  I was craving a gaming outlet pretty badly at the time, so I decided to give it a try.  It has been a fantastic experience, and has dominated my limited hobby time ever since.  Shortly after starting, I posted some first impressions about play by post.  Given that I've passed a year at this point, I thought I'd post some reflections.

What is play by post?

Play by post is the practice of playing RPG's like Dungeons and Dragons on an internet discussion board.  This video does a great job of summarizing what it's like to play at RPG Crossing:

How is it similar to playing around a traditional table?

In terms of the core of the game, play by post is very similar to traditional tabletop gaming.  The DM tells the story, which players can directly influence and shape.  We roll dice (using the forum's custom die-rolling plug-in) to determine outcomes when the DM requests it.  Players control their own characters.  They build their characters, maintain (online) characters sheets, describe their character's actions, and write (rather than speak) dialog.  Using attached images players and DM's wage battles, and if they use Google Docs Drawing, the players and DM's can each move their character tokens.

It's not some distant offshoot of transitional pen and paper gaming.  It *is* gaming.

How is it different?

Despite the similarities, the different medium makes for some particular differences.  Some of these are clear positives, and some are negatives that one has to deal with when playing these games.

Challenges to Play by Post

Play by Post is SLOW

This really is the big one.  I get really excited about gaming.  I want to play and play and play.  There are wonderful game concepts pitched every day at RPG Crossing, and I often want nothing more than to dive right into them.

The problem is that, because you're playing asynchronously with people from around the world, it's rare that one ever is able to post as a player (or even as a DM) more than once per day in a game.  Sometimes, it's more like once per week.  And sometimes, it's even less often than this.  Not only can this be maddening for the impatient--and I am a bit impatient--but it makes it hard to keep a game in your head from one week to the next.  If I don't take notes, I have a hard time remembering the names of the other PC's, much less the NPC's in the campaign (or even the main plot line!).

To illustrate the point, the game that I began last June, the New World, has been running continuously for over a year.  We've "recently" reached level 3, and just today I took my first combat turn as a level 3 character (I'm thinking that we've been through three or four combat encounters).  My own game, which is a tad more combat-oriented, has been running for 6 months, and my PC's are level 2 and have been through a total of 5 combat encounters.  And frankly, in both cases, the fact that we are at those levels is the result of a substantial amount of extra XP given for roleplaying.  Otherwise, we'd probably still be level 1!

The solutions I have for the pacing are twofold.  First, join more games.  The more you're in, the less slow each individual game feels.  Second, take lots of notes!  I don't do this as well as I should, and as I result I am sometimes scrolling through pages of old posts trying to find some detail from times past.  But when there is a quest, or there are important NPC, I try to jot them down in the notes section of my iplay4e character sheet.

Players disappear.  Games fizzle.

In large part because the games do run at a snail's pace, players will disappear.  And often times, it's without warning.  You'll be playing with someone for months, and then suddenly something will happen in their lives that leads to either a quick "I hope this is not farewell, but farewell" post, or, even more often, just silence.  In my game, six months old, despite doing a fairly extensive "background check" on each player to try to avoid disappearances, I lost two of my original seven players (and added one replacement).

Obviously, this can derail campaigns.  There's a temptation as a DM to make campaigns character-centric.  In fact, doing so might be rule 1 of DMing, and one of the best ways to engage one's players.  But if you build your campaign around a character, and that character leaves the game without warning, where does that leave you?  It's something that you always have to be prepared to handle in a play by post game.

Players aren't the only ones to disappear.  Just as often, it's the DM.  A lot of would-be DM's vastly underestimate the amount of time, effort, and commitment it will take to run an effective play by post campaign.  Or, they are prepared for it, but then experience a life change that changes their ability to commit time to a game.  I'm currently involved in five games, not including my own.  I've been involved in four other games that have crumbled because the DM disappeared.  In another, one of the two co-DM's disappeared within two weeks of the game getting off the ground, leaving the other to pick up the slack.

Game posts take time

Paradoxically, after you have waited for the game to come back to you, it often takes a substantial time commitment to make a good contribution to the game.  Sometimes, I can just sneak in with a quick post that will allow for a short response to the DM or other players.  When I can, though, I try to do at least two paragraphs.  Somewhere in there, I try to show how my character responds to what the players and the DM have just said, as well as to push something back for either the players or the DM to run with.

I type pretty fast.  But I don't compose quickly, and I'm not always the most creative person.  I'm probably slower than most, but it's not uncommon for me to spend a half-hour or more on a meaningful game post.

During combat, it's often easier to decide what my character will do.  But to do a good job of tracking my encounter powers (I use a "combat array" dashboard of sorts as an in-post character sheet), and to write evocative descriptions of combat, it still takes time.  It's fun, but it takes time.

Organization is critical

With players scattered all over the world, organization is really critical.  Players are responsible for keeping track of their characters' stats, loot, attributes, etc.  In a game like fourth edition, this is pretty critical, as combat can become quite complex.

And as a DM, it's even more important.  You can get away with just relying on player posts, but my own experience is that combat runs much more smoothly if a DM tracks not just the monsters, but also the players during the fight.  I maintain a fairly large page of tables and such during each encounter, and one of the things I have the hardest time remembering to do is to keep them updated.  But the players rely on those tables, as do I, to know what is happening during the combat.

Party coordination can be hard

At a table, the players can have a short conversation to decide what they want to do next in a matter of seconds.  In play by post, such conversations can take days to complete.  Add in a little bit of uncertainty that discourages players from chiming in, and you have a stalled game.

It really helps when a player or two takes the lead to keep the adventure moving.  As a result, I've been writing more and more of my characters to be leader-types of late.  Even my quiet ranger has become more assertive, helping to push the group forward when necessary (by actions if not by words).

Similar issues occur during combat.  Because each post tends to make up a turn, you have little opportunity to plan out strategy in advance, or even during combat.  Characters can shout back and forth from turn to turn, or players can make general suggestions to the party in the OOC forum (if the DM allows it).  But it nevertheless can be difficult to devise a coherent strategy in the middle of a fight.

On the other hand, one can see this as a benefit.  You certainly only rarely see players trying to directly influence the actions of other players at the table, which is all too common during pen and paper sessions in my experience.  Furthermore, outright metagaming is also often not a big issue.

Benefits to Play by Post

Roleplaying and Character Exploration

I first heard about play by post on the excellent Exemplary DM Podcast (which recently started releasing new episodes!), where it was described as largely a literary exercise.  While you will meet a lot of aspiring writers on play by post games, I have felt little pressure to try to become one.  And I am not a writer, nor do I have aspirations to become one.

At the same time, the medium of play by post demands that character posts be descriptive and evocative.  Otherwise, there's nothing really there to game with.  And in many ways, writing what your character says in third person (as is usually the custom) is far easier and less awkward for many of us than speaking your character's dialog out loud in a tabletop session.  As a result, very rarely do you see situations in which players are unable or unwilling to roleplay.  It doesn't take much: a paragraph or two, describing what your character does, along with a few lines of dialog, and you've made a useful contribution to the game.

Therefore, given this recent background, it's pretty hard to even relate when you hear tabletop DM complain about a lack of roleplaying at their table.  If there is one thing that the slow rate of the game tends to promote, it's introspection and exploration of one's character.  I think this is where the medium really shines--characters come to life in play by post more consistently than I've ever seen in a tabletop session.

Visuals

While this might offend the purists, one thing that I really like about play by post gaming is the ability to easily add visuals to your games.  As a DM, including an image of an important building, scene, or NPC is as easy as uploading to photobucket and adding the appropriate tag to your image.  The medium is always going to be dominated by the written word, but visuals can really help bring a game to life.

Doing the same thing at a tabletop game either requires a) print-outs, or b) a laptop at the gaming table, ideally with a secondary, attached monitor.

Records

When you walk away from a tabletop game after a session, the game exists only in your mind.  Some groups will try to take the time to write down what their group does in adventure logs, but this can be a time consuming and ultimately often thankless activity.  It certainly is also not one that lends itself to evocative writing--adventure logs tend to be pretty dry, point-by-point descriptions of what happened at a session.

In contrast, in play by post, every post contributes to the story of the adventure.  And those posts are essentially permanent.  As a result, a year later, you can go back and read an adventure almost as a novel.  And there are some folks who actually do this!  I've had at least one lurker who drops by my game and reads the wonderful stuff that my players have written.

Lessons learned

Play by post gaming has been a wonderful addition to my life over the past year.  It has given me a wonderful creative outlet and brought a lot of fun into my life.  It is not without its challenges, but my experience has been that there are tremendous rewards to getting involved in play by post games.

How tough is too tough? Encounter design in 4e

As with the prior article, if you're playing in my RPGX game and would prefer not to have your illusion of immersion damaged, you might not want to read this.  You've been warned!

Recently, I managed my first kill as a DM.  Killing a player is certainly not a goal of mine as a DM, and I felt pretty horrible about it.  In play by post games, in particular, players spend hours crafting not only their character's mechanics, but also their backstories and relationships.  Play by post as a medium is extremely good for encouraging deep roleplaying, and I've been fortunate to have a group of players who enjoy doing just that.  Therefore, it is no small thing to kill off one of their creations.

DnD 4th edition has a reputation as a system in which player death is extremely difficult to achieve.  In fact, the lack of lethality in 4th edition is one of its most common criticisms.  But without intending to do so, I managed to kill off a PC in what was intended to be a pretty uneventful encounter.

In this case, my players were working their way through a small dungeon based on a mini-delve created by Benoit over at Roving Band of Misfits.  They came upon a trapped door.  Without even bothering to check for traps, our party's Skald opened the door, launching a combat as a series of constructs came to life and attacked the party.  The biggest of the constructs rolled high on his damage dice on charge attack against our party's squishy thief, which pushed him just past his negative bloody value.  In one punch, he went from bloodied to dead.

I was pretty sad about this.  Thanks to the player's wonderful efforts to flavor the thief, he had become one of my favorite characters in the game.  And while his death has allowed for some excellent roleplaying opportunities for other characters, I still would probably have rather preferred that it not happen.  The party ended up abandoning the dungeon before they could fully appreciate the story around it, I think it hurt the group's enthusiasm for the game a bit to see that character die in a meaningless sidequest.

In any case, I've been trying to decide if my encounter design is to blame for what happened.  The DM Kit recommends the following distribution of encounter levels during each level:

• 3 encounters at the party's level.
• 1 encounter at the party's level - 1
• 3 encounters at the party's level +1
• 1 encounter at the party's level +3

Prior to this, I'd given my 1st level party three encounters, which were pegged at level 2, level 4, and level 2, respectively.  The first encounter was pretty easy.  The second was very challenging but do-able, especially because the biggest threat ran away at the end of the combat.  The third was a little scary (due to a lurker), but ultimately was over quickly.

This encounter with the constructs was technically avoidable.  Players could have rolled a series of thievery checks to disable the trap system on the door, though it would take good rolls from their thief to do so.  It was also possible to turn off the constructs with a combination of successful arcana and thievery checks during the combat, and the constructs were also set to reset if the players exited the room the way that they came (they tried neither of those approaches).  Finally, it was the only real encounter I had planned for the entire dungeon, and that the characters were fresh from an extended rest with full resources.  Therefore, given all of this, I pegged it as a level 2 encounter: hopefully challenging, and a punctuation mark on the mini-delve, but very much within their scope.

I only had four monsters to oppose my party of six:

• 1 Thaalud Constructor (Elite Brute), de-leveled from level 5 to level 4 (350 XP).
• 3 Iron Defender (Soldier), level 3 (150 XP each, 450 XP total).
• Total XP budget: 800 XP (level 2 encounter cutoff is 750 XP for a party of six)

This seems pretty reasonable, even in retrospect.  If I made a mistake, it was probably in not de-leveling the Constructor enough.  Taking it down to level 3 would still allow it to be an imposing figure, but he'd have about 20 fewer HP (as an Elite), hit slightly less hard, and have slightly weaker defenses (which were already low--he's a brute).  And given that it was a sidequest, without any real bearing on the main campaign plot, I could have knocked off one of the iron defenders to get it into level 1 encounter territory.

In the end, though, even if I would have done these things, the constructor might still very well have killed the thief.  When you use elites, solos, or lurkers--enemy types designed to make attacks that do the damage equivalent of several rounds or opponents in a single strike--it's pretty easy to kill off a player without intending to do so.  In fact, the same thing almost happened in the prior encounter when I used a level 4 lurker against the party: a character was within 1 or 2 HP of her negative bloody value.  Those things hit hard!

Lessons Learned

It may well be true that 4th edition is less lethal than prior editions of Dungeons and Dragons.  But it certainly is still very possible to kill your players by accident!  When designing combat encounters in the future, I will probably be a bit less aggressive with encounter levels, and will pay more attention to not just the monster XP budget, but also the levels of the individual monsters in the encounter.

Setting a soft limit of party level +2 to the monster level seems like a good rule of thumb (even though I've seen +3 mentioned somewhere--which is what I did with the Constructor).  I'll also probably make plot-irrelevant sidequest encounters be built at the characters' level or lower.  If I'd done two iron defenders and a level 3 Thaalud Constructor, I'd still be at 600 XP (level 1 encounter for a party of 6), and my feeling is that the players would still have felt that it was a fitting challenge in that tomb.

That said, maybe what I did was actually pretty reasonable and I'm just feeling gun-shy!  Combat is supposed to feel scary, after all.  Monsters are dangerous and unpredictable tools for the DM.  The fact that their effectiveness is dictated on the randomness of dice rolls is part of what makes the game exciting to run: even the DM doesn't know how it's going to turn out!

DMing with Improvisation

Improvisation is a big topic around the online DM community.  It is, for example, a key message from Sly Flourish's latest book, the Lazy Dungeon Master, and is the heart of countless how-to articles on DMing.  Good DMing requires one to take what the players give you interactively to spin a story.  Otherwise, players start to feel railroaded, which can ruin the sense of immersion in a living, breathing world that is so important to making a game work.

I've been DMing a game of my own for the last 6 months or so at RPGCrossing, and while I've been having a great time, it's become increasingly clear how important improvisation is.  As an example, here's a synopsis of what I put together as the opening chapter of my game, which is set in the Nentir Vale.

....If you're one of my players, you might not want to read this.  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, and all that. :)

My Anticipated Plan: River Rats Plague Lowtown Fallcrest

• Amara Azaer hires the PC's as adventurers to solve the problem of an extortion ring in Lowtown, Fallcrest (the default 4e starting town).
• PC's start poking around Lowtown near the Lower Quays, where a lot of the extortion has been happening.  Get ambushed by gang members, who are simply trying to rob them.
• A shifter who spies on them during the battle sneaks away, and PC's follow him to the Bluffs on the other side of lowtown where they have a minion-filled battle outside the River Rat's hideout.
• PC's find incriminating evidence in one of the buildings at the bluffs linking them to Kelson of the Lucky Gnome Taphouse.
• PC's confront Kelson at Lucky Gnome, have a boss fight, win the day, save the town, and move on to bigger and better things.

What Went Wrong: The PC's Go Off the Rails

After receiving the quest, the PC's decide to bait the thugs by posing as a rival gang at the Lucky Gnome Taphouse.

Are you kidding me?  The very first thing the PC's decide to do is go to the home of the Big Bad?  This was a blast.  Kelson, who was tending bar when the PC's showed up, made some great bluff rolls, and immediately began making plans to deal with the PC's once they arrived.

I also invented a new character, Arya, who was playing dice games (i.e. gambling) in the corner of the room.  She was based on an enemy I'd already planned to feature in the first fight, but she never had any real personality or background before there was a need for her to populate the bar.

Springboarding off of something that one of the NPC's said about the gang potentially having infiltrated the Fallcrest Guard, the PC's took steps to entice crooked guards to show up.  This included recruiting one of my PC's to spread word of a new gang operating in the area among the guard.

I hadn't thought this through when my NPC said it, but I was planning to throw a couple of guards into the final battle to justify that statement.  The PC's really latched onto it, though.  So, I instead opted to create a pair of crooked guards, which I named Horace and Jasper (Jasper was female, though), who promptly showed up at the bar and started harassing the PC's.

I was a little worried about whether it was too convenient that the players' plan would work so well.  But if nothing else, it seemed like a good way to get them out of the bar once the crooked guards left.  This actually worked brilliantly. The thief in the party immediately followed the guards to a safe house that I invented in Lowtown.  After he was subsequently captured, the rest of the party followed, and I had my ambush battle.  

I decided to try to lead the party back to the Lucky Gnome now, with Kelson heading off to the hideout near the bluffs to organize the gang's effort against this new thread.

Rather than head back to the Gnome, the party decided to send Jasper, who they'd captured, to entice her leader...who they had not yet identified as Kelson...to come to the safe house to parlay.

Little did the PC's know--though perhaps they should have guessed--but Kelson already knew what they were up to.  Therefore, rather than show up to have a conversation, Kelson showed up with the full strength of his gang behind him to wipe out the PC's.  This was a tough fight, but it ultimately resulted in Kelson (somewhat controversially...more on that some other time) fleeing once his gang was decimated.

I hadn't planned for the party to meet Kelson until they hit their third battle in the sequence, but the story demanded it.  I also hadn't planned for him to escape, really, but I wanted to get the group out to the bluffs to get access to an optional sidequest that I wanted to be available to them.

Of course, given that they'd already fought Kelson, I needed a new threat at the bluffs.  Therefore, as a means of linking them into the next bit of story, I grabbed an Iron Cicle Spy from the Threats to the Nentir Vale monster manual and placed her in the bluffs.  Unbeknownst to me when I started, it turns out that Kelson was actually in cahoots with the Iron Circle!  What a great segue, right?

Lessons learned

I spent a lot of time planning, write out descriptions, etc, before the game began...and ended up doing almost everything differently.  What began as a simple little sequence of three battles, with a loose story, became much more as we went.  New NPC's emerged out of necessity, and entire links between plot points developed out of thin air.  While there were some issues with execution here and there, on the whole it became a far more interesting experience than the thing that I'd originally planned.  This improvement was a direct result of the players' contributions to the plot, and the reactions required on my end to make it work.

So, for all of my planning, the most useful bits that I came up with in advance were simply who the main bad guys were, and what specifically they'd been up to until the moment the campaign began.  Everything else came down to playing my NPC's as they would behave, given their motivations and what they knew minute by minute.  Fortunately, in a play by post format, I, as the DM, have the time to get my thoughts together so that I can zag when my players zig.  Something like this would be a lot harder to pull off in real time at around a table!

Taric Tannershall, take two: Warpriest of Pelor

This is a revised version of Taric, customized to fit Elwen's version of the DnD Encounters season Beyond the Crystal Cave.  The build is fairly similar, but his background and RP sample is completely revised to fit the campaign.

Character Name: Taric Tannershall
Race: Human
Class: Warpriest of Pelor (could also easily convert him to a paladin (cavalier) if needed, though my preference is the cleric)
Alignment: Lawful Good
Gender: Male

Appearance:
With above-average height and an athletic build, Taric can be an imposing figure. On the battlefield, he radiates the brilliance of his god as he pushes through his foes with sword and shield, clad from head to foot in shining armor. Nevertheless, his facial features are fairly soft, and are punctuated by kind eyes that often set those around him at ease.

Personality:
Strong, compassionate, forthright, and devout, Taric embodies the teachings of Pelor. Yet while many of the Clergy seek to proselytize at every opportunity, Taric has found that he is far more effective in accomplishing the goals of his god--and in so doing, winning new devotees--by instead leading by example. As a result, he has earned a reputation in the poor districts of Sybaran as a caring man who is willing to help those in need while asking little in return. At times, he is probably a bit too willing to help; in the past, he's found himself manipulated by those who would take advantage of his selflessness.


 Background:
The Tannershalls are a minor noble house within Sybaran. The excesses of Taric's great-grandfather unfortunately left the family destitute, with few resources beyond the value of their name. This, however, proved enough to help the family get back on its feet. Starting with virtually nothing other than their name, Taric's parents played the politics of Sybaran with great skill. Other houses found that when they need to gather support within the modest noble court of Sybaran, the Tannershalls are often willing to cast their lot to those who can provide them material wealth in return. And by keeping their ears alert to gossip, along with no small amount of guile, the Tannershalls have managed to foil those families who might seek retribution when double-crossed. From an early age, his older brother and sister, Cedric and Dalia, also demonstrated tremendous political competence, and thus house Tannershall is known as a small but rising power.

Taric was the youngest of the family, born a full 10 years after Dalia. While the rest of his family engaged at court, Taric often spent time on the grounds of the local temple. A half-elf priest there named Garren, an extended relative of the Tannershalls and former adventurer, would watch over the boy. Garren played games with him, told him stories, and even taught Taric basic weaponcraft as he matured.

As Taric came of age, he found the life of his family, marked on all sides by the need for political gain, was a poor match of his sensibilities. Indeed, while he had basic competencies in custom and culture, his parents often treated him as a liability, asking that he do little more than smile and nod at social functions. As a result, at 18 years of age, and with his family's blessing, he joined the Priesthood of Pelor.

There, he found his calling. He proved an excellent student of his chosen god, and almost immediately forged a close connection with Pelor. As he completed his studies, he volunteered to work not with the nobility--as he certainly could have done given his connections--but rather to follow Pelor's charge and work instead with the poor. He became a champion on the streets of Sybaran, working with both citizens and the guard to drive out gangs of ruffians and establish social support systems within the city. While he always tried for a diplomatic solution to hostilities on the street, he also was known to accompany guardsmen when they were forced to clear out a den of criminals. Word quickly spread of the young cleric, shining in battle as if illuminated by the Sun, fighting back with divine radiance against those who would take advantage of the downtrodden.

When Count Varis Sybar put out a call for adventurers to help maintain the peace between Sybaran's neighbors, Taric volunteered the next day. There was, of course, still much to do in the slums of Sybaran, and he was reluctant to put that work on hold. Nevertheless, as he believed that Pelor revealed in a dream, war between Crystalbrook and Sildaine's elves had the potential to do great harm to the region. Indeed, were the fighting to spill over into Sybaran's borders, it was the very poor that he'd worked to protect who would suffer the most.


Role-playing sample: 
The moon was still shining brightly in the sky as Taric rose from his bed, a make-shift cot within an equally make-shift house. He looked up at the night sky through a hole in the roof before setting to work. In a small trunk nearby, he collected several small artifacts: a sun-shaped pendant, which he placed around his neck, a book of scripture, and, perhaps the only item he possessed that belied his family heritage, a mechanical timepiece. Those in hand, donned in robe, stepped outside, and climbed a ladder up to the roof.

Gazing about, he could see and smell the slums around him starting to awaken. A trickle of people made their way through the streets: some leaving for the day, others finally returning home. Looking to the east, he could just make out the first hints of dawn. He sat cross-legged upon the roof, left hand grasped around the holy symbol at his neck, and immersed himself in familiar ritual. As the minutes ticked by, he read softly the creed of his god, though he knew it by heart. "I will alleviate suffering wherever I find it, just as sun of mercy shines upon those in need. I will bring Pelor's light into places of darkness, showing kindness, mercy, and compassion. I will be watchful against evil, just as the Lord of Light casts his gaze to the earth throughout the day."

As he completed his prayers, the sun peaked over the horizon. Following custom, he focused just below the horizon, averting his eyes from the power of his god. As he meditated in the glory of the morning light, he had a vision of a great conflict. Elves warred against man, bow against shield, forest against plains. And caught in the fury, he saw the slums of Sybaran burning.

The vision faded as the sun cleared the horizon, leaving Taric to his thoughts. There was still much work to do in the slums. But the announcement of Count Sybar's call for adventurers hung in his mind, as did the image of his town burning. He knew what he had to do.

Comedy in a PBP game

I had to share this fun little exchange from a play by post game I'm in.  Emmett (played by robotbear) is a rather feral barbarian, who just abruptly exited from a meeting between the adventurer party at the local city Baron.  While the adventurer's continued conversing with the NPC, Emmett went and found himself something to do...

Robotbear: MEANWHILE, in another part of town: Emmett is starring into the eyes of a horse, neither creature giving the other any clue like they are going to blink first (Insight check: 12+6=18). 

Enthusiast (DM): While his erstwhile allies held audience with the Baron, Emmett was staring at a horse, wondering what secrets were housed within the animal's soul. The horse, meanwhile, stared blankly, hoping to lick the barbarian if he inched close enough. He looked nice and salty. 

The creature made a feint (Bluff: 12-1=11) to one side, hoping to draw the barbarian close enough for a lick, but the horse's prowess was no match for Emmett's quick mind. He knew exactly what the beast was up to, and there was no way he was going to fall for its trickery. 

Stubborn as a mule, the horse made every effort to resist the urge to blink (Saving throw against blinking: 6). Alas, it was no use. Emmett, apparently, was even more stubborn than a mule. He savoured the sweet taste of victory.

Shame that the horse didn't make that saving throw...but that's funny stuff, right there.

Character Application: A Warlock (Hexblade)

Name: Armin Brent
Race: Half-Elf
Class: Warlock (Hexblade), Infernal Pact - Striker
Alignment: Neutral
Age: 28 (though the RP sample below happened when he was 16)

Description:

If there’s a typical half-elf appearance, that’s basically Armin: brown hair, cut short, 5’11”, 160 lbs, slightly tapered ears, more slender than a typical human, but bulkier than a typical elf. Upon closer inspection, however, one does notice a few unique characteristics. His eyes, though they appear brown at first, seem to have a subtle, flickering, iridescent red quality to them when he stares intently at you. Second, his posture isn’t what you’d expect for someone with elven blood running through his veins; though a good athlete, he holds himself with a small slouch in his back, as if he were shouldering a great weight.

Personality:

Armin is a friendly, amicable individual prone to good natured humor. Speaking with him for only a few minutes, you might begin to think that you were making a new best friend. He is confident, listens well, and is quick with a compliment. While hardly a storyteller—in fact, he is often quite evasive, if not deceptive, about his past—Armin tactfully involves himself in conversations and seems memorably innocuous.

Some of that, however, is a front. He rarely makes lasting friendships, and in conversation is extremely evasive about his past, his motivations, or his plans for the future. A person might spend an evening thinking she was really getting to know him, only to realize the next morning that she spent the evening talking about herself...and that Armin is now nowhere to be found. Uncommonly, Armin has even been known to vanish with someone’s gold or other treasures, never to return. He is not an evil man. But he seems haunted by something in his past, and seems to be wandering his way through life without goals or purpose.

Background:

What good are choices when all of your options are terrible?

Armin was born in a small farming community on the outskirts of a major city. His mother, Serah, was single, and he didn’t know much about his father. Serah told him that he was a ranger of a sort, and as Armin grew older he surmised that he was the product result in a one-night affair. His mother was dedicated and loving, however, and worked hard to give Armin a place in the world. Among other things, this included a first-rate education. They could barely afford it, but she felt it was the best gift she could grant her child.

As he entered his teenaged years, however, a summertime drought dealt a severe blow to the farming community where he grew up. As farmers’ crops failed, food prices soared at the same time that the community’s income faltered. Refusing to abandon her hopes for her child, Armin’s mother moved them to the city and fell in with an organized crime syndicate. She served as a courier for over a year, transporting ever-increasingly sensitive materials to and from crime bosses. She quickly earned her superiors’ trust, able to conceal important documents and treasures through dangerous roads and military checkpoints alike with a combination of girl-next-door charm and a knack for stealth. It paid well, but she was often away from home, leaving Armin to fend for himself. He spent much of his free time in the library; Armin was a good student, and was considering a career in either wizardry or law. During this time, he met and befriended Belkin, an elderly wizard who had spent most of the last 20 years reading his way through the stacks of arcane volumes in the library’s archives. In those occasional nights when his mother was home, however, the two of them defied the typical relationships between parents and teenagers, remaining very close.

One day, however, his mother was intercepted on one of her missions by a competing syndicate. They beat her brutally. But even worse, they stole from her a vital portfolio of information full of secret details about personnel, safehouses, and current schemes within her syndicate. The price for such failure was certain death for both Armin and his mother at the hands of their assassins. And her superiors would know what had happened within a day’s time.

RP Sample:

The old Wizard stared into his book for a long time after hearing Armin’s request. Slowly, he raised his eyes toward the youth. “Do you understand what it is that you are asking? This is not something that can be undone. You may well be forfeiting your soul.”

“I understand—I do, really. But this is our only chance. You have to help us!” Armin replied desperately. Just last week, Belkin had delighted in telling Armin of how he’d found a loophole in the convoluted laws of the hells that would permit someone to steal immense power from infernal lords. He longed to put his idea to the test. But, as the old man told him, he was too close to the afterlife to be picking fights with devils.

Now, in his despondency, it seemed Armin’s only option. They would try to run, but the Syndicate would surely track them down. They had no chance in a fair fight, much less the ambush that would surely await them on a moonlit road as they fled. He was desperate, and here seemed to be a solution that could save them.

“I am sorry Armin, I want to help you, but I can’t do this for you. You are too young to be making this kind of a decision,” the old Wizard replied.

“What good is a soul if you lose your entire world protecting it? I’m as good as dead without this, and so is my mother.” Armin replied.“Please.”

The old man gave him a long, sad look. “May the Gods forgive me.” He turned, lifted an enormous tome from the shelf at the back of the room, and led the youth down a long flight of stairs into the depths of the library’s cellar.

---

Armin stared at the sword in his hand. It was black upon black, and seemed to absorb all light cast upon it from the flickering torches nearby. Turning it to the side, he saw that it was almost without a third dimension: it was infinitesimally thin, and seemed impossibly sharp.

Tonight had been terrifying. But the ritual, horrible as it was, seemed to have gone as planned. Armin could feel a sinister power coursing through him, and knew that it would take him a long time harness it. In the meantime, however, he hoped it would be enough. He hurried to barn just outside the city, where he had brought his battered mother for safety while he visited with Belkin. Now, with luck, they could have a head start before her employers learned of what had happened.

As he entered the barn, he saw his mother look up in relief. Through the darkness, he could see that one of her eyes was swollen shut. The other paused for a moment when she saw the sword sheathed at his side. “We must go,” she said urgently. But in the next moment, arrows shot through the room, grazing Armin’s shoulder.

The room was a blur in the darkness. Armin unsheathed his sword, which moved as if guided on its own as he struck out at their attackers. Armin felt blood splattering on his clothes as he fought. With each foe he felled, the sword emitted a burst of energy that seemed to feed his strength. They came at him from all sides, but were no match for this blade of annihilation and its wielder. Here, in the thick of combat, Armin felt unstoppable.

Just as he began to think they might survive, however, he heard a sickening thud behind him. Slicing through a last combatant, he turned to see a lone assassin standing over his mother, where she lay covered in blood. In a rage, he screamed—and as he did, bolts of energy shot from his hands. The first shattered the man’s torso, detaching his arm and crushing his chest. But the second shot to the right, striking the support pillar in the center of the barn and causing it to buckle.

In an instant, the barn came crashing down around him. Armin lay for hours beneath the rubble, sobbing. While he had survived, but he knew his mother was dead. And somewhere in the distance—or maybe just in his head?—he could hear a deep voice laughing at his plight.

Play by Post: First Impressions

Play by post gaming is sort of the opposite of this, thank goodness. (Photo credit: mricon)

I first heard about play by post games via the Exemplary DM Podcast.  On the surface, it sounded neat: play within the bounds of your time.  But the description that the guests on that show provided ultimately turned me off: focus on literary style, emphasis on roleplaying and light rules, lack of control of your own character, etc.  I think I'm a bit of a "right of center" gamer, and this just didn't seem like it would be for me.

As I mentioned, though, a few weeks ago I decided to give it a go.  Whoever runs the twitter feed for DnDOG followed me on twitter, so I decided to check them out.  I found an amazingly vibrant community of roleplayers playing all kinds of games, though it's mostly DnD 3.5 and Pathfinder, with the occasional 4e game thrown in for good measure.  I lucked into joining a 4e game with my first application, and have been hooked ever since.

My experience has been rather unlike what was described at Exemplary DM.  There certainly has been plenty of writing, and I'm fortunate to be playing with several fantastic writers (including the DM).  The only time I can remember trying to write dialog since eighth grade was when I was working on my nwn2 character creator module, and I've found it to be both fun and challenging.  Even a few paragraphs have taken me a very long time to write in the early going, but I think I'm getting faster as I find both my voice and that of my character.  I'm playing a fairly quiet character, and that's worked out well, as I don't need to take the lead in conversations...and any awkwardness fits his character pretty well.  :) Nevertheless, we're definitely still playing DnD.  The forums at DnDOG have a nice dice-rolling mechanism that permits you to embed honest dice rolls into your posts for skill checks and, of course combat.  This tool permits players and DMs to run a game that feels very dnd.  Right now, we're meeting the Baron of a small city, and my character has been rolling perception and insight checks left and right, while the talky-talky PCs are rolling diplomacy, bluff, intimidate, etc, as needed to interact with the NPC's.  The DM wisely places substantial modifiers on roll outcomes based on the roleplaying.  Therefore, if you roll a good diplomacy check, but write an insulting, uninspiring dialog you'll likely encounter a penalty...and similarly, if you roll badly but roleplay well, you might well succeed in the check.  And some of the time, you won't even know if you've succeed--you just go with what the DM gives you.  It's very immersive, and yet it's still driven by in almost equal parts by the character sheet and the player behind the character.

We also did a small combat, which I found to work very well.  It plays very closely to how it might on a table, with a few exceptions.  First, while everyone rolls initiative, the monsters all tend to go as a group, as do the PC's.  This allows all of the PC's to post their turn as time permits, without having to wait for whoever is in front of you to finish.  After each turn, our DM updates the grid (which he draws on his computer, in powerpoint I'm guessing?), and gives us reports of the monster conditions and such.  The actual combat is delivered in character, but with lots of out of character references to character actions and statuses.  Again, the forum software is great for because it allows you to hide or otherwise disguise these out of character elements within the game thread to clearly separate them from the roleplay.  It even lets you post secret information that is just between the DM and the player.

There are some downsides combat.  First, it is a bit harder to play a controller under this framework.  For example, one of my Hunter's best abilities is the ability to slide enemy PC's two squares with a damage-dealing, at-will attack.  One use for this might be to move "squishy" spellcaster-types closer to the front lines, and I'll certainly do that.  But another use will be to move foes into a position where they can be easily flanked.  If I'm doing this, I need to be really careful about who has already posted and who has yet to post as I execute the maneuver.  If "my" strikers have already posted that round, that tactical option is more or less often off the table.  But given how much the "everyone goes at once" framework speeds up combat, I think it's a worthwhile trade-off.

The second downside, of course, is that because we're playing within the constraints of eight individuals' schedules, play by post is kind of slow.  Or, rather, it's bursts of activity followed by long periods of waiting. As it's summer and I'm not teaching, now is a great time for me to be playing.  Therefore, I've submitted applications for a couple of other games.  As the semester starts up again in the fall, I'll see about reducing my commitments as needed.  Probably, it will just mean that I'm posting a bit less often than I am now.  And that's fine, as most games only ask for 3-5 posts per week.

Over the next few days, I'll post a few of the other characters I've written up for applications.  I don't know who will read them, but they were fun to write. :)