Oddly enough (!), playing more has cut into 'blog-time'...
The pace of online gaming is still a little rough for me but I'm getting used to it.I'm playing in a Warhammer FRP PBP and a couple of the players are in Israel, so there's next to no chance that we'll be online at the same times...so I don't have expectations of 'instant-action' or something...
This mode of gaming lends itself well to 'parlour-games', more abstract gimcrackery, woodshedding, strategy games. Thinking about the Play-by-Mail model - which I admittedly have never done, just read about it...I think it would be really interesting to run a sandbox game where every player<->GM channel had its own thread - or an approach that considered threads calving and merging a trivial thing.
I've been thinking about ways to deal with the absence of players. My inclination is to post up a table like this and let the players know that I'll run them as NPCs if I need to to progress the game. What player would want that? The DM is not to be trusted!
Cue Random Tables! It's just like AI!
Based on what kind of situation the characters are in, the actions of a character-sans-player are 'determined' by a die roll...
| d6 | COMBAT |
|---|---|
| 1 | Stumbles and falls down (momentarily helpless) |
| 2 | Decides to change weapons then changes mind (no action) |
| 3 | Moves to defend ally |
| 4 | Attacks nearest opponent/Casts sub-optimal spell |
| 5 | Attacks random opponent in reach or moves to nearest opponent/Casts optimal spell |
| 6 | Goes Berserk |
| d6 | SOCIAL |
|---|---|
| 1 | Says something really insulting and wont retract it |
| 2 | Tangential mouth-mush leaves people confused and suspicious |
| 3 | Mumbles and grunts at some appropriate places |
| 4 | Doesn't say much |
| 5 | Lends good support to own or party's goal/agenda |
| 6 | Steals the show, very convincing arguments for own goal/agenda - may try to cast an 'appropriate' spell toward this end |
| * | "own goal" meaning maybe the GM's interpretation... |
| d6 | EXPLORATION/STEALTH |
|---|---|
| 1 | Gripped my 2 minute choking and coughing fit (very noisy, takes no actions) |
| 2 | Lazy (-1 search or stealth or whatever negative modification os appropriate) |
| 3 | normal |
| 4 | normal |
| 5 | Is double-checking already explored areas/normally stealthy |
| 6 | Is searching (and finds 10 gp!)/sneaking at +1 (or whatever) |
ha ha! wouldn't that be cute!
5 comments:
I think it is a great idea.
Too bad the table is cut-off on my screen. :(
I was worried about that - my html is pretty lousy...it could be a fun DM toy - I can just imagine players being lass sanguine...
The table cells did the trick. Thanks.
I've been playing online PBP games for some time now.
One of my fondest was running a 1E game in the frozen north (a homebrew Blackmoor based on the World of Greyhawk boxed set). I utilized the idea of having a seperate thread for each player, at least until they linked up. I even made use of some clever DM-fu impersonation tricks to make PCs look like NPCs to the other players and vice versa from time to time, so players were never quite sure if that lantern light down the dungeon hall was another PC-party, some NPCs, or some sort of monster.
It worked pretty well, but due to being deployed and having limited connectivity I decided I needed to focus on family so I pulled the plug. One of the advantages of the online format is that it allows for private, individual communication, so if you are willing to put in the time as GM, you can really engage in a lot of active side-questing or paranoia-generating.
yeah - this is alot the lines I am hoping to explore with it - so far, only 3 players have showed up...
one thing about Tunnels and Trolls is that a lot of its players are used to solo modules, so (I assume) the 'culture' might be already predisposed to these sorts of one-on-one channels...
we'll see how this goes...
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