Chatty DM: Here’s Part 3 of Wyatt’s wordilicious series on playing RPG through text interfaces online. I wish to thank him warmly for stepping in when I needed the break!
Hey there, this is Wyatt Salazar, your DJ for the night, and as we have done before (and before) we will talk online gaming!
Now that we have an idea of how it is played, and where to go to play it, we’ll talk a bit more about some very important subjects, including recruiting and how to start running it once it’s on the run. This article will concern itself mostly with GMs.
The player’s job online is very easy – he joins the game and he plays, much like in real life. The last two articles showed him how to play online and where, and that’s really all he needs to know. Now, by reading what the GM needs to know, the players will know how to make life easy for him.
Recruiting
A lot of people who start doing online gaming already have some friends they can bring to the medium alongside them, but some don’t, and unless all of your group agrees unanimously to it, you’ll probably have some holes left to fill.
This is where recruiting comes in. This is a major part of online gaming that can make a game or break it before it even starts. Most RPG websites will have a forum for finding players or recruiting, especially those that also have play-by-post boards.
This is where you would go to find players. RPG Forums are the best places to recruit, but if you’re part of a private forum with a good community, you could try to get non-RPGers interested in learning. If you can take the time to teach them, having fresh minds may help keep the game aloft more than hardcore RPGers who are already in two other games. But that’s all taste, really.
Before you start, have a good topic title in mind. You’re posting on this forum, among maybe hundreds of other topics, to try to draw players to your game. If your topic title is “D&D 4e Game on Gametable” then it’s not going to catch any eyes.
Now, if it is “The Unseen Scourge of the Gray Vale (D&D 4e Gtable)” then you have a better chance to hook people in. (Chatty DM’s unasked for editorial comment: I’d totally join a game called that!)
The title of your thread should have the system you’re running and how you’re running it – if it’s via an instant messenger, write the acronym for it (AIM, MSN, IRC, etc), write PBP if it’s a play-by-post, or the app you’re running it with (Mtool, Gtable, OpRPG, etc). Some people just plain don’t like a medium for their own reasons, and you don’t want them thinking you’re running a Play-By-Post, when you’re really running on IRC.
Also, try to resist posting the name of whatever module you’re running as the topic title (if you’re running a published module that is) unless it has a gimmick people would want to know. In fact try to resist telling people it’s a module you’re running at all.A lot of people, like myself, have played dozens of modules, some of them more than once, and if you tell me explicitly you’re running Keep On The Shadowfell, you’re projecting an aura of “same old, same old.”
Now, if you get me playing Keep on the Shadowfell and I can’t tell that’s what it is, you stave off both precognitive boredom and metagaming at once.
Your recruiting thread should, hopefully, have the following things, that will almost certainly ensure people are interested:
Introduction: This is where you give people a feel for the game you’re going to run. Like the title, this is another chance to hook them. Tell them the system, some backstory information (but not too much – this is a hook, remember, just enough that they can make a proper character), the kind of game (dungeon crawl, intrigue, etc), and how you’re running it.
You can supplement this basic information with any maps, images, short stories, your campaign wiki or blog, whatever you’ve prepared for the game beforehand. This is a big part of how a player will start judging your DMing if they don’t know you. That’s why I include a short story along with the plain introduction – to show people that I’m a creative type and give them something to go on about me.
Application Form: Best case scenario is you’ll have about 5-8 people interested at any one time, and in truly exceptional cases maybe a dozen or two. The only way you can pick one complete stranger over another is by, basically, a contest of some form. This is where your application form comes into play. Ask players to give you some information about the character they want to play. If it catches your eye, it’s in.
Stuff like Character Name, Gender, Race, Class (or role, or equivalent descriptor), Appearance, Personality, Backstory, Friends/Enemies. No crunch just yet – just imagination. People will either post this in your topic or Private Message (nearly every forum has this function) it to you. This is like a reverse of the intro – it’s what you will use to judge your players, based on how much effort they put into the application.
Terms: This is important. You have to lay the ground rules right now: What books you use, what point buy or dice rolling method for character generation, the level of the game, the starting equipment you allow, the date and time the game is on (if Real-Time) or the minimum number of messages you want per day (if Correspondence), but even more than that, etiquette concerns. This is where you address the level of maturity of the game you aim for, whether or not you’ll tolerate swearing or certain descriptive levels of violence or other mature content, or any other specific rules you wish observed.
Also, be sure to end with something like “You may ask any questions now” to cover yourself if you missed something.
Well, now that you’ve done your first post, you need to watch the people that join. A few things you can do is to look at their posting history. If you see them getting into a lot of arguments on forums, or if they’re already in a lot of games, you might want to consider that when you make your decision. This is something I skimp on a lot that has come back to bite me time and again. You’re playing with people you know nothing about, so it’s best to learn something about them before you pick them.
Some places offer average posts and total post counts. If somebody is active in the community, they tend to make good candidates for gaming. However, some people might be lurkers who have accounts for a long time but never post, and you might be overlooking them. It’s a toss-up and might seem complicated, but most people who apply for games tend to be decently nice. It’s very rare you’ll find somebody applying just to mess with you.
Running The Game
There’s different sets of things to do depending on what kind of game you’re running.
Correspondence: The basic things you need are a game thread (where in-character stuff happens) and a talk thread (for out-of-character discussion). If you’re playing in a place that gives you control over your forum, you can create subforums for this sort of thing. Otherwise, be sure that the OOC and the IC threads link to each other for easy access (provide the URL for the counterpart in the first post).
Your OOC thread is for talk related to the game, and (very importantly) for absences. If you’re not going to be able to post, say so. If you forget to say so, apologize after and explain why you couldn’t.
For players, it is important to warn of absences in advance, or to take a small moment to say “I can’t post today.” The first post of the OOC thread should contain links to the player’s character sheets (if you have control of the forum, make a separate subforum for sheets instead). Ideally, you will have these links because players made their sheets in an online sheet place – be sure to link your players to your favorite one so they’ll have their sheets in a format you know and enjoy.
Your IC thread is the game. Be strict about OOC talk inside the game – you don’t want to see your IC thread with a new post, and then have that new post be mostly about your player’s experience with Fallout 3.
Be sure to have your threads in order as close to the end of the sign-up period as possible. If sign-ups end, and you let a week go by without establishing threads and beginning the game, people will lose interest. For players, be sure to have your sheet set in stone as close to the end of sign-ups as possible. You want everything to rocket forward after sign-ups.
Real-Time: You want to keep logs of your chats for players who are absent to be able to read, or just for your campaign history. If you have a private wiki or campaign blog, keep the chats here for even easier access by the players. You should ask for a way to contact your players if they miss a session or if you need to send them materials to peruse before the session.
Some players have a habit of not handing you their sheets for real-time games. Always ask for a sheet. Either as a text document or a hosted sheet. Preferably both. Courteous players will have a sheet ready to go for you after signing up.
You want to be timely. Don’t cancel too many sessions unless you absolutely have to. Even if other players say they won’t show, you show up for anyone who does. Reward them for showing up. Be the rock that the players can lean on, so they know that you’re serious about running this game, and that if replacement players are needed, the game won’t just fall apart and waste everyone’s time. It’s the internet, so try to be as visible as possible, or you may become invisible.
Allow a few minutes before the game to just talk about whatever, socialize. Then right after the game, talk to the players about the game. Feedback is important. Ask for it. This also lets you see the player’s personal character. If they’re enthusiastic, or if they seem like they don’t care, or if they’re bitter about things. Make probing questions, and give good answers. Log everything. Make sure your players know that you are open to discourse. Even online, they might be afraid of approaching you about your game. Everyone should be open as possible.
You’re Online, Take Advantage Of It!
For real-time games run using map software, tokens are very important. A token is your character. Nobody wants to be “blank chip with a number 2 on it”. Grab an image, learn your software’s preferred token size (Gametable, for example, uses 64 x 64 tokens) and format, and make a face for your character.
Tokentool is free, easy, and does it all for you. But watch out, because Tokentool doesn’t handle megabyte-heavy images. This is important for people like me, who collect images online that range from a megabyte and above that they like to use. You may have to downsize them to get Tokentool to work with them.
A game soundtrack is awesome. Online, where a game soundtrack won’t interrupt the narration, it’s even more awesome. That said, I couldn’t really find many places that did what I wanted – to be able to upload an Mp3 from your computer and stream it to others. There are applications that do this, I’m sure, but I’m not much of a wiz at that sort of thing. I did, however, come across 8tracks.
It has its limitations, but it lets you make a small playlist of songs, save it on their site, and link to anyone to stream it. This lets you create mini-soundtracks and link your players to listen to. It’s also fairly fast and simple. Hopefully the audience here knows of some better ways they can tell me, but thus far, I’m digging this site. Here’s a sample playlist by me of some music from my computer. Yes I’m weird.
Guess voice and video chat go here if you’re so inclined, but again, I don’t recommend it. It just didn’t feel right to me whenever I did it. Try to live through your text, and see if you like it that way. It’s as slow or as fast as you want it to be, and as alive as you want it to be. And less technologically demanding.
Get into the online log trading community. I’m the creepy guy over there reading some other creepy guy’s romantic Eberron campaign. Ask people nicely for their campaign logs, and you’ll find that you’ll never run out of ideas for games. If you’re feeling down about your own game, read some logs. They’ll empower you – even if it turns out the guy’s game is worse than yours or far, far, far more elaborate and you feel like an ant.
Take advantage of image props. For forums, you will need to provide your own maps if you’re running a game that uses a map of course. For map software, you can get creative. For example, in gametable, you can turn practically any image into an underlay.
So you could, say, buy some of Wizard’s Dungeon Tiles, break them up, scan the pieces, and photoshop or GIMP them a bit, and you’d be running with pretty grids just like at the table (Chatty DM: That’s probably illegal but then again what isn’t with media today?). Or you can take a piece of grid paper, draw on it, and scan that too.
Your game is online, so you can even run it from your mobile! You can post in your play-by-post with any phone/mobile that has internet functionality. You can run chat games off of one if they can use AIM or something close. You don’t have to miss a session this way, especially if you’re using online sheets and image storage for your props, so every one of your resources is online and thus accessible from your phone/mobile/doohickey.
Also worth noting – all mobiles have some sort of text message and the really nice ones have email. Fast email. Email in your hands, all day, every day, everywhere. So as pointed out by Walkerp in the comments of the last article, play-by-email is quite viable from your mobile, especially if everyone has a mobile with good archiving and email features. What’s more, if the mobile also has full fledged internet, as mentioned above, a campaign wiki or blog, character sheets, everything is very accessible.
Run a joke game. Make fun of the fact that you’re playing online. Make video game allusions such as save points and cutscenes and even tutorials. Create an underlay of David Hasslehoff’s face on Gametable and use that as your combat grid. Make a grindcore soundtrack and tell your players it’s the boss music. Invite a guy named “Tarrasque” into your IRC chat then kick him after your players are scared enough. Run Maid: RPG. You won’t lose face – it’s the internet, you don’t have a face. Loosen up and see the possibilities.
And I guess that’s all for this series! Thank you all for being so welcoming and responsive. Special thanks to the Chatty DM for allowing me this great opportunity. And word up to the posse, Master Epyon, Helepolis, Dragoon Andrew, Mikeloop, Kuronoa, Faury, Nanoka, and all my other e-friends who’ve shown me such wonderful gaming experiences so far away from their homes.
Until we meet again, have lots of love, platypuses and black sheep.
Chatty: Once again Wyatt, thanks, I owe you one!
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