How do these RPG's work?

[Valandil]

Hi,

I've glanced into this forum now and then, and I'm just curious about how these work. From what I see, someone starts a game, lays out the situation and various people join in as role-playing characters (most commonly, about everyone wants to be an Elf and goes into great detail about what their character wears and the weapons they carry ).

I haven't carefully tracked a thread to see how it progresses from then, but I imagine play starts at some point with a goal in mind and situations encountered spelled out - and that players react accordingly.

Do you try to get everyone online at the same time when play is happening? Or does this not matter so much? How is it determined just what happens at any stop along the way? (like if you have combat with non-player characters - or if (does this ever happen??!!??) two characters fight it out) What else happens?

Now actually, I doubt I could find/make the time to get involved. I suspect it takes a fair amount of time... so I mostly wanted to just know a bit more about it. I imagine maybe you could also use a thread like this to explain it to newcomers anyway.

So... Earniel, or somebody else who is actively involved... am I right so far? Anything to correct? Or add?

Way back in the old days, I played some D & D - but everything was pretty much resolved with rolls of the dice... so I wonder what you do.

And, btw... I suggest what I thought might be a good RPG setting in my start of thread, "Turbulent Times in Old Middle Earth" in the Middle Earth forum... or has that been done already??

[Raistlin]

well to answer your question about characters fighting it does happen (look at the tears of the sea) and it is played much like a whole bunch of different authors working together to write a story

[Irid al'Menie]

And it doesn't matter when you come online. It's not 'each in his turn' or something, you just post your part of the story, and then you go away for a while, and if you come back the next day you read what the others have posted and then you react again (or not, if you don't know what to answer ). In the fighting, everybody says how it goes, then you read that and decide how it will go on after that, and so on. But you can't use other characters too much (if you're fighting, you can't say 'Irid stabbed person X with her dagger and he was dead' or something. You just decribe what you do and the other reacts by posting what he does). In some RPG's you can use other characters just to say some things or do some things, but nothing that causes major change in that character.
Do you have any other questions? I or any other player would be very happy to answer them for you

[Earniel]

Why Valandil, I hadn't expected to see you here. How nice.

This RPG-forums holds many different kinds of role plays. We've got serious role plays as well as more silly ones.

Most go as you thought: Somebody lays out a certain plot, sometimes in detail, often more vague; after which the other players make up a character to play. Some games use two threads: one for the real game and a discussion-thread to discuss possible events, plots and other things involving the game that need a little organisation or explanation.

Most games here are without a leader but sometimes one or more players take up the task of 'game master' to steer a game in a certain way.(Lief Erikson is a good example of this, his role plays are awesome!) The thread starter, who is usually the one who knows in which direction the game has to go, is the most likely person for this job.

Most of the time the different players post only what's happening to their own character. In some games, posting what somebody else's character is doing is called 'god-moding' and is usually avoided. In other games, it's allowed as long as you don't make other characters act out of character. In still other games, they don't care much for it. It depends largely on the preferences of the thread-starters and the different players.

Although it can happen that many posters are posting on a game-thread at the same time, it's rather rare here. People are from different timezones so they can't often be on at the same times. Some games, even in the middle of battle, can remain silent for a week or two before people post again on it. Sometimes you get a post a week and suddenly three posts on a day. There's no time limit. The Hytorax-game, for example, is already running longer than a year and the TLA-threads are approaching a second aniversary.

Most games never reach an end, though. I think I can count the games that succesfully closed down at their end since I became a moderator here, on my fingers. Most of them just fade away as posters lose interest or turn to newer games.

Unlike threads in the other forums, RPG have seldom been 'done already'. Even with a simular plot, the games can veer of into an entirely new directions. So the setting of your "Turbulent Times in Old Middle Earth" may yet pop up.

I hope that gives you a better idea of what's going on in this forum.

[Kalile]

And if you are used to Dungeons and Dragons, this will kind of drive you crazy because there aren't really any rules. You can look at some of the other threads if you like, where you can see the destructive evidence of over powerful characters. It can be a problem, especially when the threads start to die, but if you just go with the flow and try not to strangle people than it's a lot of fun.

[zone]

But sometimes its hard to injure people in them because there is always an invinsible person That won't let their character get tired or anything.

[Valandil]

Thanks for all the answers! I must admit, the whole thing sounds as chaotic as it seemed before I asked! Don't worry about it though - probably a generational thingee.

How many players is typical for any particular game? 6-8?

[Akamai Deredal]

Honestly, there is no set number on the amount of players there are in any particular game. Whoever wishes to, usually gets a part in it, though there are some games where there are specific main characters, where say there were only 5... Those 5 would fill quickly, but others are still welcome to join. Hope that makes sense!

[Earniel]

Originally posted by Valandil
Thanks for all the answers! I must admit, the whole thing sounds as chaotic as it seemed before I asked! Don't worry about it though - probably a generational thingee.

How many players is typical for any particular game? 6-8?

Poor you.

Most of the time the games seem to start out with minimal 6 or more. Some games can have players up to 10 or 12. But as the game progresses, it often loses players, which can result in games being played by less than half of the orginal cast. About 4 players seemed to be the absolute minimum I've seen around here to keep a game running.

[Nurvingiel]

I've only played a few RPGs here, but one aspect I don't understand (in any on-line RPG) is how to have a battle. I played a major on-line RPG in a different venue. It was a awesome game, but the only thing that bogged it down was battles.

In a person to person RPG, the action can move quickly without any "god-moding". On-line, you would have to post "I attack the orc" and wait two days for the GM controlling the bad-guy to post "The orc blocks".

I haven't played enough for my players to actually be in a battle here, but I would imagine they would be slow like in my other experience.

The other thing I was wondering is how do GMs keep people from god-moding, or making their character invincible? In a person to person game, the GM can just say "No, you're not invincible. You take 10 Hit Points of damage." On this message board, the GM would not have the power to edit posts.

If I started an RPG, I would insist on regular posting, would control the number of players, and would want to be able to GM. I don't think it would be very popular.

Cheerio! Nurv

[Earniel]

Originally posted by Nurvingiel
The other thing I was wondering is how do GMs keep people from god-moding, or making their character invincible? In a person to person game, the GM can just say "No, you're not invincible. You take 10 Hit Points of damage." On this message board, the GM would not have the power to edit posts.

I don't think god-moding is in itself a bad thing, at some times I even prefer it instead of sticking only to my own character. Sometimes it can create a little more unity in a band of players. But of course the point is to know how to let another character behave like its creator would prefer it too and not necesarily how you want it to act. If you make somebody else's character behave 'out-of-character' you're not god-moding properly IMO. I've seen god-moding used to make one's own character better and make a fool out of the others. That's pretty sad and it can wreck a good game completely.

The invincibility is another thing, I think this can best be dealt with in the discussion threads or PM. Since the GMs can't edit posts here (unless they're mods like me, mwahahah! ) much depends on the goodwill of the players. If somebody refuses to cooperate and ignores the requests from fellow-players to reduce their invincibilty, then you don't really have a good climate for playing I fear.

Originally posted by Nurvingiel
If I started an RPG, I would insist on regular posting, would control the number of players, and would want to be able to GM. I don't think it would be very popular.

Oh, I don't know. I don't think it would make you impopular, I think some players may even prefer it. Games with one or two GM's who can keep taps on their players, are -as far as I have seen here- more effective and longlived than others. Though I'm unsure how you would make the regular-posting rule effective.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally posted by Nurvingiel
I've only played a few RPGs here, but one aspect I don't understand (in any on-line RPG) is how to have a battle. I played a major on-line RPG in a different venue. It was a awesome game, but the only thing that bogged it down was battles.

In a person to person RPG, the action can move quickly without any "god-moding". On-line, you would have to post "I attack the orc" and wait two days for the GM controlling the bad-guy to post "The orc blocks".

I haven't played enough for my players to actually be in a battle here, but I would imagine they would be slow like in my other experience.

I'd imagine it depends what kind of game you're playing. In the RPGs that I've played, we've had several battles, frequently on a pretty large scale (in terms of with hundreds, or even thousands of opponents). In "The Pentagrid Net" and "The Great Quest" we had large scale battles take place at the end. These are RPGs that are written in a story format, in that they're not so much a "game" as a "story". Reading a page of one of those RPGs would probably explain to you what I mean. There aren't points, you don't have to worry about taking or distributing damage, or anything like that. You just write it as a story.

So I can write my character cutting down a half dozen orcs (if my character is that tough; I have to be careful not to make myself illogically strong). Then I can also suddenly swerve above and show what's happening in the larger scale in the battle also, in terms of describing troop movements or anything like that. So we haven't bogged down in any battles.

[Nurvingiel]

Thanks guys! I think I understand on-line PRGs better now.

I don't mind in character god-moding. In the "As the Moot Turns" thread, Nariel and I were doing it for each other's characters because we were interacting a lot.

[Pytt]

Maybe this could be 'sticky'? it explains pretty good the RPG thing, and if someone wants to know how to play, it is nice with a FAQ...
this is not exactly a FAQ, but sort of..

[Earniel]

It's far from a conclusive guide, mind you. There are other ways of on-line RPGing that are perfectly acceptable but just haven't been tried here yet.

Still, a sticky might not be such a bad idea.... I'll think about it.

[Valandil]

Cool... my old thread got stickied! (got stuck? )

*sigh*... from back in my pre-mod days!

[Wayfarer]

I'm curious whether anyone has ever considered playing an actual RPG on these forums - not just freeform Roleplaying but using, say, Decipher's LOTR RPG.

[Nurvingiel]

What's that O Cryptic One?

There are a lot of ways to play online RPGs, but the only one I've actually done is in group storytelling format.

[Wayfarer]

Yeah. Like I said - playing a real Role Playing Game, instead of turn-based storytelling, which is kind of silly, and not terribly impressive from either a role-playing or a gaming standpoint.

There are a couple of different RPG systems that would be perfect for this sort of thing - Decipher, as I mentioned, has a Lord of the Rings RPG out (which I have), and there are numerous online dice rollers that could be used for such a thing , Like So: (2d6=2).

So, I'm curious. Any interest in actual gaming?

(I didn't think that was cryptic at all. Huh.)

[Nurvingiel]

Yeah cryptic wasn't quite the right word... I meant you didn't provide a lot of information there.

I'm a huge fan of pen and paper RPGs, and also turn based story-telling (so ).

It would be interesting to get into a pen and ...keyboard? RPG. It has been a while. I'd play if I wasn't already in 2 big RPGs.

*ponders*

There are still some of the real time aspects of pen and paper that would have to be ironed out online. But that dice roller is cool.