Why Do Our Campaigns Keep Dying?

[The Hive Custodian]

And what can we do about it?

[The Hive Custodian]

We've all seen it happen repeatedly. A new campaign opens, everyone's excited, everyone makes characters, and the first week or so is a rapid flurry of posting. And then it starts breaking down, until nobody can be bothered to post.

What the hell is going on?

It's certainly not impossible to run a durable campaign here. There are plenty of games which make half a dozen chapters or more. But I know I've never been in any of them, and I don't think any of you have gotten into anything close either.

So, it seems the problem is us; I know a portion of the guilt lies on me. But what about us keeps killing our campaigns, and what can we do about it? This is a difficult question, but I know I'm going to keep ORPing even if all the campaigns keep dying, so I might as well try to fix it. I hope you all feel the same.

[nightinverse]

Mine won't.

It's a matter of committment.

Addendum: The biggest thing is how much we are willing to do as GMs. I waited forever but I waited, and Greyscale has been a roaring success. Fated Meetings... less so, but it will continue.

Players are important, but it is possible to replace even the best player. If a GM loses interest, the game dies. If a player loses interest, the GM is weakened.

My biggest test was when Thomas and Scott slid out on me. I would name these men my brothers, I care much for them, but they made the decision and I had to deal with it. I did, and here we are.

[Doomsmile]

Now that you put it that way, it kinda' seems like it's my fault I put a player in a position to kill Mystery via infrequent posting habits. Urg.
At any rate, once I figure out what to do about that Shyntar-shaped hole, I might be able to fix things.
In conclusion, I'd say it's apethy that kills games, except I can't think who was being apethetic in most of the games that died... well, off hand at least, and I'm too apethetic to do research on it.

[nightinverse]

Well... let me do the preliminary work here.

Brave New World - Earth 2023: Sparda219/ShadowDawn. Player & GM fallout, followed by slow wither.
Special Ops 606 AR: Takkaryx. Premise flaw.

Shadow_Link and DaisyStrikesBack endangered things though leaving.

You could not have known about Shyntar, and you did the right thing giving him the chance. If you don't take a chance, you never gain players.

[Doomsmile]

Brave New World - Earth 2023: Sparda219/ShadowDawn. Player & GM fallout, followed by slow wither. I actually really liked the character I had for that game. And I still don't know why. Pitty it died, though, despite the fact that if it didn't, by character would have eventually been cripped by a dozen or more minor phobias.

[The Hive Custodian]

I'm no longer so sure it's simply commitment/patience. To me it's no so much that losing commitment to a campaign causes the death of a campaign as losing commitment is the death of a campaign. What we're looking for here is the why. Make no mistake, we can be very committed to a campagin given proper motivation. I know we've all seen and felt it. But what are the primary sources of that motivation, why do we lose that motivation, and what can we do to keep it going?

I conjecture that the major motivation for us is freshness. Invariably, the beginning of a campaign is the most successful part. I do not think it is coincidence that this is also the point at which the campaign has the most freshness. And indeed, it is freshness that draws many of us into fantasy/science fiction: it's an alternative to a world that often appears to be not fresh.

I'm not completely sure, though... I can think of one test that might shed more light on this theory:

Those of you who have been in a game when a new player joined in the middle: Did the game experience a period of revitalization after the new player joined? (The effect on teamwork notwithstanding...) The only example that I can recall is Daedalus's (now-defunct) Hunter game. Here are the approximate lengths of time between the first post of each page:

Page 1-2: Half a week.
Page 2-3: Ten weeks.
Page 3-4: Four weeks.
Page 4-5: Two weeks.
Page 5-6: Half a week.
Page 6-7: Two weeks.
Page 7-8: Four weeks.

Now I seem to recall someone joining during the 5th page, although it seemed that things were picking up a little before that. How much of an effect would you say having a new player join had on the vitality of the campaign?

[Doomsmile]

I don't know. In the World's Largest Dungeon game I'm in, I, at least, have been having more fun in the middle than in the begining. Especially if you don't count having to put up with Shanon being a jerk 75% of the time.

[The Hive Custodian]

Isn't that IRL, though? The dynamic is very different there; I don't recall our IRL games back in high school degenerating in quite the same way as PBP games.

[ShadowDawn]

The Hunter game: I know I had a few long discussions with characters when they first joined. That's code for "they wanted to kill vamps while I wanted to wait until we had some kind of clue what was going on and not endanger civilians, so I yelled at them and they yelled back until we agreed to wait and see". Several times.

[Doomsmile]

Yah. Not all characters appriciate long shouting contests, though.

Wait- maybe that's why! Out characters get miffed with eachother and slow gameplay down, thus making other players bored because they aren't getting to do things?

[The Hive Custodian]

I would count characters yelling at each other as gameplay. It may not be the most productive thing in-character, but it is interesting. On the other hand, it's often one-on-one arguing, so other players get left out. So you're saying that game decay is caused by lack of cooperation between PCs?

A test of this cause is a solo campaign such as Fated Meetings. If there's only one player, group cohesion becomes a non-issue. So far, Ersi's adventure has gone five pages in three months, versus Greyscale World's twenty-four pages in five and a half months for the first chapter. Greyscale World does have about 2.6 times the pages per month of Fated Meetings... but then, it's got five to seven PCs versus only one for the solo campaign. However, it remains to be seen which one can sustain more activity.

[nightinverse]

It can be, but in some games it helps a lot.

[The Hive Custodian]

Group Incoherency

So... let's look at the group incoherency problem first. I highly doubt that we all secretly hate one another--I know I don't hate any of you. So any problem here isn't with us players directly; it's through our characters. Somehow our characters can't seem to get along with each other. I often see characters who are:
Lone-wolf personalities.
Act without talking or listening.
Don't care what the party thinks of them.
All of the above.Obviously these are things that contribute to fractures within parties, one-on-one arguments, and so on. Unfortuately, for many of us, they may also constitute what makes an interesting character.

Furthermore, the character creation process itself contributes to these trends: in nearly every campaign, everybody creates their character in isolation from the others. The only communication with anyone other than the DM is figuring out what class is needed the most, if even that. (And often when the campaign starts, everyone is assumed to know everyone else, but nobody really does. Hmm...) I believe this isolation tends to encourage individualistic character concepts; after all, you as a player don't know anything about the other characters, and it is difficult to bring a friend of your character along into the campaign. Plus, it's hard to write out convincig other personalities in a character background. In addition, it is likely that there will be a massive clash of personalities when the characters do meet. While this can be an interesting thing, it is a factor in the breakdown of group coherency.

So, what can we try? Here are some possibilities:
Try not to be so individualistic. This is a difficult thing to do; the popular ideal of the hero[ine] is usually someone who blazes their own trail, don't take no sh!t from nobody, etc., etc. It may not even be advisable to try to do so; I do believe there is a certain degree of sacredness to a character concept, and if lone-wolfness is your thing, nobody really has the right to stop you.
More communication between the players during character creation. Again, there are difficulties; character creation already takes long enough without consulting other people. Furthermore, what you want out of a connection between your character and someone else's character may not be the same as what they want. However, if the characters have some predefined interactions, it could bind the group together a bit more tightly, as well as providing some extra emotional material in times of crisis. At the very least, if two people get into an argument, the rest of the people are more likely to have a reason to participate.

[Doomsmile]

Heh. The sad bit is that my Fated Meetings character was designed to be a team player. Oh, irony, thou rearst thy head again.

[The Hive Custodian]

Well, it's not a bad thing...

[Doomsmile]

Yah, but I can't say that my other characters in other, more party-based games are exactly "team players" is my point.

[The Hive Custodian]

Lack of Freshness, Part 1

Freshness is a more complicated problem. With group incoherency, the solution is purely on the player end; no DM can effectively force the group to work together. However, I believe freshness must be tackled from both the player side and the DM side. The key to freshness is change. Unfortunately, change requires posting, posting requires interest, interest requires freshness, and freshness requires change. It is this vicious cycle that kills many campaigns. However, this cycle could concievably also be turned into a very positive thing.

Possibilities for the DM side:

Give the players something to work with. This is more directed at those campaigns that never get past character creation. Even if the players don't communicate with each other during character creation (which may be a mistake), some sort of communication with the DM is essential. The DM must give the players some sort of seed to work with. Otherwise, the players don't know what kind of campaign to make their characters for. More importantly, the players aren't inspired. A good DM must inspire their players.
Don't go too heavy on the combat. Combat doesn't cause characters to develop--it may cause them to gain experience, or it may cause them to be dead. The former doesn't fundamentally change characters; the latter results in the loss of whatever the player invested in their character. Add that to the fact the PBP isn't the best format for frequent combat; it simply takes too long, especially when there are a lot of players, and without the face-to-face, tactile interaction of IRL games, every single post has to count. Make no mistake, combat can be good flavor, but I don't think you can run a long-term campaign focused on combat using PBP.
Involve the players in campaign-building. Now I wouldn't recommend this in every circumstance. But think about it: there are probably 4-6 players, and only 1 DM. I believe it is inefficient and unwise to force the 1 DM to handle campaign-building alone; why should one person have to do the majority of the creative work? By spreading the work around, more fresh material can be introduced.More to come...

[Doomsmile]

Hmm. Maybe I should try giving characters in some games some sort of entangling, mundane, personal issue to work out each chapter in addition to the larger goal... that could be feasable with most of my characters. The question is if it would be practical.

[Takkaryx]

I wouldn't say that my campaign failed only because of me, it seemed that freshness decay happed at an accelerate rate. DS seemed really thrilled about his character, but no one else did. But, IRL, everyone seemed thrilled about it. Oh well.

[Doomsmile]

Well, you gotta' admit that a goblin with a giant sniper rifle that fires exploding bullets is prety awesome.

[nightinverse]

The book, son, the book. Nobody had it.

[Doomsmile]

Yes, that was a bit of a problem. Especially for an online game in which some people would not have had access to the owner. And an utter lack of understanding of a lot of stuff from the setting.

[The Hive Custodian]

I wouldn't say that my campaign failed only because of me, it seemed that freshness decay happed at an accelerate rate. DS seemed really thrilled about his character, but no one else did. But, IRL, everyone seemed thrilled about it. Oh well.

The comment was mostly directed at your current one-shot. You've got to give us more than a level and a set of allowed books.

[nightinverse]

I was talking personally about your other game.

[The Hive Custodian]

Lack of Freshness, Part 2

DMage continues...

Make sure you really like your campaign setting. Okay, this isn't really related to freshness, but I'm mentioning it here because this is what I believe is the problem with my own Tenenrit campaign. When I first started Tenenrit, I wanted to see what it was like to be a DM online. I thought I could keep it going on the fly without relying on a carefully-prepared "seed". Unfortunately, it ended up that I started losing interest in it.I can't think of anything more for the DM angle, so I'll move on to the player angle.

Give your character a direction for change. So far, I feel that the focus when writing up a character description, myself included, has been too much on the character's past and present, and not enough on the character's future. In addition to describing the background and current state of your character, make sure you keep in mind some direction you want your character to go as a character. You know, like in a book.
Plan your character's future. I'm not talking statwise here (although it doesn't hurt). The conventional thinking is that the past and the present is largely the domain of the player, and the future is largely the domain of the DM. I believe this is a mistake. The DM has to manage the futures of half a dozen or so very different characters; how can one expect the DM to do it alone? So, here's what I suggest:
Players: After you're done describing the past and present of your character, plot a possible future or set of possible futures for your character. If you need to, ask your DM to give you the rough starting conditions of the campaign. When I say "a possible future", I mean something adventurable. After all, adventure is what we all came here to do as players (even if not necessarily as characters). Make sure the future you plot out is at least somewhat realistic, suited to the PBP format, specific enough in the near future so that the DM won't have a hard time making an actual adventure (or, ideally a series of adventures) out of it, and won't bore the hell out of any party you might be in, or the DM. Also, see #1 just above: make it something that will change your character in an interesting way.
DMs: You may even want to require players to give you some possible future(s). Again, why should you have to do all the work? You might also ask again at points later on in the campaign, although this can be somewhat more difficult unless the players are prepared for it.
Note that these are only possible futures. The DM, of course, still has the final word on what really happens in the future of the characters, so surprises still happen. But even if the future matches none of the possibilities given, or even lands anywhere close, it's not a waste. First, it serves as a thought excercise for the characters. Just as who the characters are now is a reflection of who they were in the past, who the characters might be in the future are a reflection of who they are now. Second, even if the DM decides not to follow exactly or closely the possible future given by a player by the character, they can still draw inspiration from the possible futures given.
Don't straitjacket your character. This one is kind of tricky. On one hand, your character should have a definite personality--that's what makes a character a character. However, on the other hand, you don't want to limit your character unnecessarily. The most common case of this is playing a character who is emotionless, or who only feels a limited set of emotions. It can be interesting for a short time, but it quickly gets tiresome, both for you and those around you.
Try to change your fellow party members. In addition to change coming from within and change coming from the DM, change can also be induced by fellow players. This can be intentional or unintentional on the part of the characters; your character might actively try to help someone else overcome a shortcoming, or your character might inadvertently piss everyone else in the party off.
Know what your character thinks of other party members. This provides another thing that can change; what characters in the party think of each other is a powerful part of the party dynamic. #4 and #5 here, in particular, are also ways of breaking off from the "lone-wolf" syndrome in active play.Yarr. I hope at least part of this ramble was useful. I know I've not been great at following these myself in the past, but I can try to think more about them in the future.

[Doomsmile]

Make sure you really like your campaign setting.That's the least of my problems, it would seem. The reason I run games is because I want to run a game in a world/setting. It's the setting that comes first with me, you see. It's when I get down to the nitty-gritty of adventures within it that I run into problems...

[nightinverse]

That's how it is expected to be.

[Doomsmile]

Well, I thought of something that might expalin why our games keep dying: school!
If the majority of the players have to stop for an extended period for a test, it takes something away from the game. This is even worse for the GM, who has to plan ahead, especially in a delicately ballanced situation such as a climactic combat. Finals, projects, and Dead Week also contribute to this. Thoughts?

[nightinverse]

Indeed, a very good point.

Back to the hell of Starcraft, I see? Shameful.

[Ayli]

School will do it. That, or an overwhelm of real life commitments in one week. You don't realize you scheduled your entire free time for the week away until you take a look at your list...and then you swear and plan to wake up early to post, but hit the alarm clock for a "few more seconds" :-)

[Doomsmile]

Back to the hell of Starcraft, I see? Shameful. Starcraft is awesome! And so is the Darchon! Jerk.

[nightinverse]

TA: Spring has changed gaming for me forever.

I have to spec a match to stop myself from playing.

[Doomsmile]

Besides, I'm mostly doing Dawn of War. I've heard so many feeble cries of terror from my poor, outmatched guardsmen, yet I still feel a pang of pitty whenever they shout their "We've been overrun!"s and their "There's too many of them!"s and their "Where's that artilley!?"s... poor guys. Some of their special weapons are litterally more valuable than the guy holding it.

[ShadowDawn]

As for the Dead Zone phenomenon: it's my belief that any game that can survive more than three extended "dead times" is a game that will last. Greyscale and Megaten (hey, it lasted a heck of a lot longer than it should have, by all rights--there were many points where it stopped, only to rise up again) are the only examples I can think of now.

[nightinverse]

That is a great point...

[Doomsmile]

Megaten's a kinda' bad example, I think...

[nightinverse]

Megaten is a horrible example, actually. Not as bad as... Brave New World or Takk's old game... but bad.

[Ayli]

As for the Dead Zone phenomenon: it's my belief that any game that can survive more than three extended "dead times" is a game that will last. Greyscale and Megaten (hey, it lasted a heck of a lot longer than it should have, by all rights--there were many points where it stopped, only to rise up again) are the only examples I can think of now.
The same is true of WoW guilds. Random observation.

Extrapolating from that, does the sheer willpower of one or more person manage to pull some games through? It's done it for guilds, I know.

[The Hive Custodian]

Yes. Yes it does. Not all the time, but it can.

[nightinverse]

Once again, look at me! I'm pretty sure nobody wanted to play Greyscale after several weeks of waiting- but there we are!

[Takkaryx]

I like Jack, so I want the game to live.

[nightinverse]

I was talking about when we began.

[Uranium - 235]

Personally I think that half of what makes a popular game is the system you're running. Having a D20 system out of hundreds of other D20 games makes it easy for people to get bored of your game and move to another. Whereas running another system on here pretty much gives your campaign a monopoly on players :D

[Benicus]

Hmm...good point, though im not sure what other of the hundreds of other d20 games there are though.

[nightinverse]

Personally I think that half of what makes a popular game is the system you're running. Having a D20 system out of hundreds of other D20 games makes it easy for people to get bored of your game and move to another. Whereas running another system on here pretty much gives your campaign a monopoly on players :D

Very good point.

1. System
2. Hook
3. Setting

If I ran Greyscale in a generic Shadowkind Modern d20 world, it wouldn't have survived as long. If I ran a Forgotten Realms game, I would never have kept players. If I ran a classic Dragonlance game, nobody would have ever joined.

[Linklegacy77]

Another thing I've noticed, if one player is gone for a short while, such as going away for a week, posting will slow down and virtually stop until they return, at which point it slowly picks up speed.

[treehouse]

Three things killed 'A Series of Unfortunate Adventures' within a year.

1) Me. ASUA was my first play-by-post ever, and I honestly didn't understand the medium as well as I thought I did. I knew that things took time, so the idea was to have many different unrelated adventures, to keep the game from becoming stale. But it didn't work. One of the main reasons was that I was too ambitious with the story arc. It was supposed to last four months, and a year later we were still trucking along at the speed of snail.

2) Too many player lineup switches. Let's see, out of my original five players, three crapped out without informing me why and the other was abducted by Real Life. I brought in two players with new characters and one player taking over an old character, but the player motives were basically unrecognizable by the time I shot the game dead. Even I had lost interest in the story line.

3) No sense of narrative consistency. I am still struggling with this, so maybe one of you has a good answer for this. What is the appropriate amount of control that play-by-post DMs should exercise to keep the game running smoothly? My Inceptum players are awesome about checking the forum almost every single day, and letting me know in advance when they expect to be out of commission, but I still feel like I have to NPC their characters a little bit to keep the game running smoothly. To what degree should a DM sacrifice player control for pacing?

[My Fellow Gamers]

I think an active GM is the key. A short update even if there is not much substance in it will make your players react and post new things.

Good communication is another big thing. What do people expect in the game and what do you expect as a GM from your players.

I also know from personal experience that people are the same for PBP game as they are in life. If you have problem with seeing a friend in real life for whatever reason, that person is not reliable in a PBP game. I would even generalize that a "Yes" person is what is needed to be a good PBP player/GM.

[nightinverse]

I agree, personally unreliable people are generally unreliable here... one of the people I recruited for Greyscale World disappeared during Chapter 00 without explanation.

I have seen him in person twice since, and asked him why, but never recieved a satisfactory answer.

[treehouse]

I noticed an opposite phenomenon in ASUA - two of my original players also play in my IRL games. They are two of the best players I know. But they both dropped ASUA without warning and without explanation; even when pressed, they only offered lame non-excuses for why they weren't playing anymore.

Kinda bummed me out at the time.

[akiko]

Probing for insight/cause:

So do they play in other PbP games? Perhaps they just got into it because of your invitation and then discovered how much slower pacing it is and that they didn't enjoy. Figuring it was your fault as the GM maybe they just didn't want to say anything to hurt your feelings.

I know when I first started PbP I was psyched that I could game any and all the time. But then a few months in when I realized it is reeally slooow (I still haven't finished the first one I joined over a year ago, but we are almost done) I almost stopped. Realizing that I really liked how the medium brings more well thought out posts and roleplaying I decided to stick with it, and have since had much enjoyment.

[BigRedRod]

My Inceptum players are awesome about checking the forum almost every single day, and letting me know in advance when they expect to be out of commission, but I still feel like I have to NPC their characters a little bit to keep the game running smoothly. To what degree should a DM sacrifice player control for pacing?
You are doing things to the right degree in Inceptum and I mean that in a general way. You've got a difficult mix of players but you're doing very in giving everybody something to do that their character would want to (Ev and her duelling, Jack just talking constantly and Lorek helping out the town smith), some of these require more posting than others but that isn't an issue. And you only do very minor things when you NPC us, which is fine.

Personally, I loathe to NPC my players. I always feel like I'm not doing them justice.

1) Me. ASUA was my first play-by-post ever, and I honestly didn't understand the medium as well as I thought I did. I knew that things took time, so the idea was to have many different unrelated adventures, to keep the game from becoming stale. But it didn't work. One of the main reasons was that I was too ambitious with the story arc. It was supposed to last four months, and a year later we were still trucking along at the speed of snail.
VSF was, I think, officially the longest running game on these forums. It was hauled over by mountain sled from the precursor forums and died about six months ago.
It was also my first PBP and I made so very many mistakes that it isn't funny, this was its undoing but it wasn't a quick death. That game lasted a good long while (largely as I had some of the finest players ever to grace these forums backing me up, and given how many switcheroos there were with the characters and players, an awful lot of people were involved).

It's strange as the central mistake I made was an utterly massive one that should've doomed the game from (I think) the third IC post (which was by LeeCHeSSS). Essentially my players were a crack team recruited from across the realm in order to further the work of an Empire. An Azer, a half-fiend, a drow, a half-dragon dwarf, a tiefling and a human were never going to be the best at slinking around in the shadows manipulating things from behind the scenes. I'd also messed up their ECLs (this was back in the day before anybody had a good handle on that particular mechanic, although that is no excuse for using something I didn't understand) meaning that their power level was rather inflated (except for the human cleric's)

Despite this, we struggled on and another mistake of mine gradually emerged: The players were pretty much split over whether they were playing an evil campaign or not. I hadn't intended it to be an evil campaign, but some of their actions were indeed dubious. The problem was I hadn't removed the alignment mechanics and while it made for some fantastic roleplaying (notably the human cleric losing his faith in one God and finding anther only to become more embittered again the rest of the party and even the country he worked for) it was a poison killing the game.

With six players I was really struggling to keep them all in the limelight to an equal amount, although I think this came down my naive story boarding without really considering the characters in too detail. I corrected that with a few twists and bends that revolved around those who had dropped out, and I was plotting to use one of the ex-characters as the big bad guy along the way.

Another factor was that I was punching out of my weight. I really like the early game in anything where development is involved and yet I'd started the players at level five or six. Given how inexperienced I was at D&D, this was to cause several problems early on and only get worse as they levelled.

After so many years of ploughing on, the game really started to flag and I got the sense that people were sticking to the game out of duty rather than because they were having fun. So I called it a day.

I'm sure my players had fun along the way (despite never actually working out what was happening with much of the plot and missing several fun side plots) but it pointless to drag things on, so I closed the book and realised what a valuable learning experience it had been.


My other game that died rather quickly was Children of Lunos (CoL). The early game was dogged with poor player choice, one in particular cried and moaned every step of the way both in and out of character effectively removing all enjoyment. The nail in the game's coffin was another play-DM clash between myself and another of the players. It was a damn shame as the other two were damn good guys and I feel bad for letting them down.

However, CoL, taught me two things:
1) Pick your players carefully (this was the origin of my blacklist IIRC)
2) Don't have a game premise which revolves around one or two of the characters as the other players will sit in the background not wanting to interfere. This was largely a communication problem, as the idea was the motives for the early campaign should've been from two of the players but all four should have had equal action time.

[nightinverse]

NPCing the characters of temporarily absent players is something I rather dislike doing as well, as each character is a unique player construct, and I can't possibly play them as well as I would wish. I would need to get into the role of the player, and then extend into the role of his character... something both complex and sapping. However, I have and will NPC drop-out player characters as they usually disappear before exhibiting a real personality and then provide me with a very well-placed NPC to add to the world.

Pick your players carefully (this was the origin of my blacklist IIRC)

You have a blacklist? That's a useful idea... though I've found on Play by Post games that anybody I would not like to play with in future has either disappeared from the forums, or would blame me for mutual problems and thus never play with me again of their own accord.

Controlling the player base is a very powerful move, but it can hurt you... a lack of interest from the focused group you happen to want could sink a game before it began. I personally decided to overload every game, and give unproven community members a chance - this allows me to discover new players and if anything negative arises it proves a massive exercise in metagame creativity to rectify the issue.

At the current time, however, I would foolishly accept any and every player if I were to start a new game.

[The Alcotroll]

Why did my games fail?

Well ultimately, my enforced disappearance killed them off. My internet connection is rubbish, and at the time I was working during the week and at weekends, and filling in paperwork for my PGCE application when I had spare time. I managed to get back for a short while before falling off the boards again, and when my connection finally re-materialised, and I managed to cut down my hours during the week, I couldn't face coming back because there was so much to do.

But in all fairness, I think that my games were struggling before that.
Whatever I do, I always end up biting off more than I can chew, and the Scottish Play, which was my first ever stab at DMing was a case in point. I had rather an epic plot (massive mistake given the glacial nature of PBP) and I took far too long in setting the scene (I was still setting it when the game died).
As BRR will testify, the game was hindered by my choice of players. I advertised to all and sundry in CA, and was deluged with applications. I didn't have the heart to turn people down, so I had about eight starting players. Of them, about five (no-longer on the boards, I think) were frankly rubbish. fortunately, most of them dissapeared after a while, and I killed off their characters without mercy.
Unfortunately, though I subsequently recruited (by stealth ninja recruitment, which was my idea, whatever BRR says) some excellent players, the damage was already done. The game was moving slowly, I'd lost my notes, made silly mistakes (that Goblin cave was never supposed to happen), and lost enthusiasm for the game.
I think with the players I had come the end, the game could have been resurected, but only if I had the time to devote to it. While I was at Uni, I spent most of the day dossing, and could create long and involved DM posts without a problem. Nowadays, my time is rationed, and I'm always to tired and pissed off to want to deal with the difficulties of DMing a game.

The moral of the story is that, although the failure of my games is my own fault, there were enough other factors that I can find excuses if I really want to...

[BigRedRod]

by stealth ninja recruitment, which was my idea, whatever BRR says
I don't claim credit for the process and nor should you. I just gave it a name.

[The Alcotroll]

I think there could be money in the idea if we ever put it on the market, so I'm eager to stamp my name on it as early as possible.

You don't get to be a capitalist pig without treading on a few toes, you know.

[hedgeknight]

I run an email game for two reasons: 1/ Because I like to write - I like to tell a story and the world of fantasy rpgs is a wonderful venue for me to work with; and 2/ I like to encourage players to have a good time with their characters - to think outside the box, to take chances, to challenge me - and most of 'em do! Sometimes a little too much! :D

I concur with MFG and Link and night's comments and I'll add this in response to your question about how much control should a DM have: As much as you need to have and still give your players some ownership of the game. Ultimately, the game runs by your command - but that doesn't mean that your players can't help you along.
Personally, I start my games with a very, VERY, narrow background and just a few notes. I normally have a beginning in mind and a general ending in mind (because I think it is good for things to come to an end - yes, I have a need for closure. ;) ). Other than that, I give my players a lot of leeway into the dictating much of the flow of the campaign.
Now, if things are slowing down, I'll punch in some drama or a scenario, drop a hint, have a tragedy occur or an encounter, to push things along. But for the most part, I have two or three players that have specific things they wish to do with their characters and I try my best to work those things into the game. That's the real fun and challenging part for me.

Sorry to ramble - just love to talk about this stuff.
-g-

[nightinverse]

I used to use Stealth Ninja Recruitment, but I figured that I've overdrawn from that original pool.

[AbusePuppy]

Having run (and been in) more than a few dead games both here and IRL I can list a short number of things to keep in mind:

1. Pick your players carefully.
Okay, so maybe I'm not the best person to be saying this, what with my postcount and record, but players vanish. A lot. If you're going to weave a tight story around people, don't take people you don't know are going to stick around. I have had this problem IRL a lot and my solution is to simply not accept into the game the people who constantly drop out of things.

2. Hook them from the beginning.
The easiest way to lose your players is to make the game boring. Take a cue from the List of Things For a DM to Remember and grab their attention right away with something neat. It can be a fight, a death, whatever, but make it something that will draw the players AND their characters in. (It's no good using a fight to pull the coward into the game, see?)

3. PBP is sloooooooooooooooow.
Another one that's already been mentioned but worth keeping in mind. You probably shouldn't write an epic campaign spanning decades and continents because it's going to take six months for the PCs just to get to the first port. Make sure that things are fast-paced compared to a tabletop game; write like an action movie script, not a French art film.

4. Don't overextend yourself.
This was the cause of failure for my first swath of games. I was running a BESM game, an Exalted game and joined several other games on the boards PLUS college, work and running/playing in three IRL games. Yeah. That didn't work so well. Keep your time limitations in mind, especially when you're DMing. This goes double when accepting large numbers of players- remember, in PBP you can run as many simultaneous scenes as you like (no more trying to divide your attention!) but each one takes another equal share of your time, and that can add up fast. I don't reccommend more than six-ish players, ten if you're a glutton for punishment with lots of spare time.

5. Posting is an exponential function.
The more you (the GM) post, the more likely the players are to post. And, as each player posts, other players are more likely to post as well. If you can't maintain a critical mass of new posts, the game will grind to a halt as everyone waits for everyone else to say something and the game will die, which is what happened in one of my games. When in doubt, make another post before it's too late.

6. Character Isolation.
I see this is a big problem, both IRL and here in 'net games: everyone creates their characters by themselves and no one writes themselves any reason to be with the other people. That makes for (unintentional) bad group coherency and chemistry; why do the nature-loving druid and the bloodthirsty barbarian want to be together, exactly? I would be much happier if people worked together more to create characters, especially as far as getting the party to mesh together. Inexperienced groups can have a reason to band together (simple survival), but once you're past the "any schmuck in the world can kill me" level you have less and less reason to hang out with a bunch of total strangers.

There's more stuff, too, but it is late for me and I should've been asleep hours ago.
__________________
"You the guy selling the elephant?"
"Yeah. You have the money?"
"Right here."
"Alright, then. He's out back; here's the keys."
"Elephants don't have keys."
"...I'll just hang onto these, then."

[akiko]

5. Posting is an exponential function.
The more you (the GM) post, the more likely the players are to post. And, as each player posts, other players are more likely to post as well. If you can't maintain a critical mass of new posts, the game will grind to a halt as everyone waits for everyone else to say something and the game will die, which is what happened in one of my games. When in doubt, make another post before it's too late. *Emphasis mine.

I think this alone is crucial. Post something, anything. You never know if someone is looking to you or not. This also goes for players guys. If a conversation is being had and a few days goes by with no posts, all the character's may be looking at yours. POST THAT!

Instead of nothing say: The silent Jon smith looks from party member to party member noting they wish for him to respond. Having nothing to add to the conversation he shrugs his shoulders to indicate he doesn't care one way or the other.

Or: Guenevire has become bored of the situation and is examing the paint on the walls for cracks obviously paying the fools no mind.

[zachol]

Hmm... while I wouldn't say that Lachesis has died, so much, I think I failed to do that... hook thing.

As far as I can tell, I said "totally do whatever," and I think that it could be defined as a 'monty haul' campaign.
Plus, about half of my players had issues out of game (Josh, Andorax, Darken), while the other few are sort of hard to contact.
Actually, I think Darken just didn't like my style, plus he made a character that was somewhat hard to engage - a near deaf/blind gnome that has no idea what's going on, ever, is sort of hard to do something with.

But I think the main thing was that I'm not good at giving all the players something to do.
Lack of the hook part.

And... I threw in a whole other group of NPC adventurers, which I feel may have taken the spotlight, a bit.
This wasn't intentional at the start, but various things lead to that.


Anyway, it's on hiatus right now, so I'm unsure if it's dead-dead or sleeping for a bit.

By the way, is a formalized hiatus ever a good thing to do?

[treehouse]

I still say Lachesis could be great. You could just do a 'and then you all wake up and realize that you haven't even been to Xen'drik yet! haha how weird!' thing.

[BigRedRod]

Not unless you've set an end to it. If you are just unwilling to admit defeat then you're achieving nothing. To contrast, every time a DM goes on holiday is an example of a good time for a hiatus.

[zachol]

There is only a practical end, likely the current module and then another thing.

I find the maximum time for any pbp is about 3 to 5 years, which is the same for my f2f games.
That is, the longest game I've been in (realms of shadow) lasted about 4 years, which felt... nice, though I would've liked to have it go longer.


But the hiatus was because I had had trouble getting it going again, so I thought "hey, what if I just say 'everyone come back middle of august,' and let people get their stuff figured?"
The majority of my problems with lachesis seemed to come from some people starting it again (there had been a pause of about a month or two), while others not, then me waiting for the ones that still were missing, which then left the ones who had come back hanging.

You could just do a 'and then you all wake up and realize that you haven't even been to Xen'drik yet! haha how weird!' thing.
I tried that once with a different game.
That did not work at all.

[hedgeknight]

We need to "coin" AbusePuppy's advice and send it to all aspiring DM's! Great stuff!

And zachol, you can resurrect your campaign whenever you're ready. Just take the good, toss the bad, revamp your plot goals and let 'er rip! And take AbusePuppy's advice! ;)
-g-

[treehouse]

I tried that once with a different game.
That did not work at all.

Then scrap the whole thing. Recruit an entirely new roster, start an entirely new plot. Just have us run around Xen'drik collecting shit for some wealthy benefactor in Sharn.

I just want to play Dreigo, dammit. And kill drow.

Speaking of Xen'drik...did you pick up the book yet? Probably not, as you are in Europe right now. When you get stateside again, go get it!

[akiko]

As you can see from current pacing of joining games, I am willing to join any offered. And unwilling to let a good one die if I can help it (usually by keeping it moving). So if you need another adventurer who will always let you know where he and his character are, I'm your man.

[zachol]

Speaking of Xen'drik...did you pick up the book yet? Probably not, as you are in Europe right now. When you get stateside again, go get it!

THEY HAVE A XEN'DRIK BOOK???? WHY WAS I NOT INFORMED OF THIS???????

Alright, amazon time.
Wonder if they deliver to europe for free....

Edit: Hmm. That's off topic.

Anyway, I'm rather attached to the current plot, by about 15 dollars, so I'm not willing to scrap it just yet.
However, I could restart from when the party leaves Breland.

This may be a good idea...

[treehouse]

Dude, it is easily the best Eberron book since Sharn: City of Towers; it's one of the few D&D books that I've been reading from front to back. Go get it. It's called Secrets of Xen'drik.

[zachol]

I now hate you far more than I ever have, including when you were an argumentative republican.

Wait... they have gaming stores here! Yes!!!!


Ok, this is still off topic. Ignore!

*jedi hand wave*

[LynMars]

6. Character Isolation.
I see this is a big problem, both IRL and here in 'net games: everyone creates their characters by themselves and no one writes themselves any reason to be with the other people. That makes for (unintentional) bad group coherency and chemistry; why do the nature-loving druid and the bloodthirsty barbarian want to be together, exactly? I would be much happier if people worked together more to create characters, especially as far as getting the party to mesh together. Inexperienced groups can have a reason to band together (simple survival), but once you're past the "any schmuck in the world can kill me" level you have less and less reason to hang out with a bunch of total strangers.

I've been in games where it was set up that you make your character with connections to two other people, and discuss how to spend points. The first third of my points were spent with one person and we made our chars sisters. The second third of my points was spent with another person (I forget how we connected our chars now), while I spent the last third however. With a total of 7 players, it worked well to swap around and form connections like that to give the party some cohesion.

[My Fellow Gamers]

Having run (and been in) more than a few dead games both here and IRL I can list a short number of things to keep in mind:

1. Pick your players carefully.

2. Hook them from the beginning.

3. PBP is sloooooooooooooooow.

4. Don't overextend yourself.

5. Posting is an exponential function.

6. Character Isolation.



1 is very hard to do unless you have lot of experience and know many people on the site. I kind of went the NI approach and approved a lot of players for my most recent game.

2 is also hard to do but that is the challenge of a good DM

3 So true, so very painfully true but I have gotten use to it by now. I plan differenlty if it is a PBP game or a f2f game. I find that giving some extra awards of XP for different good things done by the players can keep them at a good leveling up pace without need for so many long combat in a PBP game.

4 I am totally guilty of that one! thirteen players in one game.

5 I don't like posting when I feel there should be an "answer" post to the last but I do so often because of number 3.

6 this is golden advice and I will consider it next time I run another game.

[AbusePuppy]

1 is very hard to do unless you have lot of experience and know many people on the site. I kind of went the NI approach and approved a lot of players for my most recent game.

Admittedly true, and sometimes players will suprise you with their dedication to a game. However, there are still ways to overcome being new to the forums. Obviously, staying for a while is the best solution; once you've been around for a year (and assuming you actually read stuff) you'll know the people from the game you're in as well as the regular posters to the general forums.

Keeping an eye on the front page is also an idea if you're trying to see who posts a lot and which games are keeping very current. Browsing through the complete forum list and checking out the Last Post date can also help.

Really, it's isn't nescessary to be picky about your players; it's just another strategy for insuring your game has a better chance of being active. Some games have a high tolerance for inactive/slow players; (Shadowrun, for example, is excellent for switching people in and out as "specialists" that the team brings along) others, such as D&D (which is highly reliant on The Party) do so less well.

Another thought: if you discover you have a mix of players and enough people to support two or more parties, it may be worth dividing them along lines approximating how quickly they post; this allows the "slower" party to be more leisurely about what they do and keeps the people who don't have time to check the boards several times a day from feeling rush while still keeping them in the game. And, of course, the faster-posting party doesn't get bored with things or completely dominate the adventure by virtue of their free time. You should try, however, to insure that the faster party gets comparatively more RP time, backstory development and other things that take a lot of posting back and forth, so as to keep them roughly in step as far as progression of time and experience.

LynMars:
I like that idea a lot, actually. Might be nice to try it out in a game here at some point.
__________________
"You break-a my crystal ball!"
"You-a break-a her-a crystal-a ball!"
"Get out of my house or I'll rape you."

[nightinverse]

4. Don't overextend yourself.
This was the cause of failure for my first swath of games. I was running a BESM game, an Exalted game and joined several other games on the boards PLUS college, work and running/playing in three IRL games. Yeah. That didn't work so well. Keep your time limitations in mind, especially when you're DMing. This goes double when accepting large numbers of players- remember, in PBP you can run as many simultaneous scenes as you like (no more trying to divide your attention!) but each one takes another equal share of your time, and that can add up fast. I don't reccommend more than six-ish players, ten if you're a glutton for punishment with lots of spare time.


Just coming back to this discussion to read up in this dark hour of my roleplaying career I was caught particularly by this point.

When I started out on ORP I joined a pair of games and started my own single one. Overtime that pair has become, well, a dozen... and the single has become a trio - note I do not count Odious One Shots as a single game. I started playing here at a very dark point in my life, and for the most part it has fluctuated around that level to this day, though the causes continue to evolve.

Indeed, I am joining another One Shot and a Mage game soon. I will be running, at least partially, yet another One Shot. All three of my games are on the cusp of escalated activity - gameplay and background development is slated for the near future.

The management of all these different games is very stressful. At times I have felt overdrawn and overwhelmed - and I've seldom done my own characters justice. However, there are methods one may use to make any load more manageable... the most simple of which is the one Abusepuppy presented; don't get in to the bloody situation - evaluate beforehand! Others include; prioritizing different games, setting games you run on rotation, and simply reducing the quality of each post you have to make. Of all of those, I cannot recommend the last - but the other two can help if you find your load too heavy.

[Benicus]

I agree, don't over-extend yourself but have fun with it. It should run smooth after a while though (hopefully!).

[Linklegacy77]

Anyway, another problem I've noticed is that people can't keep up consistently. What winds up happening is that one person wont be able to post for a little while, and during that time less posting is going on because you want to wait for that person. Slowly, after happening quite a bit, interest starts to wear thin.

[Benicus]

Anyway, another problem I've noticed is that people can't keep up consistently. What winds up happening is that one person wont be able to post for a little while, and during that time less posting is going on because you want to wait for that person. Slowly, after happening quite a bit, interest starts to wear thin.

You are correct sir! Give this man a dog biscut!

[hedgeknight]

Anyway, another problem I've noticed is that people can't keep up consistently. What winds up happening is that one person wont be able to post for a little while, and during that time less posting is going on because you want to wait for that person. Slowly, after happening quite a bit, interest starts to wear thin.

What I do is just move on without them. I know that might sound harsh, but I try my best not to let one player (or more) hold up the game for the others. My rule is this: miss one post and you're okay; miss two and you might be on the receving end of a "wake up call"; miss three posts and your character is at my mercy...which is usually very thin by that time > i.e. the other characters are gonna be dividing up your shit because I'm gonna do my best to kill off your character! :evil:
I don't NPC anyone's character very well - don't plan to start. I have enough NPC's in the game to take care of without adding some from the players. Like I said, this may sound harsh, but my players know this coming in and know what to expect from me.
-g-

[nightinverse]

I usually just let it flow slower and slower until I come to the conclusion that I need to spin it back up, and then I take control of the character, while trying to keep it as close to the percieved wishes of the original player, in the case that he might return.

However, I tried to make this less intensive in Lempfhyr Isles by dropping the ultimate responsibility of character flow. It hasn't worked thus far - so I will simply revert.

[crueldespot]

My Jiangu campaign has been running for over 3 years now. I don't think that is a record, but it is pretty long, relatively speaking.

Here are a few things that I think I have learned:

1. The first priority should not be the campaign world. The first priority should be the plot. No matter how great your world is on a macro level, the story is going to take place on a micro level. Besides, the story is going to go so slow, you will probably change your mind about what you want for a campaign world three times before they finish the first dungeon. So just pencil in the world map and only fill in the details when you have to. That way you don't paint yourself into a corner.

2. Put each new character through a brief solo adventure before he meets the rest of the group. This way you can make sure he is actually going to play without distracting the other players.

3. Be conservative in the supplements that you allow and the stat rolling method, etc. Be strict. My PBP is 25 pt buy SRD only. It doesn't have to be THAT strict, but strict is better than generous. Being strict will filter out the immature munchkins. It will attract the real roleplayers that are more interested in their characters personalities than their PrCs.

[Zoombie]

As a new GM, this thread makes me slightly worried. But then again, all the people I'm playing with are within walking distance of my home...and that means they are within punching distance. Also we all love Fallout, in one form of another, so that should help. But I have some (one that is) ideas:

A way to make a campaign interesting is to give them a time limit: In my campaign the players have 150 days before everyone dies. Nothing like a time limit to give people nessessity (is that even a word?)

Anyone else think thats a good idea, or am I just rambling again?

[-J-]

A time limit or countdown can be a great way to build tension in a game (I used it in a cyberpunk game once) - In PbP time is much more relative. Eberron has been going for almost 2 years and only a week or so has passed in game time. Regardless I think it has some potential.

As to the discussion of epic plots in PbP - epic plots in either table top or PbP are tricky. If you show too much (of the overall plot) then the players get this feeling that they're doing things because its what's "in the script", show too little then they get confused as to what their "motivation" is. Multiple small plot arcs (at least one for each character) that intertwine into larger, epic plot arcs is probably the best balance. And if those arcs begin to conflict then you get some great roleplaying.

2¢