My Play-By-Post Campaign

I first started my play-by-post campaign in the fall of 2011.  Up until that point, I had played “live” at the table with a handful of people that I knew in High School or the Navy but real life issues like significant others and children and bills and jobs had conspired to prevent any sort of regular gaming sessions.  At best, I might manage to get a group together for a short afternoon session once every two or three months.  The campaign that I had been running for years stagnated.  I still wrote for it.  I still plotted out adventure ideas and created NPCs but when it came time to sit down and play, even on live chat, things fell apart as my players and I were spread out across three different time zones.  Frustration built.

And then, one day, while working out in the garage, the idea came to me – why not make a group on Facebook where I could write out the adventure, let the players respond in the comments and then take those responses to generate the next post?  Yes… that would work.  All I needed was a hook.  What should the campaign be about?

This was right after WoTC released 4E. I was tired of re-buying products and decided I was through. I That’s when it hit me.

The source material was still perfectly usable and none of my players here have ever been through Undermountain or the War of the Lance or been Spelljamming or any of the older game stuff I had lying around collecting dust. So, I decided to use it, all of it. The campaign’s overall plot is fairly simple: Make it home.started looking at my shelves and was frustrated by my newly “obsolete” collection.  That’s when it hit me.  The source material was still perfectly usable and none of my players here have ever been through Undermountain or the War of the Lance or been Spelljamming or any of the older game stuff I had lying around collecting dust. So, I decided to use it, all of it.  The campaign’s overall plot is fairly simple: Make it home. 

Literally, every book, every game system, every adventure module, every game setting that I owned was going to contribute to this, my grand idea.  And we are talking about some wildly disparate systems.  Luckily, when the d20 system was released EVERYONE was scrambling to publish whatever supplement or setting they could think of.  So many internet forums were devoted to posting conversions for system after system to make them d20 compatible.  Talk about making my job easier.

I decided to turn the campaign into a long trip.  A magical catastrophe would strand the adventurers on another world and over the course of the campaign they would make their way back across the universe until finally getting home.  Along the way, they would search for portals and ships and other means of magical transportation.  They would battle fiends, dragons, evil priests and wizards, save a couple of worlds along the way, and if things went well, maybe kill a god or two.

 
I began to write.  I still needed to come up with a plot for a fairly standard Dungeons and Dragons campaign while incorporating several of West End Games’ settings, Paranoia, the Marvel Superheroes RPG, GURPS, and so on.  I spent a year on the outline, changing small details, discarding some ideas and replacing them with others entirely – and in some cases, this is a still a work in progress.

I put the page together and sent out invitations to join.  Most of the players were drawn from the ranks of my oldest friends.  Some were younger guys I had met through my current job.  With everything more or less in place, I was ready to begin.

I added everyone who was interested to the group, let them confer amongst themselves and get used to the format for a few days and launched on September 15^th, 2011.  I was immediately struck by how slow this method of play was.  Some players would respond within minutes of my posting, others would dilly-dally and take days to chime in.  I had originally started out waiting for everyone to comment before I would start the next post.  This was one of the first things to go away.  I now give everyone about a day to reply, two days if I am working nights or they let me know that they were out of town or whatever and things began to speed up.  We were moving at turtle speed instead of a snail’s pace.

As an upside, some players have embraced the forum.  Character development (personality-wise especially) is far more in-depth than in any other campaign I have ever been part of.  There are players who write beautiful, thought-provoking comments that give real insight to their character’s motivations and backstories.  And there are others whose comments amount to “I hit the guy with my sword”.
 

With my story in-place and underway, I soon faced my next dilemma.  I saw one play-by-post campaign after another fall apart.  How was I going to keep the players entertained while waiting on slower ones to jump in?  What was I providing that would keep them coming back?  While my writing was fine in and of itself, I wanted something more.  I started sharing old gaming stories, fantasy and sci-fi clips or movie trailers, reviews of old games, articles from other gaming blogs and assorted pictures as “filler” material to keep things interesting so everyone would return for the next installment.  It worked beautifully.
 

Six-and-one-half years later, we are coming to the end of our third setting now.  We have adventured across Hyboria and Lankhmar.  We are nearly finished with the setting for Grimm.  My group expanded to over 20 players at one point but some have dropped out for personal reasons and we now sit at a just over a dozen active gamers.  There are several people in the game that I have never met in person who were recruited by some of my players.  

 I have enough material prepared to last me for at least another five years, maybe longer considering that I keep adding to the collection of games that are at the house now.  I already have parts of the finale plotted out and find myself wondering, after everything is said and done, what will happen next.

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Our Cast of Characters

Arthur Fumeridge – A native of Lankhmar, fought in the War against the Wererats.  Opened a tavern and is now a successful brewer.  Converted to the worship of Malazzarr, god of Progress and has become the First Paladin of the God.

Cedron Maghnus – from Aquilonia, a minstrel and con-man who has also embraced Malazzarr as his deity of choice

Drax – an assassin from Oerth who traveled to Toril, trying to leave his past behind him

Grotto Grimmbeard – a dwarf, captured by goblins and held as a slave for decades, torture has left his face horrifically scarred, a warrior priest of the god Hanseath

Korbin Crow – a talking crow from the Islands of Aesop in the Grimmlands

Kysek Creepingshadow – a gold elf from Evereska, a rogue who was Malazzarr’s apprentice before the god rose to divinity, has an owl familiar named Bubo

Morn Silvertongue – a bard from Amn, master of the whip, was once possessed by the ghost of a copper great wyrm

Niklas Splitwood – grand-nephew of Peter from “Peter and the Wolf”, a woodsman and tracker and most recent addition to the adventuring party

Nym “Shadow” Millithor – a dark elf rogue/wizard from Faerun, traveled to the surface to avoid persecution because of his gender, was befriended by surface adventurers despite initial mistrust, has a lizard familiar named Spewer

Raven Straightbow – a Moon Elf from Evermeet, father was a diplomat who was killed by ogres during the elven retreat from Myth Drannor, was taken in by the Riders of Mistledale and served alongside of them for years

Ra’ziir Azagoth – a gold elf bladesinger from Faerun, heart was replaced by living crystal which is spreading throughout his body until he was transformed into a half-earth elemental