Comments on: PBeM: Lauchlin Section 2 Part 1

By: Finwe

Finwe — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:48:24 +0000

I’d also be interested to see an example of the emails that form a round of play.

This is great stuff. Are you working on a novel, by chance?

By: Landorien

Landorien — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:21:09 +0000

“… if there is interest in how I organized this and the mechanics for how I run and write the PBeM, I could write a post about it.”

Yes, yes we need such a post :)

By: minnieu

minnieu — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:53:02 +0000

Needs to be made into a book.

By: Halsey

Halsey — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 06:07:13 +0000

Enjoying the PBeM a great deal, and would be most interested in your process for the whole thing. Paper and pencil RPGs are something I enjoyed a great deal once, but have drifted away from since I left the army. Any insight into how to make an RPG work with a wide flung group would be great reading.

By: twww

twww — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 11:53:21 +0000

Yay for closure! Sort of.
Glad we haven’t lost this thread of the story due to Jessie’s impulsive nature :)

By: Joel

Joel — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 23:08:53 +0000

I would be interested in hearing about how you organize and run a PBeM. I don’t know if I’ll run/play in one again, but it would be fun to know how you handle it.

By: bigbearbutt

bigbearbutt — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 21:26:02 +0000

One other thing… if there is interest in how I organized this and the mechanics for how I run and write the PBeM, I could write a post about it. I’ve been doing it for so long now, at one time or another, that I just do it. I don’t really think about it.

But it involves how I approach Gming as well as writing and what I think a good role playing game is, so it’s definitely not for everyone.

By: bigbearbutt

bigbearbutt — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 21:24:37 +0000

I happen to think, and maybe I’m just overly critical of my own writing, but I think that the exposition in the early part of this part of the turn was handled clunky and boring and wall of textish, even for me. But it was info that needed to be exposed for the player to know at this point, and I just couldn’t rework it into something better at the time.

There is one other thing. Just this last weekend, I discovered that the version of the two stories that I had published to you so far, were coming from an earlier version of my turns, and weren’t from the more polished version I had of both.

As far as what happened, nothing changed. As far as how I wrote it, well, there were style changes that I think were a lot better. So my confusion as to why it seemed to suck worse than I remember was finally answered. It was the unpolished version I was publishing here.

Damn it. It’s okay, it’s just that when you’ve cleaned up your writing and spelling and stuff once, it sure is annoyineg to not use that version when you show it to folks.

Last weeks Terin and this weeks Jessie were the first two I published from the polished up copy.

By: Sfinx

Sfinx — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:52:05 +0000

Wow, I’ve been wondering what happened to Jes. This is really good stuff here. The last few paragraphs here detailing what happened to Jessie are exceptionally good. More please!!

Also, this is whetting my appetite for some good reading. Does anyone know of any good novels along the same line and feel of this story?

By: Mannyac

Mannyac — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:44:11 +0000

It is also critical that the players are more interested in ROLEplaying as opposed to defining their characters as “Human, 4th lvl fighter, ST 18 DX 14 etc, +2 plate and +1 flaming sword…and oh yeah his name is Bob.”

If you are running a game and you want the flavor of the characters as opposed to the mechanical aspects, insist on a detailed background, description etc. If a player can’t give you more than a paragraph or two about his character, it’s pretty much a given that the turn replies you will get will be very short too