Interest Query

Anyone interested in the possibility of a RP module here? It would be some kind of play by post setup. No particulars determined yet; I'm just curious if that would appeal to enough people. Most likely candidates for game type would be Pathfinder/DnD or World of Darkness, and either way it would at least start as a single module or adventure, possibly branching out from that if it's successful.

You already know i have interest. Buuut, for the sake of the other forum users, gonna come in here and say, yes. I have interest. :D

Would this be new player friendly? And how often would activity be expected?

As friendly as possible. I'm very much against rules lawyering and powergaming, and even more so of the belief that the game should serve the story. Imperfect characters are preferred in my games anyway, since I like seeing development more than huge hit totals.

As for frequency, probably at least something daily as needed. My model would be, at first at least, to be akin to the mafia games. I'd be trying to figure out a quicker solution to combat regardless of the mechanics chosen, since nothing bogs down PbP games worse than d20 combat.

So in short, very newbie friendly and reasonable post commitment.

I'm interested.

So, that's two of an ideal four or five. Any preference for urban fantasy or more classic/dark fantasy?

Hmm. I may consider this, but I need to focus on NaNo for the rest of the month, so I know I cannot fully commit until then. Not sure if I'd be interested, though. I will think on this. I spent a good 4-5 years of my life doing play-by-post roleplay, but it was mostly solo threads and moderating character submissions. Not sure how well I'd fare in this context. This sounds more D&D-esque? I've never actually tried that format. Hm. I need to actually read the World of Darkness post. Ahh!

Never actually played a post by post game with more than one player character either. Well, I guess I've played two, but one only lasted two and a half scenes while the other never made it to the first chapter, heh.

That's why posting at least semi-regularly is important.

Still, the have I've wanted to either GM for more than one player (Jaiser) at a time, or be more than only one player in such a game for years has me hoping since of you will have some interest. :D

Yeah, it would be more DnD esque in that the players would be cooperating for a common goal, and utilize some mechanics.

SUPER super interested! Not sure how well my activity might be, but I'm willing to try and make it work!

Sure, but don't know about my activity before Aug 24th... I'm going through D&D withdraw and it only been a week.

So, I've been giving it some thought, and forget what I said about either being DnD or World of Darkness per se for now. I've been thinking about how the mafia format works well with the realities of online forum communication, and it's inspiring me to write a story that best fits those realities -- or possibly work up an entirely new system. I've got a lot of proto-ideas, so once I have a better sense, I'll let you know, but I wanted to make sure no one got too deep in the Pathfinder SRD or shelled out for a book too early. This also gives time for those of you with commitments, so I'm tentatively thinking this might happen in late August or early September.

It will be roleplaying, mind. Just unconventional since I want to work with the limitations we have in posts/day rather than suffers from them. Though you guys can help me out by shooting out some things that would excite you the most about an RP of any sort. No promises on any inclusion of those elements, but it would help me tailor it to the group.

You're all gonna be my guinea pigs. XD

Okay, so I've had some time to ponder how to do this and talked to some of you about how World of Darkness works, so here's the next step.

I've a tentative idea for a story for 3-5 players. We will be using the New World of Darkness God-Machine Chronicle ruleset for characters, resources for which I will post if this garners enough attention. Here are the basics. (These are very subject to change, partially based on the reactions you all have to this and on how well it actually works in practice.

• All player characters are mortal, mundane people. No worries about massive amounts of lore or setting to worry about this way. Some minor supernatural merits may be allowed, on a case-by-case basis, but the characters are all relatively normal people in a modern American town or city. Nothing is exactly off the table, but keep in mind real-world consequences in case you get your heart set on someone stockpiling military hardware or something. (This isn't DnD, mind. Very few problems can be solved by hitting them hard enough in the real world)
  
• This will be a horror story. Strange and dark things lurk in the shadows of the World of Darkness, and your characters will be caught up in these fell machinations and forced to adapt. Characters are not invincible, and there will be a strong focus on character growth and group cohesion/strain as events claw at them. For inspiration, think Silent Hill or a Stephen King story.
  
• All player characters are tenants in the same apartment building. You otherwise have complete freedom to make your character whoever you want he or she to be, from job to family, etc.
  
• Each tenant will have a one-on-one Prelude, conducted either via Skype or PM, whichever is easiest for you. This is essentially a short series of scenes to give you a chance to break in and adjust the character and get some practice with the game without stressing about affecting the other players.
  
• Scene starts will be announced ahead of time. A "Scene" is essentially the same concept as in any other piece of storytelling media, reflecting a discrete set of events happening in one location at the same time. These will be clearly marked when they begin and end, and I'm hoping to have sort of a Mafia-esque setup this way, though obviously scenes may last longer than one real-world day.
  
• There will be real-world time windows to determine participants in each scene. This is a compromise to account for differing availabilities we all have. Once the scene starter post is up, there will be a window of X-hours to determine which characters are present (for example, in a scene taking place at the apartment building, which characters are home at that time). Once a scene is declared and the time window passes, those are the characters who will participate in that scene, and it will continue on until finished.
  
• Tenants whose players can't make that window may have one-on-one scenes, time and subject permitting. This is to avoid anyone feeling left out or punished for not being able to be around as often. These scenes may take place at your character's work place, their nana's house, etc., but will still tie into the plot somehow. (Hopefully this will also give the overall story a more organic, natural feeling as real-world people have schedules that get in the way of stuff like this.)
  
• There will be some flexibility in this setup. For example, if there's a good reason your character can join an on-going scene (coming home from work, etc.), you may be able to join in after the window. However, these will be the exceptions to the rule and we'll coordinate to see if it works.
  
• Any plot-critical scenes requiring the whole group will be coordinated ahead of time, and may be done over Skype as necessary. Narrative write-ups will be posted in the game's topic after the fact.
  

Anyone who is interested but knows they may have limits to their availability in general, I can work with to figure out in-character ways to reflect this, such as a demanding/multiple jobs, family, etc. Early on we may experiment with different mixes of forum vs chat scenes to see which works best for the group as a whole, so bear with it.

So, all that out, who's still interested? And feel free to toss character ideas at me.

And I may end up helping Jaiser here run the game. : D

To clarify a few things too, while RPG books can be pricey, none of you will need to spend a dime. We have our PDFs on Dropbox and can share them that way. And if you're concerned about reading a lot...yeah, the books aren't small, but that's an advantage of playing as a normal human, a "mortal," for this game.  You'll really only need 2 PDFs we can provide:

1. The God-Machine Chronicles rules conversion (which is a free PDF anyway), which will be the main one, and isn't too heavy a read.
   
2. The World of Darkness Core Rulebook. This is mostly just to fill in the gaps left by the rules conversion above, which, for mus, mostly concerns the descriptions of skills and abilities.
   

Also, as anything like this goes...nothing is yet set in stone. Still working out the story, and even the method for how to tell the story, given our disparate timezones and schedules.

In fact, speaking of the scheduling, if anybody has ideas on ow this could possibly run in our li'l forum, please, run it by us. : D This is all experimental so far, and unless there is some way we could ever get everyone on at the same time for a whole hour or two at a time per week, we'll have to work with what we got.

Edit: Actually, I guess we could show you guys the rulebook now, so you can know if you have any interest or not to begin with, heh.

So, if nothing else, here's where you can get the free conversion PDF, which has most of the important info, anyway:

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/114078/World-of-Darkness-GodMachine-Rules-Update

Sorry for not replying sooner! I wanted to check/confirm some scheduling things before I said anything here.

I am interested, but I'm really concerned about my possible activity levels, especially since I'm supposed to be having a fairly busy schedule next quarter. I want to say that I should be able to at least check in/read posts in a thread at least once every day, but I don't want to make any promises about actually posting just yet.

I really like the idea of the irl time-window thing, because it sounds like a really smart idea for the story to move forward even if not everyone can make it, and it would probably also make people (i.e. me) feel less guilty about holding the group back.