DnD Play By Post Planning, Thinking of joining? Pop in here.

Figured I'd split off the discussion from the one in Mythical Creatures so I stop derailing it.

So. If you're interested in giving play-by-post DnD a try, say so here. Doesn't matter if you've never played DnD before, I'd be more than happy to show you the ropes, and I'm sure there'll be at least one other person here who's played before.

First of all, a system decision needs to be made. We can do D20 classic (also known as DnD 3.5, straight up, with homebrew tossed in as in all of my games), or D20 Modern, or I can go digging for some D20 Renaissance or some other time period crossed with high fantasy (barring Shadowrun, unless people really want to give that a try, but I'd be learning a new system while running a game in it, and that can be sticky in my experience). Exalted, if I can get access to the sourcebooks, is also an option.

Next, what kind of game are people interested in? Something serious, lighthearted, combat heavy, social heavy? Sooner I know, the sooner I can figure out a central campaign thread.

A few things to know about games I run:
One personal rule I strictly enforce on myself is NO RAILROADING. Barring obvious situations, like if the party is, y'know, on a physical railroad, or something. But by and large, that means that it's entirely possible (and this happened on several occasions on the bigger campaign I ran) for you guys to run off and do your own thing. The plot will still be happening, you guys will just be involved in your own plot. This requires me to be much more adaptive to things you guys do, but I think makes things much more entertaining for all involved.

As an example of this in effect--in my last campaign, I gave my players access to a giant planar nexus, and asked them, basically, "Where do you want to go?" One of them chimed in with, "Oooh, Skies of Arcadia!" Fast forward a few sessions, and that campaign party became personally responsible for the fact that there are no ninjas in Skies of Arcadia. Oh, and as a result of that, I've got a system conversion for Skies of Arcadia -> D&D 3.5 in my first year notebook.

And Redwall -> D&D 3.5.

...And Golden Sun.

They took a while to get back to the main plot. But everybody was, much more importantly, having fun, which was, is, and ALWAYS SHALL BE the point.


I mentioned this in my intro post, but for those of you who may not have read it, I'm a game design student. In particular, I love coming up with effective system 'crunch' (the rules for a concept) and good 'fluff' (the flavor behind a concept). With that in mind: homebrew. In 99% of all cases, I'm going to say whatever you pop me a link to or send me the text for is OK. I might make tweaks one way or the other to keep character power at a consistent level, but if you've got a concept that'd fit the game and you're interested in sticking it in, then we'll probably find a way to make it fit.

On that note--if you've got any ideas for a character or ability or whatever that you'd like to see in the campaign or just written out in 3.5 crunch / fluff form, let me know. If I can get a good enough feel for the idea, I'll pop out some homebrew for it, and I'd be fine with people using that sort of stuff in the campaign.

Good call. I'll split this topic and move the relevant posts into the new one once you've started it.

Actually doing admin stuff? PREPOSTEROUS IDEA

Apparently it really is. Sildraug has been so thorough in his post that I'm not going to bother doing this anymore. Inaction prevails again!

I'm all for 3.5, and I would definitely want a high fantasy world. I don't think I could do D20 Modern, the last time I played it, it felt really awkward for me so I'm not too comfortable with it. I've played Shadowrun but that was a one time thing, and the rules aren't too clear for me yet. I haven't played 3.5 (My DM wanted to try out 4th Edition so we've been doing that for awhile now) in awhile though, so it'll take a few sessions for me to get my head around the rules again.

A lighthearted game would be nice but it shouldn't all be sunshine and rainbows, but really, I'm up for anything. Well, as long as it isn't a hack-and-slash game.

But what books are we allowed? And are there any houserules or variant rules you like to use?

I'd also like a light 3.5 game. Quite frankly I'm not sure if I could adapt to a non 3.0/3.5 version for a few weeks (from now).


The things I thought might be issues with homebrew, might not even come up anymore. The two things I know of, that we played by (without knowing they were homebrew) is grappling, and crits*.
I'm pretty flexible, I'll try to go with whatever rules you are.


I'd like to play a sorcerer, If I can call dibs on classes yet.

As for combat/social heavy, I think I'll wait until how we figure out dice rolls to decide.

*With crits, any natural 20 was a crit, but I've read you have get a 20, then hit again or something like that. I can figure whatever we go by out.

My group doesn't like threatening with nat 20s. If you roll a nat 20 it's an auto crit. No rolling to confirm it.

Yay! I'm not as much as an outcast as I thought!


And hopefully this time I won't have to gestalt. d4 hitpoints might take some getting used to.

If you want to use a book, all I need is some kind of access to the rules you'll be using. If it's on the D20srd (< - SUPER HELPFUL LINK) you can probably assume I've at least brushed over it. I have access to a number of books--if there's some obscure one you're tapping rules from, just let me know so I can read up on it.

We can do critting on 20s. I'd like to do away with diplomacy as a skill, since it has potential gamebreaking-ness. Also, no peasant railguns or quarterstaff fountains. If you guys don't mind, I'd also like to do away with XP entirely, and just declare levelups. Spells that cost XP--well, so long as people don't go crazy with them, I doubt I'll have that much of a problem.

How was grappling homebrewed?

Combat / social is just one of many axes. The alignment axes are also important. High fantasy versus low fantasy is another axis, but really, D&D lends itself to high fantasy just by its structure.

Dice rolling I would say would work on the honor system. When you declare a check, you post your roll, mod, and total. If somebody's getting suspiciously lucky, then we can turn to an online roller, or I can do all of the rolling on this end. Hopefully it won't come to that last one.

I lean on High Fantasy, but I could be swayed either way.

I can work with that, it might make switch to wizard, though.

For a forum Dnd I'd think that would work much better.

...ughh, It was complicated, I'd rather drop it, but I still feel like I have to explain. On the beginning of either of your turns, you would roll have a to keep grappling dominance, or to take it, and there was "pinned", "total dominance", "split", and "no dominance", "pinned". If you had total control, you could make an unarmed attack, leave, or if you had a dagger you could pull it out. It would just go back and forth on who had control, and more likely than not, just waste time.

Also, that link is about 4 times as useful as the one I have that just has Scans of all the books. (No offense, whoever gave me that. Sorry I forgot who you are.)

It was me. I already used the online srd, so I assumed you knew about it as well.

Just a slight derailment...geesh, I feel old when I figure AD&D 2nd edition is classic...and still have first edition stuff.

Nope. All my DnD knowledge has been from the actual books. Gee I feel silly now.

I played 2nd Edition, it was with my dad and his friends. They still get together to play and often bring their children over.

DnD, bringing families together, how touching.

A few other things:

With the absence of XP, multiclassing is obviously a lot more freely done. It's still rather complicated, especially when it comes to skills, but for all intents and purposes, everybody's got Favored Class: Everything.

I will caution you guys, though, if we're doing natural 20 is autocrit, well, that's probably going to work against you more often than not.

We had a session a while ago over here where 2/3s of the attack rolls I was making were crits, 1/6 were crit misses, and the rest just missed normally. This orange d20 has the weirdest rolling patterns. And a few stories around it, but those can wait for now.

People who have posted in this thread I'm considering interested in playing for now--if that's not the case, let me know. They're bolded in the list below. People who expressed interest over in the Monster Wishes thread are unbolded. People who just spoke on the topic in the Monster Wishes thread are unbolded with a question mark, because I have no idea if they're interested. Beyond that, well, I'm not about to go hunting through the user list to find people who have mentioned D&D as one of their Interests to ask if they'd like to play. If they speak up here, they're more than welcome to join in.

- Vuanaunt
- Masterly
- Megamet
- Lord Shadow
- Genoraven
- Doppleganger
- Ryuu (?)
- Bri
- Kristof

Reading through the guide on GiTP for Play by Post games (PbP from now on from me), things to keep in mind:

Other business I can just resolve now, if we're going to be doing this:

- If you're in, we'll have 'turns' of 2 days. This means if you're idle for more than 2 days, I (or somebody I okay to) will take control of your character if necessary 'til you're back in the game.

- I would not anticipate a hell of a lot of combat. Obviously there will be some--D&D is first and foremost a combat system--but taking days at a time to finish 6-second chunks of time in a fight would probably be rather ponderous. With that in mind, that means lots of RP is likely. As that's the case, backstories would be appreciated. Obviously, before I can get real meaty backstories from you guys, I need to give you world info, so no 'OH SHIT' scramble just yet, but ponder overall character ideas. I'm pretty open when it comes to rules stuff, as you've probably figured out by now, and putting together basic character crunch before writing the character flavor in full might help your flavor develop.

- If you take a look at the GitP thread linked above, I would recommend adopting the prose format for the In Character (IC) thread (there will be separate IC and OOC threads). Obviously not going to force the matter on this, but anything you choose to do to make it easier to read is a plus.

- If a combat is going on and people are really getting into it, I might suggest we ramp up the schedule to daily. If anybody can't quite make daily, that's fine with me and we can keep it at 2 days.

- I'm not going to limit posts per day for players. If you guys are getting that into things, as far as I'm concerned, that's awesome.

-

- I'll try to keep on top of things when combats are going on so that I can post results to your actions quickly and the round can cycle. That said, I'm a college student and my time might be otherwise tied up. If it looks like I'm going to be tied up till the 2 day mark, I WILL let you guys know in advance (and that's a good thing for you guys to do, too).

- Don't worry about party balance, play a character you want to play. Weakness makes things interesting, and means I don't have to push on you guys as hard to provide a compelling challenge.

And, with that, the 16 questions (or what of them I can answer now--I'll edit this post with answers as I come up with them and let people know with a new post).

* 1. What game system are you running (D&D, Call of Cthulu, Palladium, GURPS, etc.), and if applicable what edition (Original, Classic, Revised, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 10th, etc.)?
D&D 3.5.

* 2. What 'type' or variant of game will it be (i.e. "Shadow Chasers" or "Agents of Psi" for d20 Modern)? What is the setting for the game (eg. historic period, published or homebrewed campaign setting, alternate reality, modern world, etc.)?
Setting is High Fantasy classic with moderate crossover potential with thematically appropriate IPs and plenty of homebrew. If you're not sure on a specific case of 'thematically appropriate', just ask.

* 3. How many Players are you looking for? Will you be taking alternates, and if so, how many?
For now, I'm going to try running this as I ran my main game--if people want to join, they can join. I would like a bare minimum of three players, but anything more than that is cool too. If we get too far above eight, I might drop whoever's lagging the game, but that's unlikely.

* 4. What's the gaming medium (forum, chat, e-mail etc.)?
Pretty much exclusively this forum. I might work some stuff out with people over PM, especially if the rest of the party wouldn't necessarily be aware of something, but I don't think it'll ever hit email.

* 5. What is the characters' starting status (i.e. experience level)?
TBD

* 6. How much gold or other starting funds will the characters begin with?
TBD, dependent on previous question (running straight wealth by level probably)

* 7. Are there any particular character classes, professions, orders, etc. that you want... or do not want? What are your rules on 'prestige' and/or homebrewed classes?
The only real request I've got for this is for people to try to keep their classes thematically appropriate. By that, I mean, don't roll up a battle-hardened Marine for the Fluffy Bunnies in Paradise game. Try to keep things to fantasy. Run any homebrew by me before using it just so I can know what it does and give the all-good. Prestige classes are fine.

* 8. What races, subraces, species, etc. are allowed for your game? Will you allow homebrewed races or species? 'Prestige' races or species?
See previous answer.

* 9. By what method should Players generate their attributes/ability scores and Hit Points?
Point-buy, 32 points. HP is assume max roll for first level and roll every level thereafter, rerolling ones.

* 10. Does your game use alignment? What are your restrictions, if so?
Yes, we will be using alignment, and alignments of characters may shift as the game proceeds (indeed, I hope that they do). I would suggest we avoid a mixed alignment party for Good / Evil, but if you think you can play Evil without playing MUAHAHAHAHA Evil or Good without the Paladin Butt Stick, then maybe. The definition of Evil in D&D is a lot broader than just the philosophical one. I'd say wait on declaring your alignment until you generate your character, and if you're not sure, then just let me bounce some questions off of you to get your idea fixed in place.

* 11. Do you allow multi-classing, or have any particular rules in regards to it?
Yes. All classes are favored classes because XP does not exist.

* 12. Will you be doing all of the die rolling during the course of the game? Will die rolls be altered, or left to the honor system? If players can make die rolls, which ones do they make, how should they make the rolls, and how should they report them?
I will be doing all NPC die rolling and any rolls that directly result from an NPC's actions. This means saves for spells from NPCs, both sides for any checks that qualify as Opposed checks, and all NPC stuff. Players will be rolling the rest, so checks they declare, attack rolls and damage rolls (just do both and I'll tell you if you hit or not), saves they manage to force themselves to take or other players force them to take, etc.

* 13. Are there any homebrewed or optional/variant rules that your Players should know about? If so, list and explain them, or provide relevant links to learn about these new rules.
Listed above.

* 14. Is a character background required? If so, how big? Are you looking for anything in particular (i.e. the backgrounds all ending up with the characters in the same city)?
Character background is appreciated. Not required, but if you give me nothing, I reserve the right to make stuff up. Not looking for anything in particular just yet, but that may change once I have a central campaign idea.

* 15. Does your game involve a lot of hack & slash, puzzle solving, roleplaying, or a combination of the above?
There will be puzzlers, roleplaying and hacking and slashing (possibly even stabbing). By likely order of frequency, I'd say RP, then Puzzle, then Hack 'n' Slash.

* 16. Are your Players restricted to particular rulebooks and supplements, or will you be allowing access to non-standard material? What sources can Players use for their characters?
No restrictions on supplements so long as I can see them.

Another bigass post from me, it would seem...

Your family sounds so awesome.

So what starting level do you guys want to play from? Do you want something high-powered, low-powered, what? The higher the level, the greater the complexity, and since we're introducing at least one person to the game as a whole, it might be wise to start it off relatively low powered.

So, where between one and twenty? Epic (>20) is just a bad idea.