David Meadows wrote:
>
> One point I always stall on is I can't see how to sensibly run a combat
You fudge a lot of it. You don't tell the players you are fudging it,
although of course they know -- it's a (as much as I despise the phrase,
it actually applies here) "suspension of disbelief" thing. But you
ignore the details when the details do not matter. Or, at least, when
you think they do not matter. Sometmes you'll be wrong, and have to
rewind a little and cover your ass, but that will happen less as time
goes on, and if you are gracious about it no one who has experience
playing in pbem games will complain.
You do keep track of rounds and who has acted in what round, but that's
mainly to keep the frequest posters from ovrwhelming the infrequent
posters. And you do roll dice (at least, I do), but I find it much
faster if the GM rolls dice for everyone and then tells them what they
rolled. The problem is that you have to make sure you know all the
character sheets inside and out, because if you are wrong about
something, it can really break the mood when you fix it. The alternative
is to only tell the players the results, and not the actual numbefrs
that were rolled, but then you will have to deal with people convinced
that you have overlooked something when events are not in their favor.
Pick your poison.
It also helps if you have people post not just their current action, but
also a contingent action based on what they expect the results of the
current action to be. "I shoot him, and if he goes down I fly away;
otherwise I keep shooting." That helps keep everyone in mind of the
state of the fight, and reduces the number of questions from Gail asking
what Bob is doing, and if he needs help (or whatever). Combat, oddly
enough, is not really as much trouble as you might think. It's time
consuming -- it may well take a week or two for one fight -- but as long
as the players post as frequently as they ought (at least once every
other day, and at least every day for the GM), it goes fairly smoothly.
The only rough spot is when you have one player who goes a week without
posting. How long do you wait before you say "Mighty Max holds his
phase", and move on? I am a softie, and tend to wait on that person for
too long, and the game suffers as a result. Live and learn.
I should point out that none of this is particularly unique to
Champions. I have run D&D pbems and a Risus pbem (Rough Magic), and they
both worked very much the same way.
> And the back-and-forth of a regular conversation between
> two characters is even worse, and no amount of fiddling
> with rule mechanics is going to fix that...
This, alas, is true. Thre really isn't much you can do about it. The
best you can is step in and steamroll things ahead when it's obvious
that the players are not saying anything new. Like if they are
discussion whether to head to the mountains now or spend the night at
the inn -- that conversation could go on forever, and some players will
let it. You have to take decisive action and say, "okay, the group
decides to do this, and night passes".
Of course, then you'll always get the one ambitious soul who wants to go
off on a solo adventure while everyone else is asleep. You have two
coices: let them, or explain to them that the reality of a pbem, game
means that if you were to run them on their solo jaunt, that the rest of
the players would be sleeping for the next month. The best thing to do
in such a situation is -- that's right -- fudge it. Ask the player
straight up what they want their character to accomplish while everyone
else is alseep: have them name a goal, simply and succinctly. Then you
roll dice, tell them what happened, and morning comes and you move on
with the game.
> Obviously people do manage, but I really can't imagine how.
Like anything, it gets easier with experience, but even after having
done it a few times adf mostly doing it successfully, I make tons of
mistakes. So you can't beat yourself up over it. You do the best you
can, and plow ahead.
bblackmoor
2004-06-15
>> Stay informed about: seeking Champions 5 pbem game 
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