Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Play-by-Post => Topic started by: CalibanX9 on <10-31-11/2041:09>
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Hi, I'd love to get into this, but I don't really understand how it works, a few games I've tried to read through seem to have significant sections missing, and I don't understand post frequency, etc. Could anyone point me to a beginner's link?
Thanks,
Cali
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Games are divided into IC (In Character) and OOC (Out Of Charater) threads. At least in theory. In practice they tend to mingle (at least in my games). Anyway, you need to follow them simultaneusly, and even that does not give you any guarantee ;)
You must understand, that the game is an action-reaction play. Only that while in tabletop game GM reacts on small pieces of action, in play-by-post the players actions have to be larger, more time consuming, otherwise the game would never end. The result of this is that sometime, GM must intervene, end the timeplot gets tangled, in other moments, combats that last few seconds takes weeks RL to accomplish. Some of that combats are taken to the chat tools to speed up, that's why you can see large pieces missing. Same with private messages, that solves many issues, and to the forums only solution is posted so other players (that know the context) understand and accept.
To understand the flow you would have to join a game. There aren't many openings so stay around and post when there will be one.
and most important: welcome :)
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Thank you so much! That explains a lot.
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It depends on the PbP as well. I GM the Road to Redmond series and I prefer to keep rolls in the IC thread. The only thing I want in the OOC thread is meta-game discussions or any other random tidbit. Even with the rolls in the IC thread sometimes it still is hard to read like a book because of some accidental retcons since stories do last for months.
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To contrast, in the Chacago Depths game I started, I try to keep all of the back end mechanics and knowledge stuff out of the IC thread so that the IC thread is a description of the action as an observer would view it. It reads pretty clean if you go through it, sort of the the anatomy of a shadowrun story, but it's a pain in the ass for GM and player alike since we're basically playing the game in OOC and describing what happens and talking in the IC. When I ended up GMing a 2nd game, I went with the way inca does it. ;)
I wish that the spoiler tags weren't the irritating "hover to show" style since spoilers are a good way to keep OOC from muddying the action.