When and how to play

Play by Post Campaigns Ars Magica 5th Edition: Ragnarok
1

There has been some discussion back and forth about playing on Discord vs. playing on the forums, and I think for the health of the game it's important that everyone is on the same page and in agreement. This is a thread for us all to discuss and work this out; here are my thoughts. I'm available a lot right now, but that could change at any time, so I want to be fair to both sides of the debate.

The advantage to discord is that things move much more quickly, but not everyone is on, so people have to come after the fact to see what happened. This can be mitigated somewhat by allowing retcons for people who weren't there, but that might not always be good enough.

If there is a time when everyone can be on discord together, it would be great to set up to play a regular discord rp session; however this may not work out.

My suggestion is that side-plots involving only certain characters, or background stories that could really be, "You find a regio with XXX inside" or "you search for a while and finally find the chest of gold", but that are fun to play out, could be on discord, because in the big picture, they are minor story points. Whereas important stuff that will change the course of the game, like an invading army of giants, will be strictly pbp unless everyone can be available on discord.

I also think that multi-threading is a good idea, especially where so much is going on. We can figure out timeline conflicts as necessary, but I think keeping to a single thread is unnecessarily slow.

For instance, right now, we could have an "Inside the Regio" thread, a "Searching for Treasure" thread, and maybe a few others for introducing companions, figuring out repairs to the covenant, etc.

2

Isn’t this already stated in the saga startup?
Pbp with regular posts. My understanding is this is not a discord game.

3

So the biggest issue is the big group events. Those should be PbP for sure. But side events (like if someone runs a small adventure for two or three players), those can be done according to those players’ preferences.

4

Thanks for bringing this up!

My preference would be to keep most of the story on the forum. I don't really have the time to roleplay too much on Discord most days, even though I can keep it open in a side tab. I'm afraid that I'll end up dropping out of the saga, honestly, if it becomes the norm to spend an hour or two interacting on there every day - it's the kind of thing I can check on my breaks but shouldn't really be messing with all day long. Plus, since we have people in a variety of time zones and with different schedules, we'll tend to leave people out if much of the action takes place live.

On the other hand, I have enjoyed the Discord banter. I don't really mind if people go on subplots without me or retcon my character's involvement as they see fit. And it's nice to not have the exceedingly slow pace of some PbP games. I think that ideally a PbP storyguide can develop a real knack for knowing where those branching points are that actually require pausing for everyone to jump in, and they're not necessarily the same places as in a tabletop game. If we can all try to plan out for common possibilities in our posts (for example, "I move to the doorway, and if it's unlocked, I go inside. If not, I cast "open the door"), and work out things like botches and awareness checks live in Discord if possible, we can keep the story moving a little faster. For instance, I'd rather not post, "Sceparnius looks around." as a forum post, if I can roll my awareness on Discord, and have the storyguide tell me live what he sees.

My hope is that we can make use of both tools to avoid favoring the story too much towards those players who can spend all day on Discord, but also avoid the need to take six real-life months roleplaying a shopping trip.

5

Dave, that’s exactly what I’m envisioning right now. That doesn’t mean I, or any of us, will be expert at it at first. So we need to try to be forgiving and call out if we feel we are getting left out or behind.

6

My 2/100ths of a dollar:

While I am generally online during the day (M-F, 7 AM PST - 4 PM PST), there are times during the day where I cannot be available. This is generally due to conference calls and other work-related items that pull me back to the real world whether I want to be or not. I am also not online at night or on the weekends except for brief appearances where I just pop in to say hello or ask a simple question. And this is a big thing for me; I cannot commit to posting anywhere on the weekends as I need time to unplug and get away and spend time with my wife, cats, and my RL friends.

With all that said, I can commit to daily posting M-F here on the forums. Due to work issues, I may not be able to post daily in Discord. Because of this, I prefer the forum almost strictly; I've already expressed that I felt like I was falling behind on Discord when I was actually on the server yesterday.

I sincerely hope that this does not happen. Everyone should be involved in all stories to some degree. I've been in many games that had side adventures, and it was always an excuse for the GM/SG to give extra XP to their pet players. And then those players would outpace everyone else, as well as get information that never got shared with anyone else, leading them to pretty much cut the rest of the group out.

Ditto. I joined this game with this understanding. Just because we are continuing without skywyze doesn't mean we should immediately just change this to a discord game when several people have expressed an inability to be on Discord 24/7.

7

I actually joined this game originally because skywyze had said it would be a Discord game. Then people answered his recruitment thread saying they were only interested if it wasn’t, and he acceded to that, forming a sort of hybrid where he specifically said that the posts could be made on the forum or summarized from the Discord.

Pure PbP moves too slowly for me. I have to log on, check for responses. It becomes a chore. I recently quit an entire forum because I wasn’t having fun. So I would very much prefer if we could work out a hybrid model of some kind.

8

Has Sky stated that he’s afk for an extended period, or ongoing? I think I’ve missed a handover or a bit of information around this.

9

He hasn’t been online since Feb 26 and he missed a promised post date by 10 days. We gave him till Monday and then we started.

10

Nobody has heard from Sky (either in this game, or in the other one I know he's playing with) since February 23rd, when he said he'd be posting "in a couple days". There was a discussion (on Discord) regarding how long to wait and a general consensus emerged there that we should move forward without him and we could hand it back to him if he showed up again.

So, no, there has not been a handover, and you missing it is probably relevant to this thread :slight_smile:

11

Well, I've already stated that I cannot continue if this becomes a Discord game. And as the majority of the players here came onboard because this wasn't going to be a Discord game, it wouldn't really be fair to force this to become a Discord game and force players to play in a medium they didn't really sign up for.

12

I didn’t say “force.” I said I hope we can find some sort of hybrid solution.

13

Well, the majority spoke up about not wanting Discord. Unless I'm seeing that wrong and pushing my own agenda here. Which is entirely possible. :smiley:

14

This is all predicated on us changing from a single SG to troupe-style play. The existing guidelines are based on one SG, rather than troupe-style, so I think we should revisit them. Some of the concerns I see above can be addressed by this. Both multi-threading and discord are public; and with an understanding that people are reacting asynchronously, there should be some understanding and acceptance of asynchronous interjections and ret-cons (of course, only to a point). But this should address concerns about missing stuff and about SG-favorites.

I hope Sky comes back, but we can't assume he will; and to be honest, I think even if he does, it would be worthwhile for us to discuss staying troupe-style to take some of the load off his shoulders.

15

The original posting from Sky’s recruitment, so we all remember where it started: skywyze » Tue Jan 22, 2019 9:16 pm
If players do not wish to use Discord, I'm not going to make them - I just find it's a handy tool. Forum posts tend to be long, and Discord can be handy when you just want to ask a quick question or resolve a round of combat - small stuff. But again, nobody's telling you to use it.

I'm making the decision right now that any action not posted in the PbP forum is not considered "canon." E.g. if you tell me on Discord you want to do something, we might resolve dice rolls there, if you choose. But until you actually make the post, as far as the game is concerned, nothing has happened.

16

Marcella: Can we use it as a place to do meta; management of the game and so forth? But all IC actions take place on the forums. Does that work?

17

My dilemma is missing “live” discussions. Ooc char and choices are just as important as IC, as we’ve already seen. Many of the players chat live when I’m either asleep or starting my work day. I’ll never be a regular participant in those game sessions.

Also a point was made with frustration having to re-read forum posts. C’mon. Please put yourself in our shoes and consider how frustrating it is to re-read discord across multiple screens well after the discussion has passed. It’s the same point reversed.

But hey, let’s try a hybrid and see what happens. As most of the players seem to want this my choice is to go with it or leave, so let’s go.

I’ll offer: I’ll run sessions as a beta SG in forum.