Observations on Play by Email Games - Part I

If you read this blog, you've probably figured out by now that I run a lot of play by email (PBM) games. The biggest reason for this is that my old gaming group is now about a 10 hour drive away, which means my face-to-face gaming with my favorite gamers is rather limited. At the time of this post, I've run at least a half-dozen long-term PBM games, years of gaming, hundreds of turns. A few weeks back I saw a post on rpg.net asking for guidance on running a PBM game, so I thought I'd put together a collection of notes based on my own experiences. Hopefully it'll prove useful to anyone trying to run a PBM game. This post is focused on setting up for a PBM game, the next post will focus on running things.

Daruna - Tomb Robbery

I run my Daruna game about twice a year, with each session being a two-day marathon. Briefly, the game is a Swords and Sandals campaign with lots of death and mayhem. We're using my homebrew class free rules, which are loosely based on 3.X D&D/ Pathfinder, but, obviously, no classes.

Between the last session and this one, the party had spent a nice chunk of money on buying and rebuilding an old villa just outside Shalish, their base of operations. After hosting a major party for their patrons, associates, and families, they were out and about in the marketplace and ran into Sadine Salar (the extraordinary), a merchant who had treated them quite well in the very first session. Sadine had fallen on hard times, having been boarded by 'pirates' in the war zone up north. The party invites him back to the villa to see if they can help get him back on his feet, and eventually Sadine reveals his last treasure, a map leading to a Lost Kingdoms tomb. He suggests a joint venture to visit the tomb and 'recover' whatever wealth is there. The party, being good little murderhobos, agrees. On then to the game...

The Wilds - The Aftermath

I missed posting a turn or two of my Wilds game, because the last couple weeks have been filled with family obligations and a long road trip to run my biannual Daruna game. More on that another time. After Urúvion's death, the party fell into a bit of disarray. Some wanted to pursue the beastmen and seek revenge; others wanted to continue exploring westward, looking for Blackpool Maze; and a few wanted to turn back. After long discussion and a full day's rest at the abandoned quarry site, the party finally decided to continue west, with the proviso that if they failed to find anything in two days, they'd bend their path to the north and try to find out more about the beastmen. Here's the result (and a revised map of the group's explorations)...

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The Wilds - Ahh! Death!

Ouch, that'll leave a mark. With the fight over except for the cleanup, the party moves to reorganize and find a place they can hole up and recover, hoping their new-found enemies don't return or track them. Unfortunately this plan is interrupted... by death!

Tome of Names - Volume Three Now Available

Tome of Names - Volume Three is now available on DriveThruRPG!

This is the third and final volume of the series. Each Tome of Names volume contains over 370 unique names arranged as three language collections, each with its own flavor and sound. Each language collection is subdivided into given names and surnames arranged in a dice-friendly tables to allow easy random name selection. There's a PDF sample available on DriveThruRPG that includes a bunch of example names, so you can see if they're useful to your campaign.

I hope you'll check it out, or take a look at the entire catalog. Thanks, as always, for reading!

The Wilds - Into the Storm

Missed a turn last week, and there was a bit of chaos as a result. After the first fight with the beastmen the party was pretty beat up. With a second group approaching fast, and a swirling mass of black storm clouds forming over the big old elm tree to the north, they're desperate to find a way out of the predicament. After trying to sneak southwest to gain a positional advantage, the party realizes they've been spotted. They decide to try and use the oddly compact and stationary storm to cover their retreat...