Online Roleplay

Online Gaming
Even somebody who's been role-playing for several years might be puzzled by the idea of role-playing over the Internet. After all, usually you play a game with a group of friends, perhaps around the kitchen table. Over the Internet, players may be separated by thousands of miles and several time zones. The face-to-face role-playing that traditionally takes place is obviously impossible. How, then, is it done?

The key lies in message based play. Instead of verbally communicating moves and actions, the entire game is done by writing messages. This has actually been done for years, from the very beginning of the hobby, by sending normal mail back and forth in so-called Play by Mail (PBM) games. With the birth of the Internet, e-mail replaced mail to give us Play by E-mail (PBeM) games, and now, the latest incarnation, Play by Web (PBW) or Play By Post (PBP) games.

If you've ever role-played before, one obvious disadvantage quickly becomes apparent. Time. And it's true that role-playing games played in this manner take a lot more time to finish than do face-to-face games. A lot more time. Whereas a typical scenario being played around the kitchen table might take a few hours, a game played through messages can take months or even years to finish. Normally only a couple moves can be posted per week, and if you consider that a typical combat encounter could have 10+ moves--well, you can do the math.

So why would anybody do it? There are a couple reasons. The obvious reason is that if you can't find players in your area message based play may be your only alternative. There are however more subtle reasons than just necessity.

Message based play can actually have several advantages over normal, verbal role-playing. Typically the quality of the games is better in message based play. The players and the moderator all have more time to contemplate moves. Because moves are so precious (with only a few per week), more detail is put into each one. In addition, many techniques have been used to get around the time problem. For instance, instead of doing a combat sequence round by round, the entire combat is usually done in one turn. In general, each move will span more game time than a typical move around the kitchen table.

So you can see that message based role-playing offers some advantages over traditional gaming even if it does have disadvantages. Message based playing will always have devoted fans, simply because the quality of the games really can't be really matched. If you're interested in giving message based play a try then join one of the games on this site, either a forum based game or a threaded game.