PlayByWeb.com | Table of Contents Games that succeed If you've been running a successful board, you don't need to read this. * Be consistant. If you say you're going to post every Saturday, do it. * Start out with a couple of players. Some admins take on ten players at once. How can you possibly give ten players the attention they require? Take two or three to start. Once you're comfortable with them, add more. * Be prepared. Have the adventure planned out ahead of time. It will show. * Create a detailed background. A detailed background will add depth to your game. Many players choose which games they'll join by reading the background. * Reduce the amount of combat in your game. With message boards, where there may be a move a week, combat is slow and quickly grows tedious. * Encourage conversation between characters. Offer EPs for this kind of roleplaying. If one player tries to talk to another, and the other doesn't respond, email him. I'm surprised how often players don't read the moves of other players. * Get good players. I believe the admin makes the game, but if you get bad or disinterested players, you'll never succeed. * Players seem to enjoy roleplaying. Introduce interesting non player characters for them to interact with. When you get them rolling, I've seen boards quickly fill up with messages. Reward good roleplaying with EPs. * Here is an old PBEM FAQ. Creating a board Log in. Click on the CREATE BOARD link. Enter in your title. Select the set of rules for the game and pick a theme. Click on the button when done. Once the board is created, the first thing you should do is to post an introduction. Deleting a board Log in as the board's admin. Click on your board's link, click on SETTINGS. To the right of your board's title, you'll see a DELETE link. Click on it. Customizing your board Log in and click on your board. Click on the SETTINGS link. With this form you can: * Set the PLAYERS WANTED flag. * Set the LURKERS WANTED flag. * Create a character sheet template. * Enter in a background for your game. * Edit the note that prospective players see. * Enter in an external website * Change your theme Lurker friendly boards Some boards have story lines every bit as good and suspenseful as a good novel. Why not share your adventure with the Lurkers? Lurkers are people who like to read adventures but not participate. Lurker friendly boards will use a private group only when necessary and when it's no longer necessary will change the private group back to public. Adding characters There are two ways to add characters. You can do it through the GROUPS link on your board. Or, when the player emails you his REQUEST TO JOIN form, there will be a link in the email you can click on. To add them via the GROUPS link, log in, click on your board, click on the GROUPS link. Click on the group you want to add the character to. Type in the character's name and click on the SUBMIT button. If there is more than one character with the same name, you'll have to include the player's username like smorg@jake where 'smorg' is the character and 'jake' is the username. It's much easier using the email link to add a character. You and your players can have several characters each. If you want, You can create non player characters to post with. Editing characters Log in, click on your board. Find the character in the CAST section and click on edit. Make your changes and click on SAVE. Groups The vast majority of you won't need groups. Just accept the defaults. Groups are hard to understand and harder to explain. Briefly, you, the admin place moves, dicerolls, or players in a group. If someone, player, admin, or lurker does not have access to that group, he can't view it or post. Groups are used to separate your players or to add and remove admins. Most admins will never use them. Here is a couple of examples where groups are useful, say you want to run a tournament, you could create a group for each team. That way, one team couldn't cheat by reading the posts of the other team. Say you're tired of running your game; you could pass it on to a player by moving their username to the admin group. When you create a board, three default groups are created. ADMINS, and PLAYERS. Put all new characters in PLAYERS. If you put them in ADMIN, they can do everything including deleting your board. You can create as many groups as you need. If you place a move in the ADMIN group, only admins can see it or post. Besides posts, groups also affect whether or not players can view dice rolls or pass notes to other players. EXAMPLE1: Say your players split up. GroupA goes down to the docks while GroupB searches the castle. Create two groups and name them GroupA and GroupB. Move players into their respective groups. When you post a move select GroupA or GroupB. Now, GroupA can't see GroupB's posts and visa versa. EXAMPLE2: Say your board has an adult theme. Say all your players are in the PLAYERS group. When you post a move, select the PLAYERS group. Now, lurkers can't view your posts. Changing a group to private You can change a group from private to public and back again. When a group is set to public, anyone can read the posts. When a group is set to private, only the members of the group can read the posts. To make a group public or private, log in, click on your board, click on groups and click on the PRIVATE or PUBLIC link. Posting As an admin, you'll post in two places: moves and replies. You'll first need to post a move so that players, and you, can reply to it. Log in, click on your board and click on the POST MOVE button. A dialog will ask you to pick a character and group to post for. Most admins will want to pick the EVERYONE group. Enter in your move, review it and you're done. To reply to the move you just entered, click on the move's link. Scroll to the bottom of the form and click on the REPLY button. You can't pick a group here--a move can only have one group--but you can post for yourself or a player. Note that you can edit or delete posts. Only admins can edit or delete posts. If you delete the top post, the entire move is deleted. HTML You can put HTML into your posts. HTML, hypertex markup language is the language used to create webpages. To affect some text, you surround it with 'tags'. Tags always consist of a command surrounded by the less than and greater than characters. Note how the closing tag has a slash. Some useful tags are: <I>italics</I> italics <B>bold</B> bold <U>italics</U> underline Another useful tag is the preformmated tag. Normally, browsers format the text much like this paragraph, tabs and double spaces are stripped out. The preformmated command stops the browser from changing the text. To preserve your formatting, surround your text with the <PRE> and </PRE> tags.
<P>This is an example of text without prefrommatting tags.
<PRE> This
is an example of
using the preformatted
tags.
</PRE>
ASCII maps
Sometimes a map can really help your players figure out what's going on. I
use letters to make up a map. I surround the map with the <PRE> and </PRE>
tags.
For example:
<PRE>
o o
T o
T
i T k
U
o=orc; T=tree; i=Isacc; k=Keldorn; U=Urox
</PRE>
Now the players can get an idea of how close they are to the monsters or if
there is some cover nearby. The tags won't show up when you use them, I used
a trick to get them to show up here.
Lately, I've been using a coordinate system so that players can specify
were they want their characters to be.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789
a
b wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwDDDwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
c g
d g g
e
f
g k
h L
i
j
k=Kyle; L=Laso Havrim; g=Hill Giant; w=wall; D=big door
Now, a player can tell you which giant he wants to attack. For example,
'Kyle attacks the giant at Hc'. To find were Hc is, take the first letter 'H'.
Come across until you find an 'H'. Now come down until you reach row 'c'.
If you did it right, you'll find the giant closest to Kyle.
Players can also use the coordinate system to tell you where they want their
character to be. Before I used the coordinate system, they would get mad
because I put their characters in the worst places--or so they thought.
Sending notes
Log into the site and click on your board's link. Click on the PASS NOTE
link. Hear you can read, edit or delete your notes. To send a note, click
on the COMPOSE link. Select the person you want to post for (You can fake
a note from a user to another.). Select all the people you want to send
the note too. If you have a covert character infiltrating the group, you
might want to email them too, just to deceive your players. Type in your
message and click on the send button.
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