Hello and welcome, once again, to The Ultimate Play-by-Post Blog. GaryD20 here with Part 4 of “Where Can You Play-by-Post?” This is the second to last entry in this series (what I’ve dubbed the “Ok” series) of introductory articles covering the very basics of the play-by-post medium. I hope you have found this series of posts interesting and informative. After all, that’s the whole purpose of the GaryD20 blog, to be your go to source for all things play-by-post. So, without further ado, lets jump right in and discover three more PbP sites where you can get your game on!
Giant in the Playground
Giant in the Playground is a forum-based site much like Tavern Keeper and Myth Weavers, et al. Overall this is a nice-looking site with a friendly and active community. The site itself is pretty simple and straight forward with few bells and whistles. And that isn’t intended as a knock on the site at all. In most instances, simpler is almost always better. At least in my book.
It does have a dice roller and the ability to add images, maps, etc. Other than that, this is about all I can say of the site. I’ve just recently discovered it and have yet to do more than sign up and poke around for a bit. It is definitely one that I intend to give a go of. And of course, you’ll be able to read all about it here, when I do.
Don’t feel like waiting for my review? Check it out for yourself here: https://forums.giantitp.com/forum.php
Ongoing Worlds and Sufficient Velocity
These two sites, Ongoing Worlds and Sufficient Velocity, although play-by-post sites, are more in the vein of collaborative storytelling than traditional play-by-post type games. What is collaborative story telling? Well, in a nutshell, collaborative storytelling is when two or more people come together to tell a story.
While you can certainly play common RPG games such as Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and Star Wars collaboratively you are not limited to just published RPG worlds and rule sets. You could create and play a character in your favorite TV show setting for instance. Just about any character type, story idea, and setting you come up with can be played as a collaborative story.
How can this be, you ask? Well, I’m glad you did!
Most collaborative storytelling games are just that, storytelling. They are very heavy on story and very light on rules and mechanics. In fact, some collaborative storytelling games are just players deciding among themselves what happens in any given scene and then each writing out and role playing what they decided on. No rules, mechanics, stat blocks, or dice rolls. As you can see, with this type of game and style of play you could literally play any setting, world, character, time period, etc. If you can dream it, you can create it.
There are also published games that are geared more toward the collaborative storytelling style of play. Some of these games are Fiasco, PrimeTime Adventures, FATE Core, Dungeon World, and Torchbearer to name a few. These games are stripped down systems, light on rules and with story focused mechanics.
Although not exactly my bottle of beer, if this sounds like something you’d be interested in then give these sites and systems a look. They just may be what you are looking for. Their links are below:
Ongoing Worlds: http://www.ongoingworlds.com/ and
Sufficient Velocity: https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/
Well, that’s it for this post. We’ll be closing out this series of introductory articles on “Where Can You Play-by-Post” in Part 5. From there it’ll be on to bigger and better things as we learn more about this thing we call Play-by-Post. Until then, roll high, roll often, and get your game on!