A lot of my friends do play by post games, but none of them ever use a system or dice. It is completely shared story telling. Starwars is by far the most popular topic. One of the guys I know is a mod for a forum, mostly in charge of whatever group Boba Fett (obviously not a starwars person myself here). He often complains that without dice, it takes a lot of work to keep people honest and fresh, and that sometimes it can be hard to get a group going that is nothing but people who let each others characters interact in an equal way (not trampling them in the story), and not just repeating themselves.

Funny thing, this guy is my hard core Palladium GM from back in the day and when I told him about forge mechanics, he was pretty revolted.

I've been playing the Open Quest PbP for a while now (which is my first), and it is really good. The only thing that isn't great about it is how long combat takes. We've been in one fight for a very long time. I've looked up some other PbP games and it seems to be the norm.

What way is there around it? If a table top game combat normally takes five combat rounds, it is going to take probably 5 days online, assuming everyone playing checks the board in their initiative order, each day.

I really thought about this when I just read that Benoist is going to run an AD&D game online. I can't imagine how long that would take as a play by post. I mean, it sounds really fun, but it would take forever to get the action moving along.

I'd like to try my hand at running something PbP, using the Invisible Castle dice system, but I was wondering if there is a system that resolves combat between characters or sides with a single check.

For example, the GM says, "The Darkelf draws his sword and attacks you. He has a skill of 80, and you have a defense of -25, so he has to get a 55% or lower to beat you. I rolled a 72, so you win the fight."

The player replies "Great, when he lunges at me I step back out of the way, then dip under two more of his nimble slashes. While he recovers, I take his throat with my sword.

Wiping my blade clean, I go on to dadadada"

I've done a lot of free form role playing myself, on Ancient Sites, particularly Celtic role playing. That's actually how I met my better half.

Now, I don't know about any system that does what you ask, BUT:

What you could do is use RuneQuest's resistance table to express probabilities, though. You basically have stats for the PCs and the NPCs in the 1-20 range. Same thing about skills or abilities. All 1-20. You cross reference an Active ability score/skill/ability against a Passive one or a Difficulty number expressed between 1-20, and that basically gives you a chance of success expressed as a percentile. Active character rolls. Boom. Done.

Here is a good one for Trollman, if he is so willing, to help with.

If I remember my statistics right, anything more than two standard deviations from center on a standard distribution is what? only going to come up 5% of the time? Or is that 3 standard deviations? I don't have my Statistics book here.

I was thinking that a good die mechanic for a single roll system would be a die pool, like 10d10 (your just going to type it into the Invisible Castle and get numbers back anyway). Your average hero could roll 10 dice and count successes (number over 5) and compare them to the needed number of successes required to beat a certain villain.

Villains, tasks, challenges, and so on could be rated by needed successes. Maybe goblins require so few successes that 98% of the time on a bell curve, you will hit it with 10d10. Maybe really nasty bosses, like a dragon, will only be 80% to beat if all of the players add their successes together. After one set or rolls, if they fail to meet the combined number of successes needed for the encounter, they lose (whatever that means).

I'd have to figure out something like the 3e CR system, that scales the number of needed successes. For example, if a dragon takes 10 successes, and a goblin takes 2, then 5 goblins would be as hard as a dragon if I just added it together. Maybe 5 goblins are 3 successes.

However that is figured out will have a huge impact on how powerful the heroes are.

Quote from: Benoist;414348I've done a lot of free form role playing myself, on Ancient Sites, particularly Celtic role playing. That's actually how I met my better half.

Now, I don't know about any system that does what you ask, BUT:

What you could do is use RuneQuest's resistance table to express probabilities, though. You basically have stats for the PCs and the NPCs in the 1-20 range. Same thing about skills or abilities. All 1-20. You cross reference an Active ability score/skill/ability against a Passive one or a Difficulty number expressed between 1-20, and that basically gives you a chance of success expressed as a percentile. Active character rolls. Boom. Done.

That would work pretty well I think. I do like Open Quest a lot.

Just add stakes setting and you rediscovered narr' conflict resolution.

I'm so going to denounce you to Pundy.

"La délation paye mais la fellation égaye" Pierre Desproges

To avoid both the total lack of structure and a snail's pace, I think light systems work best - something without a lot of back and forth in a given round. Fixed round structure and iniative also means that at any given time, you're usually waiting on a single person to respond and are stuck until they do.
 
For pbp, instead of an I hit/you hit system, I prefer something where both sides roll and the loser takes damage according to the difference. Risus and Fudge can work well. I'm in a pbp of Lacuna part 1 adn there isn't a tone of dice rolling and a roll means success/failure for an entire task so it's gone pretty smoothly.
 
You also have to give up on waiting for everyone. I've had some success with a format I call Thirty Minutes Til Midnight. The gm builds a scene that will come to a game ending climax within 30 minutes. Then, each day of posting represents a minute of action in game time. If someone has posted enough to take at least a minute, they need to shut up and let others post. If someone didn't post for a few days, their character was standing around watching for a few minutes. The game ends before people get burned out.
 

Quote from: Cranewings;414352If I remember my statistics right, anything more than two standard deviations from center on a standard distribution is what? only going to come up 5% of the time? Or is that 3 standard deviations? I don't have my Statistics book here.

A normal distribution has a 95% CI with 1.96 standard deviations.  That's 2.5% on either extreme.

Quote from: boulet;414364"La délation paye mais la fellation égaye" Pierre Desproges

LOL! Good man. This made me laugh. Huge fan of Pierre Desproges here.

Got me wondering if Mythic wouldn't work very well here. It even includes levels of success/failure and unexpected events.
Hummmm...
=

Quote from: Cranewings;414346I'd like to try my hand at running something PbP, using the Invisible Castle dice system, but I was wondering if there is a system that resolves combat between characters or sides with a single check.[/I]

This was going to be one of my suggestions.  My other suggestion is how I usually run my pbp games.  Instead of a system that resolves combat quickly, why not run several rounds at once?  I do this often, asking for each PCs general tactics and intentions at the start of the fight, only stopping for player input if battlefield conditions change enough to warrant a change in tactics, such as:

-you kill the enemy you are fighting (duh)
-you start getting low on HP (1/2 or less)
-reinforcements arrive (either allies or enemies)
-other significant event (tunnel you are in collapses, the gates of the castle finally break, etc)

During important "boss" fights, I may slow it down a bit (or I may not)

Quote from: Technomancer;414484This was going to be one of my suggestions.  My other suggestion is how I usually run my pbp games.  Instead of a system that resolves combat quickly, why not run several rounds at once?  I do this often, asking for each PCs general tactics and intentions at the start of the fight, only stopping for player input if battlefield conditions change enough to warrant a change in tactics, such as:

-you kill the enemy you are fighting (duh)
-you start getting low on HP (1/2 or less)
-reinforcements arrive (either allies or enemies)
-other significant event (tunnel you are in collapses, the gates of the castle finally break, etc)

During important "boss" fights, I may slow it down a bit (or I may not)

I like that idea in some ways, but in others it just feels like putting the character on autopilot, and doing so you don't get to type out the scene.

I feel like one of the big advantage of PbP over table top is that it encourages people to paint a much more vivid scene. If you don't get to write everything that happens, even if it is all at once, I think your being robbed of the best part.

Quote from: Cranewings;414346I really thought about this when I just read that Benoist is going to run an AD&D game online. I can't imagine how long that would take as a play by post. I mean, it sounds really fun, but it would take forever to get the action moving along.

Just commenting on this: yes, play-by-post is generally a lot slower than face-to-face game play, but it's a different beast of its own, where you can care for little details that just fly by in actual table play. I think AD&D is one of the best systems in this regard, because it provides some structure, while remaining relatively light on the players' side.

So. I'm going to actually run Ptolus, but not as written. A Ptolus in the past of the city-as-written, which would reflect AD&D, just like the city-as-written reflects 3rd edition D&D. I'm going through the background right now and trying to decide which time period would be most appropriate for what I have in mind. But that aside, my point is that I intend to start with a short adventure, relatively small in scope, manageable, so that game play can either come to a natural end after a while, or grow further along if we want to play some more. It's all in the way it's managed.

Brainstorming about this right now. It'll be on the RPG Site, btw.

Hey, can I play? I'm going to write up a fighter with a tower shield and full plate as soon as I can get it. I'll fight with a club and borrow money from other players if they will let me. See if I can't get a high stat in Dex as well.

Nothing to slow down play by post than a fighter with a 24 dex at first level dealing 1d4+1 damage

Seriously though, sounds pretty cool.

Quote from: Cranewings;414511Hey, can I play?

Of course! That's why I mentioned it's going to be here on the RPG Site in the first place.

Quote from: Benoist;414516Of course! That's why I mentioned it's going to be here on the RPG Site in the first place.

Then where is the goddamn thread already?

Oh hell, I'm doing it all wrong.

Ben, I wanna play too.

Quote from: Benoist;414516Of course! That's why I mentioned it's going to be here on the RPG Site in the first place.

I might be up for it, depending on logistics.