GuidePlay-by-post
Play-by-post
Boards hold threads and a thread is a scene. People post into it when they can, which might be twice an evening or twice a week, and the site’s job is to make sure nobody has to reread forty posts to work out whether it is their go.
Starting a scene
Any member can start a thread on any board. Give it a title that says where and when it is — The Ashfen road, after dark beats Chapter 4 — because the title is what everybody else scans in a list of nine open scenes.
A thread has three states. Open takes posts. Locked and archived both stop new posts and keep everything already written, readable forever; the difference is what you mean by it. Only the people running the campaign can change that.
Writing a post
The composer has one control that matters more than any other: whether this is in character or out of character. They render differently, and an OOC aside about next Tuesday dressed up as something your character said is the fastest way to ruin a scene. Use OOC freely; that is what it is for.
In character- What your character says and does. Attributed to the character you picked.
Out of character- You, talking to the table. Scheduling, rules questions, apologies for the delay.
@kira- Names somebody and notifies them, wherever they are.
Preview- Renders the post exactly as it will appear before you commit to it.
Posts are markdown, same as the wiki. You can edit your own afterwards — the post is marked as edited and the previous text stays available, so a correction is a correction and not a quiet rewrite of what somebody replied to.
Your draft is saved as you type, in your own browser, for a fortnight. Close the tab, lose the connection, hit the back button by accident: the words are offered back the next time you open the same box. Nothing about a draft reaches the server — it is not a post, it is not in anybody’s unread count, and no moderator can see it.
Rolling inside a post
A post can carry rolls. Add them in the composer as expressions — the swing and the damage, the perception check — and they are rolled by the server when the post is submitted and rendered underneath it. That is one action rather than a post and then a separate roll that has to be matched up with it afterwards.
You send the expression, never a result. How the dice work.
A fight that takes a fortnight
Any thread can carry an initiative order. Everybody rolls in, the order is derived from the rolls rather than stored as a list, and whose turn it is lives on the thread.
People join the order
Each player rolls initiative for their character. Somebody who joins three days late slots into the right position rather than being stuck on the end.
The GM adds whatever they are fighting
A name typed into the box, or something out of the bestiary — which is worth the extra click, because a monster added that way rolls its own initiative from its own Dexterity and arrives carrying its armour class and hit points, so there is no second tally being kept off-screen.
Play advances one turn at a time
Hit points can be adjusted on the tracker as it goes, and anybody who drops is marked. Whoever is up is shown on the thread and, more usefully, on the front page of the person whose turn it is.
Not losing threads
Following. Every thread can be followed or muted. Posting in one follows it for you automatically; muting means you hear nothing about it except being named directly, which is the right setting for a scene you are watching but not in.
Waiting for you. The front page, signed in, leads with the threads that actually want something from you, in this order — and only these three, because a list of everything is a list nobody reads:
Your turn- The initiative order is on you. A fact.
You were named- Somebody addressed you and you have not read it. A request.
Moved on- A scene you are in has new posts. Neither.
Unread counts sit on the group switcher in the header and on each board, so you can see where the week’s activity was without opening anything.
Gone quiet. The three above are about you. This one is about the table: a scene with no post for 7 days is marked on its board and listed on the campaign’s front page, with who it is waiting on — whoever the initiative order has landed on, or whoever wrote in it and has not written since the last post. A scene nobody but its author ever answered says that instead.
Everybody in the campaign sees it, not only the person running it. Play by post rarely dies of an argument; it dies because a scene stops, everybody reads the silence as no news, and three weeks later nobody wants to be the one to restart it. If only the GM could see that, unsticking four scenes would take four conversations — and the person a scene is waiting on is the one person who can move it without being asked.
It counts posts, not visits
Whether anybody has read a thread is nobody else’s business, and this site keeps no record of it that another member can see. A scene is waiting on somebody because they have not written, never because they have not looked — and writing sorry all, busy week out of character counts. Saying you are still here is the thing that stops a table assuming otherwise.
If something needs reporting
There is a report link under posts you did not write. It goes to the moderators of that campaign, and site staff have a queue of their own for anything larger than one table.