In PBP is a Sandbox filled with Quicksand?

Neurotic

I plan on living forever. Or die trying.
Same goes here. I can't imagine my wife coming on here to let you all know about it if I were to suddenly pop off. If I ever disappear, that will be the only reason. Otherwise if I were to quit, I'd let you know.

Sorry to bring down the mood! But it's food for thought.
There was exactly this situation some years ago, when a long-time poster disappeared and then reappeared...only to say "This not X, this is his wife. I'm just letting you know he passed away and I'm closing this account." Real bummer

And when there was a hurricane in NY, one long-time judge disappeared. He re-appeared later, everything was fine, just work with some housing damage...but still, it was...unpleasant...to wait for that news.
 

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I've been PBPing on the DFRPG site (I think it's paranetonline these days) since 2010ish? I think my longest game started in 2014. There's one game I'm in that a single scene took close to a year. I don't get it. I, sometimes, feel that my posts are the only thing nudging the games along. Generally, I like the slower pace of a pbp to make decisions but, if posts happen too infrequently, it's difficult to remember what is happening in the game or even remember the personality of your character.

There was only one time that a combat was taking forever - MONTHS - to complete so we got on discord and hashed it out in a couple hours just to move on. This has only happened once.

My primary tactic is this: If I don't have time/energy to do a big post, I'll post dice rolls and a quick explanation - even a couple sentences - just to keep things moving. I might go back later and fill it out when I have time (with the GM's permission). or let the GM narrate the results.

Ghosting, I don't understand. I do, sometimes, wonder if people have died. I've had several long-time, consistent posters just stop to never post again. Which makes me sad.

For one game we set up a discord server just to take on a lot of the OOC stuff. This has been super useful for the slow, occasional posters. You can hash out decisions, answer questions etc... very quickly and then get your post up.

In the 2014 game, the GM is very good and giving us good hooks. 'This is what's happening in this scene, what do you do'. While it feels railroady, it's a FATE game so it's easier to throw compels at players and the GM has a good idea what we want to do because of Aspects and what-not.

I've never played a pbp D&D
 
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Thomas Shey

Legend
Honestly, the more meaningful tactical decision making an RPG combat system has, the less you probably want to try and run it PbP; either it will take forever or the combats will suffer.
 

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