I’ll second Yochai’s channel set up, and Tam’s excellent guide. I think between those two, you’ve got a great basis to begin.
A couple of things that I would add, which build from many of the things Tam discusses:
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A very specific Discord tip: I find it very useful to take advantage of Discord’s ability to link to specific messages to keep notes of important events that happen in the play channel. For example, if an NPC hatches a scheme with a PC. I’ll put that in my notes for that NPC with a link to the message where it happened.
- This is particularly helpful since I follow the approach Tam describes in her guide, and don’t consider anything canon until it appears in the play channel. So, I might have a lot of ideas kicking around in my notes or things discussed OOC, but if I have a link to a message in play, I know that’s something that really happened.
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A much broader note: One of the most distinctive things about PbP is the IRL time scale of the game. There are advantages and disadvantages to that, and it’s good to have those in mind as you play.
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Players will likely come and go, and have greater and lesser participation. Be prepared to be flexible about PCs entering and leaving the fictional spotlight and potentially hanging around the background of the world for a while.
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The long time scale allows for both you and the players to really dig in to the details of the fiction in ways that might be impractical in a live game. This can mean fun complex fight scenes, intricate political maneuvering, or exploration of complicated world.
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As a referee this time scale also allows for a lot of improvisation, and a real embrace of sandbox play - if that’s what you’re into. Say the players go in a direction you never expected, in a PbP game you’ve got hours or even a day or two to start figuring out what happens. You can do a lot of ongoing prep. In this sense, it’s a kind of dream as a ref, you can stop pause and figure out what you want to do, in a way, that’s impossible when the clock is ticking for a live session. Of course, you want to beware of getting lost down a rabbit hole in a way that’s not fun, but you have plenty of time to dig yourself out! lol
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The game I’m just starting to prep now, is specifically an attempt to take advantage of this PbP IRL time scale.
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