Hey All,

Not sure if this is even the right section to post this, a few IRL friends of mine and I decided to play some D&D on here as we were having trouble finding a day during the week that would work for all of us. I was asked to run the session as the Dungeon Master, which I am more than happy to do. That being said I have never done that online, I managed to create a game session I believe and kinda figured out how to add players and upload stuff, but I have a few noob questions:

- What kind of threads are a must for the group to communicate well?
- What are groups that appear next to threads I make, and what is their purpse? (See pic: http://prntscr.com/qr15qm)
- Anything else I should know/do that I am not even aware off?

Cheers,
Yaco

howdy... On the main page  at the top left is 'start your own game'.

  set it up, get an Ad asking for players  ( you can bumb your ad once a week, there is a timer   on the Ad  page of your ad, that will tell you when yuou can bump it..i bump mine every week!)

 anyway  once you set up the add..people   who are inetredt  will  contact you  in a PM on that game  ( the game will have a Link in the top box to go to the GAme , and they can ask to join)

 if you only want to play with your buddies?..  you can still start the  game , don't have to sue the ad..but you'll need to contact you friend  by R-mail to copy and paste  the  link to yuou game

 my advice?.. set the game up ( rules   , type of game ect)  put up the add when that is done..make sure you click "platers wanted".. and  go from there...

In reply to donsr (msg # 2):

The rMail is something I had no idea about, thanks!

it works pretty good, I rarlky use it, I had  a friend from an old site come here and I talked him through set up using R-mail

 your main page  will have  'rmail' lit up red  when you get a new one.

Hello!

Many games have Out of Character Threads (OOC) for discussion about the game outside the regular posting, or sometimes just to chat in general with each other. rMail and Private Lines in regular posts can also be used for some of that.

Groups are like private rooms you can cloister your players into. Group 0 is always public, all other groups are private to those players/ characters who are assigned to them. You can assign to multiple Groups as well. Z is a completely isolated Group, I believe, but someone will correct me if I'm wrong, as it's been a while since I used it.

For more info, if you click on the FAQs link in the top right corner of any page next to Help, you will see a FAQs for New Users and there's a ton of stuff in there that should be really helpful to you.

Fir the game I just started, I have a thread for House Rules (which also details which of the Optional rules in the DMG we're using).  There's a separate thread about Character Creation, too - with a list of which books they can use, how to figure out attributes and hitpoints, and so forth.

I also have a thread about the world itself, detailing where a few nations are, a little bit of what they're like, what their money is like, and so forth.  Players can use this to develop their own characters even more.

I have another thread about the Keep, and the places in it - so I won't have to type the same description up over and over.  Nor will I have to explain to the players what the prices in the Tavern are, or how the Inn is laid out.  The players can see it, right there. (And I can cut-and-paste into any active scene we're playing through, if it seems necessary.)

And I have a thread that is labelled "RPOL User Manual", with some helpful tips and advice .... all of the players have never played here on RPOL before, whereas I have, so, it seemed like a good idea.  Also, I'm using the "Language Groups" mechanic, so I explained that in this thread, too.

Finally, I JUST opened up the first actual scene in the game, in a thread titled [IC] The Adventure Begins!.  There's also a thread titled [OOC] The Adventure Begins!, for "table talk" things related to the current scene in the game.

...

Note, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO IMITATE ALL THAT.  I am perpetually over-prepared for everything!  :D

But, it gives you a good idea of the kinds of things you might want to do - one or two of them, anyway - for your own game.


That's just to indicate which of those groups the thread was posted to.

You can use Groups to limit access to threads, and the information in them, to only some of your players.

For example, I've just kicked off a game with four players; one of them asked if RPOL had a place to write down notes, etc, so ... I created a "Character Journal" thread.  I put it in a group that only he is assigned to.

Each of the players got one of their own threads just like it.

Now, they have a place to write things down, that the other players can't see.

I can also use that group for any "only they know this happened" things, later in the game.

And finally, I keep an unused group all for myself, as a "staging area".  That first-scene-ever thread?  I had it written out, with images and everything, weeks ago, just waiting for everyone to finish their characters and be ready to play.  I posted it to Group A, which no player is assigned to; they're all in Groups 0, 1, and one of C-D-E-F.

Tonight, all I had to do, was edit those two first-scene threads, to move them from Group A, to Group 1 ... and my game had officially begun! :)



READ THE FAQ.  There's a lot, a LOT, of useful information in there.  Like, tons of it.

But don't think you have to use everything.  Start small, and build on that, little by little.

...

...

Edit to add: if you want to see what my hyper-organized game looks like, here's a screen-snippet:  https://i.imgur.com/OTlbHvU.jpg
This message was last edited by the user at 05:50, Wed 22 Jan 2020.

They've covered most of it here.  I'm speaking from the perspective of a player, rather than a DM (I hardly even play D&D anymore), but these are the things I find most useful:

--OOC thread.  Whether it's to ask questions about the current situation, clarify information between players, make game announcements, or just chatter about life, I've found one of these threads in almost every game I've been in, and I feel like it creates better chemistry within the whole group (which is, to me, the real secret to making a game work...if there's bad chemistry, it doesn't matter what else you've done right.)

--Rules.  You may be playing a published system, but it never hurts to have a place accessible to everyone where you explain what rules you're using (even if it's just to clarify which edition of D&D you're going to run...there's still the question of 'are we just using the PHB and DMG, or are there any supplemental publications that we can draw from?'), any house rules you've adopted, any 'shorthand rules' you decide on (because simplifying dice rolls can make a huge difference in game tempo), setting details (which is often in its own thread), etc.

--History/Background.  Unless you're using a published source, and all of your players have that source available, you may find one of these very helpful (depends on the game you're running, of course...if your characters have no way of knowing the history of the world then there's no sense writing one out for reference, unless it's your own.)

--RTJ (request to join) information.  Where you're planning on running this for some already-selected friends, this may not be applicable, but I think you have to have one to enable some site features (I could be wrong, and if I am, someone will clarify).  But if you plan on ever opening your game up to additional players, you'll want some information out there about what you expect from anyone who wants to join your game.  This can be anything from specific details about what types of characters you're looking for to 'code words' that should be used in the players' RTJ messages to demonstrate that they have, in fact, read all the game instructions so you can be relative confident that they're on board with the kind of game you're choosing to run.

IC thread(s).  This is where the meat-and-potatoes of the playing happens.  How you choose to utilize them is a matter of personal preference:  I'm in games where the GM specifically requests that there be absolutely no OOC content in the IC threads, and I'm in games where just about every other post has breaks of character to highlight skills used, or list results from the dice roller, etc.  Do whatever works for you.

RE: Groups.  It's been touched on already, but Groups are a way to filter content within the game to specific players.  If, for instance, you have two groups in your game (say, the party splits to accomplish two objectives at the same time) and you don't want each group to know what the other is doing, you can put everybody in one group in Group A, and the other in Group B.  They are all still part of Group 0, which is the default group that EVERYONE in the game belongs to...but when posts start happening in a thread that is only accessible to Group A, nobody in Group B will see it (unless you made someone a member of both groups).  This is also helpful if you're running a game with Adult content, since site policy is that any Adult materials must not be accessible by the general public.  Anyone who stumbles onto your game can read everything in Group 0 threads, or threads that are flagged Public...but they can't read anything else.

And Group Z is kind of a 'holding pen'...any characters in Group Z can't post, except in PMs to the GM of the game (if my memory serves.  I don't use it and have never been in it, so...)  A lot of GMs use Group Z as a 'timeout space' for disruptive players, or they'll keep game notes and such there for ready reference.  But don't use it for anyone you want to be active in your game.

You can also coordinate with people via non-RPOL options...the friend who introduced me to RPOL messaged back and forth with me on MySpace (which tells you something about how long I've been here), until I got the hang of how things worked here.  But that was where he told me which game to join, and I got details about what I needed to do to join it.  (I have also had people contact me via rMail to ask me if I was interested in joining their game...and a former GM contacted me on Facebook to ask if I was interested in joining her new game.  So don't feel like you MUST only use RPOL resources to get the job done.)

This message was deleted by the user at 16:37, Wed 22 Jan 2020.

This message was deleted by the user at 16:37, Wed 22 Jan 2020.

Thank you all for the great tips and insight. I am sure my groups experience is going to be incredibly better with all the setups I will make with the info you all gave me!

Have fun buddy... make your game fun, keep it active, and the players will come.

The main point of RPOL.net (and play by post in general) is that it can easily be asynchronous. There are platforms like roll20.net and fantasy grounds which allow live play, but PBP is all about posting and then waiting a bit.

Some games only post once a week, some post multiple times a day. But with this system, and website, you don't have to all have time at the same time. One can post at midnight, another read it at 8am and respond, on and on :D

  I will state, for my part, this is the ebst sight I have  ever been a part of... I am one one other site now..RPG Crossing..I am only there  for  one game, that as on another site years ago and the site  fell apart... Rpg crossing isn painfully slow, and hard to find a game..I have a  direct link to that one game..and its barely all I can stand.
'

I talked a  player/GM from that same game to starting on here, and Helped him out in Rmail..he got his game started..but RL has snatched him away.

This site is clean.. the Mods  police  it.. and rarely   is there any  bumps in the round...Like any Video game, once you get your 'controls  down' you'll master this site.

 others  are too  think..and no personal way to make it yours"... here?  you have lists  for your game... games you are in..and the  community thing  with   wanted player ads and  Community  posts, such as this.

I know that it was mentioned once in passing, but it's important enough that I will reiterate it here by itself.  Make sure that you and your friends all are aware of the rules and restrictions for posting, particularly those that differentiate a general game from a mature or an adult one.  The adult tag allows for the most leniency in content, although there are things which are always a hard no.  The only catch for an adult game is that new accounts cannot start or access an adult game for two weeks, and you must be of the age of majority of your place of residence, or 18 years old (whichever is higher).