House Rules
So, in general, the point of using an established system is to not have to make up a ton of rules on the fly. However, Pathfinder (and D&D 3e before it) was not designed with play-by-post in mind, but rather face to face in person play. Specifically, what this means is that the rules are meant to allow for a lot of back-and-forth between players and GM, as that's more entertaining and fun in person; however, the nature of play-by-post is such that these very same back-and-forth provisions slow it down considerably.
As a result, I'm gonna try to reduce the back-and-forth to a more manageable level, hopefully in a way that doesn't bothers people too much. Details below.
Saving Throws
So, saving throws are the core defense against magic. They also require a lot of back-and-forth reactive roll, so that if I have a villain cast an AOE spell that targets six players, I then need to wait for six saves. That's just not feasible.
So, what we'll be doing is swapping the rolls around: Saving Throws will now become static defenses instead of rolls, with each being equivalent to whatever Saving Throw bonus the character has +10. Meanwhile, save DCs will become "attack rolls" of a sort - so each DC will instead be reduced by -10, and the result will become a bonus on a d20 roll to hit. Abilities that would cause a save to "roll twice, take best" will instead now affect the attacking roll with a "roll twice, take worst". Instead of saves always succeeding on 20 and failing on 1, it will be the spell roll that always succeed on 20 and always fails on 1.
Hopefully, this will speed up combat considerably, without any meaningful loss of power or otherwise making any ability obsolete - it swaps around the mechanics but leaves everything else untouched.
Perception, Sense Motive, and otherwise not combat reaction rolls.
Again, rolling for perception or sense motive when reacting to a situation can quickly become obnoxious in play by post when it causes players to have to stop their actions and wait for answers, possibly once per post. Plus, it's always seemed weird to me that Perception is an active skill requiring activation when people are perceiving the world around them all the time.
Furthermore, constantly asking for Perception checks is incredibly immersion breaking - I think we're all familiar with the common joke of "gee, I rolled 2 on that Perception check, I wonder if something is sneaking up on us" - and the generally suggested alternative of making players roll at random times is an incredible hassle that, again, is based upon the back-and-forth nature of in person play, and thus doesn't work well at all in play by post.
So, I will instead assume that each player is always constantly taking 10 on their Perception and Sense Motive checks passively, and include in my posts of the environment any information that said result would give them. Since this means that some peple with high perception might be getting more information than others, I will be employing secret lines to make the experience more realistic; for those not in the known, secret lines are lines of dialogue that are only visible to one person, but unlike private lines, to that person they appear as part of the text.
Thus, if you find yourself reading a description were somebody is sneaking behind a fellow PC with knife in hand, and that player post indicates they aren't reacting, consider that you might be the only person in the group who's actually noticed the sneaking assassin.
Now, while this works for speeding up play, it does would limit the ability of player who truly invest in an ability to make use of it, and I don't want that. So, players will still be allowed to roll for their Perception and Sense Motive if they want to, but to do so, they will need to actively engage the setting in an attempt to discern more.
So, when speaking with somebody who they're doubtful of but which their Sense Motive gave them nothing on, it's not just a mere roll, they need to really engage in conversation to try and ferret out their motive thorugh it.
Similarly, when using Perception to check for traps, it will take more than just a glance, and instead require a thorough check of whatever it is they're examining for an extended period of time. I think this will help roleplay a lot; furthermore, if rolling less than 10, then you as players will alreadu know you're not gonna notice anything the original description didn't give you, and that also will speed up play by allowing you to not have to wait for an adjudication of your roll on my part.
Knowledge checks
Now, a lot of information should normally be available to people who have knowledge, and in this case, the approach I had for Perception doesn't really help. However, knowledge roll are less immersion breaking than Perception or Sense Motive. So, what I'll be doing instead is that, whenever you face something that rolling knowledge against would help you with, I'll place a small blurb at the end of the relevant post under spoiler, and atop it, the type and DC of knowledge check needed to know the information under spoiler.
This way, any player can make their own knowledge roll as they read, and if its good enough, they read what's under the spoiler, and can incorporate it into their own post without slow-down; and if it isn't, or they can't make the roll, then they won't. Yes, I realize that this means I'll be trusting those who fail the roll not to read the spoiler, but if I can't trust players to not metagame, well, what's even the point of playing?
Relatedly, I dislike the "absolute value" of money in the game, and the Appraise skill in general, which is a direct result of this mentality. So, I will be doing away with Wealth By Level entirely, and just like in an actual economy, items will have different values depending on where you buy them and who you decide to sell them to - a collector and a wizard will not be interested in paying the same for the same thing. And to tie this to the discussion, appraise as a skill will be dropped, and instead any appraise check will be a knowledge check, with different requirment depending on what value you're interested into - the value of something as an art piece would require Knowledge Nobility, while the value of items of worship would be Knowledge Religion, and so on. Bonus to the Appraise skill will still work, but instead of adding to the no-longer existing skill, they'll become circumstance bonus to the appropriate Knowledge skill check.
Initiative
Again, waiting for everybody to roll initiative before a fight is a disastrously long time-waster. However, the general procedure people use to shorten this (having all players go first in whichever order, then have all the villains go at once) is something that, I feel, somewhat damages the tactical aspect of Pathfinder (which I would expect is one of the things people are playing with the system in the first place), and I'd rather not have to resort to it (although I will if my idea detailed below turn out not to work).
As such, I will instead ask everybody to roll Initiative ten times at character generation, and have this list of current initiative results placed on their sheet. This will give me a list of the order in which character should be going when a combat shows up to post for you all to follow, as well as allowing the extra bonus of not having to ruin the shock of surprise attacks by having to roll initiative before them. Each player will be tasked with removing the initiative numbers from their lists as they get used up, and I will have everybody roll up a new batch periodically. I think this will work much better than any other alternative.
Speaking of posting in combat, as I said I will post the initiative order at the start of every battle; then, players will make their post in the listed order. Each player will get 48 hours after the post before them to make a post of their own; if the player does not make the post, I'll just take control of their character, having them do whatever seems reasonable to me based upon said character's personality, and then move forward with the next person. This should keep things going without too much slow-down.
Posting Speeds
Finally, a note on postings and absences. I am a weird person; I am very patient and can wait forever if I'm told "please wait for me due to (reasons)", but I become ansty very quickly when I get the feeling that I'm being ignored or dismissed - it makes me feel like less of a person and more of a piece of refuse, which isn't a good sensation. When I dedicate myself to something, I put in true commitment, and I want that to be returned.
What this sums up to, is that with me, it is much better to send a one-line message saying "sorry I couldn't post, RL problems, I'll be back next month" than disappearing for random times (even if much shorter than a month) without explanation. So, here's how we're gonna be running things.
The posting speed is "one post every two or so days", and if you can't keep up with that, you shouldn't have joined - and if you suddenly find youself unable to keep up with it after you joined for whatever reason, it is your duty to tell me immediately, so that we can brainstorm a solution to the problem, or some other way arout it.
I will generally poke people if I don't see any posts from anybody in a three days span; if you think your character wouldn't have anything to contribute to a scene but nobody else has posted anything in two days, then make an OOC post stating why you're not going to be posting on the situation, and asking if perhaps somebody else could push things forward - as a GM, I've lost count of the number of times two players were waiting for each other to go first.
Also, when in doubt, just make a post anyway, even if it's just in-character fluff about how your character is reacting with disinterest to the situation, maybe doing something quirky like petting their toad familiar or such. Even if you're not actively contributing to the scene, reminding people that you're around is important, and it helps in making them finish a scene and push it forward if they realize they're hogging the spotlight too much.
If somebody goes two weeks without making a post, I will consider that a sign of disinterest in the game (and lack of politness, since a polite player would just tell me that they're not liking the game anymore, and if also they told me why, I'd be more than willing to try and adress any complaints, but I can't do that if nobody speaks to me), and move things along regardless of wether it'd make sense for their character to go along with it normally; once we reach two months of absence, I'll just consider the player to have left, and start looking for replacements, while treating their character as an NPC from then on - including possibly killing them, if that makes sense in the situation.
On the other hand, if somebody tells me they have trouble and why, I will try to find ways to justify their limited interactions with others in-character by some means, sidelining the character until the player can come back to it, but also making sure they can then jump back into things quickly once they do show up again.
Fundamentally, remember that communication is key, and if you have a problem or disagree with me on something, tell me. Mature, adult people talk about their problems, so as to solve them; disappearing without warnings is a childish way to act. Yeah, this is just a game and not that important a thing, just a bit of silly make believe, but the other players are real and deserve a respectful treatment anyway, even if you dislike them. At least, that's what I think.
I hope that's all clear - if you have doubts or questions, don't hesitate to ask them, and if you think you have suggestions on how to make the game better with some other houserule, don't be afraid to suggest them to me - I might not agree, but you never know unless you try, right? :)
This message was last edited by the GM at 10:21, Mon 08 Apr 2019.