Play By Forum RPG

Post by **Joose** » June 3rd, 2007, 23:29

Just had a thought, not really fleshed it out as an thought, but thought I would see what you guys thought about it, I thought.

anyway....

As the recent venture into old school bearding went quite well, with the SLA stuff, I was wondering whether anyone would be interested in some kind of play by email style game, only using the forum instead of emails. Would be slower than playing over teamspack, obviously, but would mean that we dont have to get everyone together at a specific time for several hours. I have attempted such things in the past with mates (albiet on a one to one basis over emails) and as long as the DM sets it up right it works reasonably well.

Anyway, I was quite fancying DMing a Shadowrun game, and thought this would be a good way to do it without it getting in the way of future SLA game playing. Not thought it through much further than that, but I could put together a simple mission (similar in complexity to the SLA one we did) to test it out, if people are interested. I also have electronical versions of all the current Shadowrun rulebooks, which I could leave somewhere on the floor, im sure.

In case you dont know what Shadowrun is, setting wise: its basically cyberpunk meets D&D. Everything you can find in either of those settings is in Shadowrun, as well as some other stuff. You may meet elves and dwarfs and magic, but the elf may have a robotic arm, the dwarf may specialise in heavy machine guns, and the magic may be being hurled at you by a guy in an expensive suit. Theres lots of corporate backstabbing and nastyness. Also, its all rather amoral: you are not heroes, you are a bunch of mercanarys and criminals. Just to give you an idea of what it can be like, when we used to play it my mate had his character fitted with a powerfull explosive device in his head, rigged to detonate if he died. This was to encourage the rest of us to keep him alive when we were in the field with him. This kind of mutual trust is not uncommon.

Its a bit more complex than SLA, but makes up for that by giving a bit more depth to what you can do with your characters. And dont worry, I will hand-hold all the way through, as and when is needed, so all you will have to do is say "I want to shoot the bastard".

Anyone interested?

shot2bits · Post by **shot2bits** » June 3rd, 2007, 23:53

sounds like it could be good, if you could drop the rulebooks on the floor so i can have a flick through that would be good

Post by **deject** » June 4th, 2007, 0:57

I would be interested for sure.

Post by **FatherJack** » June 4th, 2007, 1:05

sounds interesting

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » June 4th, 2007, 1:05

Sounds fun.

Post by **Joose** » June 4th, 2007, 6:37

hurrah!

I will be using the 4th edition Shadowrun rules, which you can get from various floors. If anyone has any better floorspace for me to stick em, that would be grand. Its a wee bit larger a download than the SLA ones, mind (only just over 100meg though). I shall also dig out my excel character generation sheet, does all the nasty maths stuff for you.

Lateralus · Post by **Lateralus** » June 4th, 2007, 6:44

Oddly, this sounds fun. How much of a beard do you need to be for this? If I start but then drop out does it ruin it for everyone else? Booby-trapping yourself sounds fun though.

Post by **Joose** » June 4th, 2007, 7:08

Lateralus wrote:How much of a beard do you need to be for this?

As long as you dont have a problem with using your imagination for the fights (they tend to go along the lines of "I want to shoot him in the face" "You have shot him in the face. He's dead now." Although I will try and spice it up a bit, especailly when someone gets waaay higher than the need to on a roll. "his head explodes, showering the area in ork flavoured chunky salsa. Hes *very* dead"

As far as the difficulty of the whole thing is concerned...depends. You lot wont need to worry about the rules, i'll cover all that. All you need to know is what your character can do, and a bit of the background to the world (which i'll do a quick round up of whilst im in werk today). The only mild exception to this rule is if you play a magician or a decker (deckers are people who have computers grafted on to their brains, and hack things with thier minds. Basically). If you have one of those characters, you will probably need to know a little more about the rules than the rest of the characters, as its a bit more complicated. Magic in SR is a *lot* more than just "I want to throw a fireball at his face". But even then, I will be on hand to help out at all times, so its no biggie. As long as you know what your character can and cant do it, I'll sort out the "how you actually do it" bit.

If I start but then drop out does it ruin it for everyone else? Booby-trapping yourself sounds fun though.

Not really. As DM, I am essentially God. If a character drops our, I can either take em over so they become NPC's, or write them out of the story somehow.

Woo Elephant Yeah · Post by **Woo Elephant Yeah** » June 4th, 2007, 8:10

Perhaps it's time for 5punk to have a dedicated Beard forum again

Post by **FatherJack** » June 4th, 2007, 9:38

Woo Elephant Yeah wrote:Perhaps it's time for 5punk to have a dedicated Beard forum again

I was going to wait for Joose to say what he wanted - separate forum might be overkill, but a normal thread is in danger of getting spammed or hijacked.

Post by **fabyak** » June 4th, 2007, 10:08

FatherJack wrote:
I was going to wait for Joose to say what he wanted - separate forum might be overkill, but a normal thread is in danger of getting spammed or hijacked.

hijacked?! on 5punk?! frankly i'm amazed it has made it this far on topic

Post by **Joose** » June 4th, 2007, 16:41

yeah, not sure that it really warrants a whole forum unless it expands somehow. Maybe start it off as just a thread, and see how it goes. If it gets big and horrible enough to need its own forum, one can always be made then and everything moved into it.

Post by **Roman Totale** » June 4th, 2007, 17:21

My beard tingles for this in a good way.

Post by **Joose** » June 4th, 2007, 23:13

Get your tingly parts around this then:

http://217.112.95.67/SR/horseporn.rar

Sorry to disappoint, but its actually the sourcebooks, not horseporn. Sorry.

Ballunatic · Post by **Ballunatic** » June 6th, 2007, 15:05

This looks great! Downloading the rules now.

Incidentally, can anyone point me to a floor where I can sweep up the SLA rules, or is it on the Wiki somewhere and I missed it?

Anhamgrimmar · Post by **Anhamgrimmar** » June 6th, 2007, 18:27

Joose wrote:Get your tingly parts around this then:

http://217.112.95.67/SR/horseporn.rar

Sorry to disappoint, but its actually the sourcebooks, not horseporn. Sorry.

YAYS! i was always too pikey to buy my own copy of the rule book, plus my mate who DMed was always wary about letting the bunch of powergamers our group had become knowing what was possible with the rules.

Now i just need someone to find the Cyberpunk2020, Werewolf, and Paranoia rulebooks on teh floor, and i can relive my youth!

shot2bits · Post by **shot2bits** » June 7th, 2007, 2:04

Anhamgrimmar wrote:

YAYS! i was always too pikey to buy my own copy of the rule book, plus my mate who DMed was always wary about letting the bunch of powergamers our group had become knowing what was possible with the rules.

Now i just need someone to find the Cyberpunk2020, Werewolf, and Paranoia rulebooks on teh floor, and i can relive my youth!

id quite like it if someone could drop a copy of the paranoia rulebooks on the floor, as it sounds like a good game

this post was brought to you by a stoned shot2bits

thankyou and goodnight

Post by **Dog Pants** » June 8th, 2007, 19:10

Me please!

Post by **Joose** » June 15th, 2007, 7:42

Righto, ive almost got the character creation guide and easy excel character sheet done (my sheet does all the irritating maths for you). So two questions:

Who will be participating in this endevour? (just so I have rough numbers to work out mission stuff)

Who wants help making their character? (in addition to the guide, so I can make sure to be online when they do it)

I shall be posting the above character creating stuffs tonight, after werk.

Post by **deject** » June 15th, 2007, 8:38

me, on both counts. I downloaded all the source books you posted, but I CBA to read them on account of how fucking slowly it loads each page.