Play by Post

A collection of 54 posts

3.5e

Game Looking for Players: Breaking the Siege

GeneCortess has a new game up in the 3.5e section; Breaking the Siege. A small town is dying; and your character is one of a small group who made it through unmolested. To save the town, or die with it? That’s up to you. More details can be

donations

Good news, everyone!

Hello, fellow Portalites!The search for a new hosting provider has finally borne fruit, we’ve found a suitable host, with Andi-approved hosting services. As you are all aware, this is not a minor expense, so any help you all can give us in paying for server rent and all

Barsoom

Kickstarters of Note

Hello, fellow Portalites! Welcome to another round of Kickstarters of Note! It’s been a little slow of late, which is both good and bad – good for the budget, bad for my ability to wave cool Kickstarters around. But, I did find a couple of very interesting looking offerings, one

5e

Kickstarters of Note!

Hello, fellow Portalites!Christmas has passed, and I hope you have all come out of it with your sanity more or less intact. As always, I have a whole bunch of new Kickstarters in progress for you to look at!Mostly things I hope would be of use to those

5e

Looking for Players: Swords of Justice (5e)

Cruvis is currently looking for one player to join his 5e game, Swords of Justice. This game has been running for 15 years. He is in need of a player who is cool with the pace, reading, and writing involved. He is willing to accept new character concepts into the

3.5e

GM's Tip of the Week

Yup, we’re still looking at classes, and we’re up to the Cleric. A more accurate name for the class would probably be ‘Priest’ – cleric and clerk have some very similar roots, after all – but either way, this class is the first one most fantasy gamers will think of

campaign building

GM's Tip of the Week

I’mma be honest, these are getting increasingly hard to write; my own experience is not so broad I can easily mine it for helpful tidbits for everyone else. However, I’m not up to kitty memes yet!Player-driven campaigning for fun and giggles. Working on the assumption that you

Design

GM's Tip of the Week

So, we’ve been quiet on this front; if anyone has any suggestions or requests for new GM Tips, please, speak up! This week I’m going to talk about building a dungeon; not so much the nitty-gritty of designing and balancing an encounter, although we’ll cover that eventually

Game Mastery

GM's Tip of the Week

Hey guys. We’ve talked a bit about consistency and pacing, but haven’t really covered what a GM should do in that between moment of losing a player and finding a new one. Obviously, you shouldn’t just stop; a game needs to continue. One solution is to simply

Game Mastery

GM's Tip of the Week

Cruvis has written a series of GM’s Tips: Ten Things Every DM Should Know About Running a Play-By-Post Adventure, and is sharing them with us as a guest blogger! Please direct questions, commentary and kudos to him. This week’s tip is: Transparency This one was a huge learning

Game Mastery

GM's Tip of the Week

Cruvis has written a series of GM’s Tips: Ten Things Every DM Should Know About Running a Play-By-Post Adventure, and is sharing them with us as a guest blogger! Please direct questions, commentary and kudos to him. This week’s tip is: Writing and Storytelling over Mechanics Play by

Game Mastery

GM's Tip of the Week

Cruvis has written a series of GM’s Tips: Ten Things Every DM Should Know About Running a Play-By-Post Adventure, and is sharing them with us as a guest blogger! Please direct questions, commentary and kudos to him. This week’s tip is Critical Mass and Recruitment Size Matters In

Character Pictures

GM's Tip of the Week

Hello, fellow Portalites. Cruvis is out this week, on account of vacation; so I’m going to cover a Portal tip for GMs that I hope will be helpful to everyone. I’m going to cover using images! The first thing you will need is a place to store images

Game Mastery

GM's Tip of the Week

Cruvis has written a series of GM’s Tips: Ten Things Every DM Should Know About Running a Play-By-Post Adventure, and is sharing them with us as a guest blogger! Please direct questions, commentary and kudos to him. This week’s tip is:Consistency, Pace, and the Gentle Nudge. The

2e

Unexpected Daybreak (2e) Looking for Players

Hathgar is looking for players for his 2e edition game. In his words: “The world is not yet created. The adventures are not yet created. All that exists are some seeds and the potential for an elaborate tale spun out of fate. Using engines such as Mythic and even tools

5e

Game Looking for Players: Swords of Justice (5e)

Cruvis is currently looking for one player to join the 5e game, Swords of Justice. This game has been running for 15 years. He is in need of a player who is familiar with gaming on the portal and is cool with the pace, reading, and writing involved. There are

Design

GM's Tip of the Week

A dozen other people have written far better guides on writing villains – and playing them – than I can. However, I’d like to think I can sum up the basics . The short form is that ‘Villains are People Too’. They don’t just wake up one day and decide to

advertising

GM's Tip of the Week

Let’s talk about recruiting. For those of us lucky enough to have steady groups, this isn’t really an issue; but I have found that it is a good thing to keep in mind regardless; you never know when you might find yourself looking for new players. So, on

Design

GM's Tip of the Week

Going to talk specifically about gaming on Rondak’s Portal this week; because we have a lot of new people, and running games on Rondak’s Portal isn’t quite like running them anywhere else. So, to start with, you need to create your world. I’m not going to

3.5e

GM's Tip of the Week.

I’ve talked about communication, and taking notes and a bunch of basic stuff, and now I’m going to talk about another important skill set for a GM. Consistency and responsibility. Yes, it’s your game, you call the shots, you can decide a lot of things and you

Game Mastery

GM's Tip of the Week

Keeping information separated. It’s tricky to do as a GM; not only keeping information separate but keeping it threaded. Who knows what, where they learned it from – it’s enough to make anybody tear their hair out … but you also have to figure out how to pass specific pieces

Fantasy

GM Tip of the Week

For a GM running a VoIP, play by post or other virtual table-top game, there’s nothing more valuable than a good map. And for many people, nothing harder than building one. Sometimes, a module will come with maps you can scan or photograph, or a PDF file resource, but

Game Mastery

GM's Tip of the Week

This is another general sort of tip that applies as easily to playing games as running them. Playing a role-playing game live is different from play-by-post. Not only is it slower, but role play is much easier to prioritize in a text-based game. It also requires a skill-set that a

LFP

Game Looking for Players: Shipwrecked Skies

A port city isn’t a boring place at the best of times. Tonight, sore and weary from your labors, boring is all you hope for. Passing the docks as the sun drifts downward, allowing the night to spread her cloak of stars over the city, a muffled cry of

books

GM's Tip of the Week

A GM’s work is pretty intensive; we spend a lot of time on a world, we spend hours writing background, NPCs, hooking together plot – and that assumes we aren’t starting with a published module or adventure path. It’s a lot of work, and not all of us