I have never played on an interactive forum, but I've played by
email.
Biff is dead right about response time. The successful games
I've seen have had *very* few players, and those players have
to be very committed, or it slows down to the point of expiration
quickly. I concluded after a while that the optimal number of
players was one, though of course that's a prejudice of mine
anyway. Certainly not more than about four.
The participants should love to write, and write well. You can
be a fun tabletop participant with no flair for dialog or
description, but it doesn't work as well in PBeM. The GM
in particular had better be up for writing a *lot*.
It's a better medium for political games than for combat games,
Conversations can work well, especially if you accept that the
dialog should not be too realistic: instead of having each
character speak a line or two and wait for the next, you can
have little speeches and get a lot further.
I've been in PBeM games with excellent moments, the equal of
tabletop. But they are frightfully fragile.
Mary Kuhner mkkuhner@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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