Women In Gaming

by Lisa Hartjes

Originally published June 2001, at The RPG Times Vol. 6, Iss. 6.

Greetings! By the time you read this, another summer has arrived. University students are home from school and relaxing (or working at summer jobs so they can afford to go to school in the fall), high school students are getting ready for their summer holidays or work and/or play.

So, what does this have to do with pbem games? Not a heck of a lot, really, at least not for high school students. For university students, it can make the difference between playing during the summer with the group you game with during the school year, or living in a gameless wasteland until classes start up again.

This article may be a bit late to help anyone out who may be facing a summer without a regular gaming fix, but it could help you prepare for the coming year, and even next summer.

I recently joined a mailing list, started up by a friend of mine, for people who GM (or want to learn how to GM) play by email games. There have been some interesting discussions, and I asked if anyone would be interested in a series of articles where I went step by step through the creation of a pbem game, from the inception of the idea to where I put out a call for players.

I guess you can say the response w
as positive, because here is the first in that series of articles. I’m not sure exactly how many articles the series will be, but it will be at least four (two topics per article). To show you that I know what I’m talking about <grin>, I will be following the checklist that I presented to you in the March 2000 issue of my column. As a reminder, here is that checklist again:

The Starting PbeM GM’s List

1. How much time and effort are you willing to, or will be able to, put into the game?
2. What setting are you planning on using?
3. What game system are you going to use?
4. What type of game are you going to run?
5. How are you going to get the information to your players (potential or otherwise)?
6. How are you going to run the game?
7. How are you going to find players for your game?
8. How are you going to deal with problems in the future?

If you want to learn more about each of these items, please visit the RPG Times archives.

Now, on with the process of creating a pbem game!

How much time and effort are you willing to, or will be able to, put into the game?

Well, I’m not sure if this game will actually get off the ground, as it is being created as an exercise and example, but I would have to say I’d need at least three or four hours per week, once the game is running, to devote to the game.

This time would be spent doing things like answering questions from the players, posting the moves, doing web page updates, doing up character sheets for the NPC’s, and other general move related stuff, like maps for encounters, and so on.

The actual amount of time will, of course, vary. Weeks that I do the web page updates will take up more time, but there are things that can be done to make that easier, and those will be discussed in a later article.

But the most important thing is how much time will I have to put into creating the background for the game. The more that can be done ahead of time, the less will have to be done during actual game play. As I have said before, and will say again and again, the more effort you put into the start-up of the game, the better it will be for everyone.

What setting are you planning on using?

Let’s see. What setting to use. Let’s try something different this time. I am already running two superpowered games and a fantasy game, so what else is there. Hmmm? How about horror and/or the occult?

Now, what setting to use? It is this decision that can make a big difference on how much time I’ll have to spend doing background work for my campaign world.

White Wolf’s World of Darkness™ exists, but I don’t really like to use a “canned” world, so I think I will use a world of my own. How about a world just like our own, but with one difference - the monsters of myth, legend and our nightmares do exist.

Actually, when you really think about it, most of the game world settings out there now for horror games do use our world - with a few changes - as the basis for their games. It’s easier to create a feeling of horror when you present a world that the players know (or that their characters think they know), then hit them with the nasties.

So, now that I have chosen the setting, what will I need to do to get the setting ready for the game? Time for another checklist! <grin>

1. Create an outline of the game world.
2. Decide where the game is going to take place.
3. Do any research and/or creation required to get the world ready to be populated.

If I were using a published setting, like the World of Darkness™, a lot of the work that I’d be doing would be taken care of. All I would really need to do is decide on what books I would be using, and any changes that I would be making, if any, to the published info. Since I’m not, there is some work that I have to do.

For a bare-bones (if you’ll pardon the pun) description of the game world, we could describe it as I did above - our world where the monsters of our myths, legends and nightmares are real. Now there are some more questions we need to ask ourselves:

1. How did it come to be that way?
2. What kinds of monsters are out there?
3. Who knows about what’s going on, and what are they doing about it?

These three basic questions are very important, as it will provide the feel for the game. It will also provide your players with the ever so important background to create their characters. It will tell them where their characters fit in, provide them with motivations, and draw the players into the game. If the players don’t care, their characters won’t care, and the game will fail.

Next month, I will show you the results of the questions I have asked above, then discuss what game system might best be used, and the type of game that I would run (if I was going to run the game).

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