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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  2785 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: One day after

Forum RPGs, as they're called in Russia, are very popular among the young people.

In essence, you have a fictional world (even if it's a copy of the real world), where each players creates and plays a character. The way they play it is by writing a literary post of indefinite size (some games impose limits from either side, some don't - all up to GM). Each player takes turn writing a post from their character's perspective within a single instance of an event or a location. Naturally, all players do as their characters must come logically from the character sheet they've filled when they entered the game or from their character's past interactions with the world.

It seems to be at least moderately popular in the English-speaking segment of the Internet as Play-by-Post games. They seem to be a bit different from what a usual Russian FRPG looks like, however.

What I'm doing is trying to steer FRPGs into a more tabletop and collaborative writing direction. "Do whatever you want, as long as you have consent of the other players involved". You're a political nutcase and want to blow a skyscraper up to prove your point? Go for it: just remember that people will hunt you down. Want to kill an NPC as a revenge for your squad going down? Sure thing: just keep in mind that if you do it sloppily, somebody will come after you; and sometimes, you don't even know you're crossing paths with bigger powers than you can imagine.

When the game starts, I'll just be waiting for a skyscraper to be blown up.

Some of such games require hardcore fluid planning, akin to but wider than that of modern non-linear videogame RPGs. Some improvise stuff along the way. I have the former, because I want to make events happen not unlike a director.

Feel free to ask any question you might have.