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Message no. 1
From: Rune Fostervoll <runefo@***.UIO.NO>
Subject: Idea for email campaign thoughts...
Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 11:58:03 +0000
I've been away for a week or so; just resubscribed today.
(What, I don't fancy wading through 1000 mails??). Now then, while
I was gone I thought about a run I ran on my RL players a year or so
ago... where they were in competition with another team. I managed
the other team, of course; in RL play it's not that feasible to have
two rooms with a group in each without someone getting seriously
bored; also, mortality might be high.

That isn't a problem on the net, though.

So what about starting a campaign with two semi-opposing teams?
(They can elect to cooperate... but only one team can get the gadget
out... they might not even meet each other, of course, depending on
their course of action.).

But then, I thought... why stop there?
Have a couple of people play the Mr. Johnsons - after all, some of
you ought to be able to think up interesting ways to spice things
up... at least selecting from a list of runners who they want on
'their' team.

As for the security on site... well, that might also be interesting
to leave in the hands of someone else. Exactly how do you react when
the alarms in the Admin building goes off? Is it a diversion?
What changes would he suggest in the security system?
Being in a reactive role, the security manager would probably have
impressive resources available; enough so that a stand-up fight would
not be a good idea on the runner's behalf.

I would expect such a campaign to require fairly maxed characters.
What should the power level be?

Has anyone tried this? Did it work? Does it sound like it could be
interesting? Any suggestions on how to pull it off?

Lastly, I was thinking of running everything through me - noone gets
email addresses, noone knows who's pc's and npc's. (Except for a few
educated guesses.).

As a side note, paranoia might be interesting to watch in this one.
A few players on my current net campaign acted so paranoid (pulling
weapons on a group of runners entering a bar) that they were very
likely to start a fight simply by their paranoia.). How would that
group, if they were players, react? (And who would be the last man
standing?).

--


"But the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we no not of."
Message no. 2
From: Ben Frech <frech@***.COM>
Subject: Re: Idea for email campaign thoughts...
Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 13:30:29 -0700
Rune Fostervoll wrote:

(Just a note: this is one of my first posts to the list :) )

> <SNIP> Now then, while
> I was gone I thought about a run I ran on my RL players a year or so
> ago... where they were in competition with another team. I managed
> the other team, of course; in RL play it's not that feasible to have
> two rooms with a group in each without someone getting seriously
> bored; also, mortality might be high.
>

I was considering this for a while. After an unsuccessful **&* adventure
where the GM did somthing similar (I was a player), I decided it
was impractical, because of boredom.

> That isn't a problem on the net, though.

I see what your getting at. :)

> So what about starting a campaign with two semi-opposing teams?
> (They can elect to cooperate... but only one team can get the gadget
> out... they might not even meet each other, of course, depending on
> their course of action.).

<grin> I would enjoy this.

<SNIP about Mr. J's>

> As for the security on site... well, that might also be interesting
> to leave in the hands of someone else. Exactly how do you react when
> the alarms in the Admin building goes off? Is it a diversion?
> What changes would he suggest in the security system?
> Being in a reactive role, the security manager would probably have
> impressive resources available; enough so that a stand-up fight would
> not be a good idea on the runner's behalf.

I would think leaving a player in charge of Security would cause
problems with high lethality, though raising the stakes for the
runners could be fun. You'd probably have to keep *really* careful
track of all the security forces at a given time...

> I would expect such a campaign to require fairly maxed characters.
> What should the power level be?

I would suspect stealth would be more valuable than firepower, by
a large margin. In any case, the power level would be very high.

> Does it sound like it could be interesting?

<snip>

Yes, it does.

> Lastly, I was thinking of running everything through me - noone gets
> email addresses, noone knows who's pc's and npc's. (Except for a few
> educated guesses.).

That could make bookkeeping a major problem. If you could pull it off,
then that's swell.

> As a side note, paranoia might be interesting to watch in this one.
> A few players on my current net campaign acted so paranoid (pulling
> weapons on a group of runners entering a bar) that they were very
> likely to start a fight simply by their paranoia.). How would that
> group, if they were players, react? (And who would be the last man
> standing?).

Hey, we thought they were about to "dispose" of us. As it ends up,
I still think we'll eventually have to kill them. If they were players,
well, ummm... hmmm.. that could be messy.


Ben Frech (Grill The Shaman in Rune's PBEM campaign)
http://www.realtime.net/~frech/
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Message no. 3
From: "Arno R. Lehmann" <arlehma@***.NET>
Subject: Re: Idea for email campaign thoughts...
Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 02:35:51 +0200
On Tue, 27 May 1997 11:58:03 +0000, Rune Fostervoll wrote:

>Has anyone tried this? Did it work? Does it sound like it could be
>interesting? Any suggestions on how to pull it off?

It sounds interesting, but _very_ complex.

>Lastly, I was thinking of running everything through me - noone gets
>email addresses, noone knows who's pc's and npc's. (Except for a few
>educated guesses.).

That will be a load of work for you.
I'd like to contribute some to your work ;)


--
Arno
*********************************************************************
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(And send me a note when you notice that
the reply-to-address points to the list!)
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Message no. 4
From: Falin <dark-claw@*********.COM>
Subject: Re: Idea for email campaign thoughts...
Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 22:12:58 -0400
>>Has anyone tried this? Did it work? Does it sound like it could be
>>interesting? Any suggestions on how to pull it off?
>>Lastly, I was thinking of running everything through me - noone
gets
>>email addresses, noone knows who's pc's and npc's. (Except for a
few
>>educated guesses.).

I'm currently running a very small game using email, and a small
section on my website to run the adventure. Sometimes all i tell the
player (yes only one at this time) to do is to check the adventure
page, and see what new has happened and other times we go back and
forth for a week using email. Just today we spent about two hours
using ICG in chat mode running the game I saved the cache and will
add this to the page later.

It seems to be working great at the moment we still try to play most
of the combat in person but the email lets us get the legwork and
less dice intensive parts out of the way. We haven't tried the
combat by email.

One great thing about doing it this way is that you can add just
that
extra little bit of character to the npc's that you can't (unless
you
are a good actor).

Hope it works out.
Message no. 5
From: "Arno R. Lehmann" <arlehma@***.NET>
Subject: Fwd: Re: Idea for email campaign thoughts...
Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 01:52:54 +0200
This thing went to me, but I assume it was intendet to go the list.
Arno
=================¾GIN FORWARDED MESSAGE==================
>>Has anyone tried this? Did it work? Does it sound like it could be
>>interesting? Any suggestions on how to pull it off?
>>Lastly, I was thinking of running everything through me - noone
gets
>>email addresses, noone knows who's pc's and npc's. (Except for a
few
>>educated guesses.).

I'm currently running a very small game using email, and a small
section on my website to run the adventure. Sometimes all i tell the
player (yes only one at this time) to do is to check the adventure
page, and see what new has happened and other times we go back and
forth for a week using email. Just today we spent about two hours
using ICG in chat mode running the game I saved the cache and will
add this to the page later.

It seems to be working great at the moment we still try to play most
of the combat in person but the email lets us get the legwork and
less dice intensive parts out of the way. We haven't tried the
combat by email.

One great thing about doing it this way is that you can add just that
extra little bit of character to the npc's that you can't (unless you
are a good actor).

Hope it works out.



===================END FORWARDED MESSAGE

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