Age certification in a PBEM game

I’ve been running a PBEM since 2000 now, and this problem has cropped up a few times whenever someone has said a naughty word.

I want to allow people to write freely whatever they want, but I obviously don't want children seeing something disturbing

There’s no clear rating system of PBEM games, in terms of what language you can or can’t use, and how much explicit or sexual content you can use. Many PBEM games are public, and all are available to join without having to prove your age, which means young role-players can often stumble upon explicit content.

There are many methods of age verification, but most require some sort of trust on the user’s part. This is why you see sites with explicit content that just have a landing page with a date field, requiring you to specify your age before continuing, or at least if not that just ticking a box to confirm that you’re over the required age.

This is all very ambiguous in PBEM games. I’ve been using a Yahoo Group to run my PBEM game for years, which has no way to allow you to specify your age when you sign up. We do often have members who post with bad language, and honestly I don’t mind – freedom of speech and all that. But that’s because I’ve never been in trouble over it. I’m sure there are PBEM games around that have far worse explicit content that just an occasional swearword, which will allow children to join up.

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Nobody cares about the Captain

This article is about trying to avoid waffling in your *Action* posts, and cut to the chase.

I’ve seen this a few times in Sci-fi PBEMs, especially Star Trek ones, but of course it could exist in any. GM’s write an *Action* post which is really heavy with dialogue from the Captain. Maybe the Captain is talking with his First Officer, or with an Admiral, or a diplomat from an alien colony.

What happens is that the entire post sets up the scenario where other players can get involved. So for example the Captain could argue with his First Officer and make a bad choice that leads the crew into a dangerous situation, or with the Admiral he is ordered to take his ship and check out some unexplained phenomenon, or talks with the alien diplomat break down and they end up attacking the spaceship.

All these scenarios are very common in an *Action* post. Now you might be looking at the title of this post and wondering what I’m getting to. You might be thinking that I’m being overly harsh on posts that have too much dialogue with the Captain, and I’m about to say that he’s not important, and that only the players are important.

You could write a convoluted reason for why Captain Picard is in a bad mood to explain why he gives an irrational order, but this is a lot of reading for your players. Be concise in your *Action* post and focus on what your players need to know. Explain in a separate post all about the Captain's feelings

What I’m saying isn’t that. Also I’m not saying that giving too much explanation is a bad thing either. It is actually very sensible and worthwhile to show the reasons behind why things happen in your game. Without this, the story could be too rushed, and you end up starting a story with no explanation of why anything is happening, only that it DOES. Your players might start to disrespect you for not following the laws of common sense, or start to follow your lead of not bothering to write an interesting story. If you don’t, why should they?

So what I am saying is that you shouldn’t get too carried away when creating your *Action* posts. The Captain is the leader of your crew, and therefore he is a great driving force for your story. But, it’s very easy to get carried away when using him to go into a lot of unnecessary dialogue, with the idea of setting up a story which isn’t that complicated.

For example if the Captain is talking to the First Officer, he might invite the First officer into his office, sit down, offer a tea or coffee, have a little chat about life and “how’s the kids/wife/cat?” before getting to the important bit that sets up the story. If the Captain is talking to the Admiral, he might be friendly at first, then get awkward when the Admiral starts telling him what to do, and argues back unnecessarily. If talking to the alien diplomat this conversation could go on for ages talking about their political situation, racism, the alien’s right to defend themselves, etc before getting to the important bit of the story. You don’t have to show every single little decision that the Captain makes.

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Snipping in a PBEM game

Often in a PBEM game you’re going to have lots of story threads going off all at the same time. This is okay, soap operas and TV programmes have several stories running alongside each other anyway, and as Humans we’re perfectly capable of remembering what’s happening in each story.

Jack Bauer in 24 - they recap what's happened at the start of the episode

In a TV show, there is normally only two stories, an A-Story and a B-Story. Soaps can have more as the scenes are often shorter. However, in a PBEM game, depending on the amount of players you have, there could be loads of stories all running separately. Often it’s really easy to loose track of what’s happened in a story, so it’s really handy to have a short summary at the start of the post, just like in the TV series 24 when they spend the first 5 minutes showing what’s happened so far.

So in a PBEM game you use what is called a <snip>. This allows you to insert the last few lines or paragraph from your previous post. If you left your last post on a cliffhanger then this is especially handy, or other players might have to go and find your older post to see what the hell is going on.
The idea is that you put the word <snip> before the paragraph, and <end snip> underneath.

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5 tips for someone joining a PbEM game for the first time

Joining a PBeM game for the first time can be quite confusing, here are a few tips for the newbie.

1. Get an idea of how frequently you’ll be expected to post. Some games are strict on this, and will remove you from the game if you don’t post after two weeks, and some will be more relaxed and allow you to post as much as you want. Don’t join a game where you’re expected to post more than you can handle.
2. Take notice of the GM’s posts. In every game there will be someone who takes responsibility for the storyline (this is most likely the GM), otherwise there will be no story, leaving your character with nothing to do. Make sure you take notice of what the GM is posting, as it will contain important story that relates directly to your character.
3. Take notice of everyone else’s posts. Other members in the game are contributing to the story too, if you post something that conflicts with theirs your game will loose continuity and you might offend other members.
4. Leave a cliffhanger at the end of your post. This doesn’t have to always be a dramatic life-or-death cliffhanger, but it’s best to finish your post at a point where someone else can take it further.
5. Communicate with other players. Email other players with ideas about what you could do next, and see if they mind you using their character in your post. Most people will love other people using their characters, but some are protective about their characters and want the courtesy of you asking first. This prevents surprises and other players getting annoyed if you’re stepping in and changing the story from what they had planned.

Poll – PbEM or PBeM?

Lately I’ve noticed that I’ve been writing “PbEM” instead of “PBeM”. Making the “b” lower case because it’s the insignificant word “by”. But I’ve noticed that when other people use the acronym, they make the “e” small, for “e-mail”. I’m not quite sure when this convention came about, and why certain letters deserve to be uppercase more than others. But I wondered enough about it that I wanted to create a poll to see which was the most popular.