Play-by-Chat 0
I was struggling to find a second session to finish off a Trail of Cthulhu game, The Dance in the Blood by Graham Walmsley. I offered the players two choices, just to cancel it and I’d summarise what happened, or to play through the second half by chat on Discord. We went with the latter.
I set it up as follows; a dedicated Discord Text channel, a dice bot, rollem. I then posted the description of a scene perhaps a picture or handout, along with an indication of any potential dice rolls that were needed. I used markdown to signify in-character and out-of-character speak or mechanics.
I then used hammertime for the deadline to post (24 hours), including a countdown. When the deadline was reached I would react to the actions of the players, perhaps calling for dice rolls and then summarising the key stat changes - stability, health.
We are currently on session ten and approaching the end of the scenario. I’ve enjoyed it, it’s a little bit of casual fun, with a low commitment. We’ve had a couple of missed sessions by some players, but that is fine, I have a clear timeline, things happen around the PCs and they are buffeted by the outcomes.
So…
I am now running Alteregomania for a group of five individuals, this will be five separate games of Gumshoe One-2-One. I’ll start with two in parallel and then add more as I build out knowledge and content for the scenario.
I’ve expanded the safety tools so that folks can post an X Card, I have a Lines and Veils Google sheet, based on The Gauntlet and it is an open table - If there are no responses for two consecutive actions, then we cancel the game, no harm is done. I’ve also decided to keep weekends sacrosanct pausing the sessions on Saturday and Sunday.
It all kicks off on 30th September, I’ll post here how it goes and how I tweak the rules as we play.