Headlong Into Play-by-Post: Roleplay for the Rest of Us

In this post, I’m sharing a bit of my journey—how I returned to the joy of roleplaying through play-by-post, even with a jam-packed adult schedule.

This post reflects on how play-by-post TTRPGs helped me rediscover roleplay in a busy adult life.

As we get older, we find it harder to play our games as often as we once did. Now, truthfully, I didn't get into TTRPGs until pretty late in my life. At the ripe old age of 38, I joined my first campaign. But I’ve played with many people who made their first characters back in high school or college. These players tell tales of playing for 8 hours on a Saturday—hanging out, telling stories, and creating memories that stuck with them.

Now, though I didn't play TTRPGs at that age—man, did I stay up until all hours of the night playing video games. I’d play until 3 or 4 a.m. and still make it to school by 8:00. Those days were amazing. And that’s what a passion in a hobby will do. It gives you the energy to keep going, no matter how late it gets.

But then you get old(er). And you can’t do those types of marathon sessions anymore. So, what’s the solution?

Well, in the TTRPG landscape, there are Play-by-Post (PbP) games. Now, if you're experienced in PbP, this post isn’t really for you. Not that you can’t read it, of course. This post is just about my first experience starting a Play-by-Post game. I’m still fairly new to the system. If you are experienced, I encourage you to comment below about your game and let me know anything else I should be doing as a GM of a PbP game.

Now to continue on—as I said, I’ve started a campaign in PbP because it allows me to enjoy roleplay at a bit of a slower pace. I’m not new to roleplaying, though. I used to roleplay in World of Warcraft. Before Blizzard revamped the forums, I wrote major posts as two characters—Machik and Takota, members of a guild called the Earthspear Clan. That was me. I cherished roleplay. I reveled in creating characters.

And the roleplay on the WoW forums was slow. I usually posted once or twice a day, but always had to wait for the alternating players to post their part of the story. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was doing something akin to PbP. I was roleplaying slowly over a forum across a long span of time.

And I loved it!

So, once I realized I needed more roleplay but had less time these days due to family, kids, work, and everything else that comes with a busy adult life, I searched for a way to continue my love for tabletop roleplaying games. And PbP was it. With help from a friend, I put together a game on my Discord server. It’s only a week old, but I’m already loving it. And a big part of that is the system I’m using—Legend in the Mist.

Why Legend in the Mist Was the Right Kind of Weird

So let’s begin with the system. This part took me the longest to figure out. I was worried that anything too crunchy would not make me happy. I wanted a system that would handle combat and rolls quickly. I didn’t want one that would need a ton of back-and-forth to make it work correctly.

I considered Ironsworn, Cairn, Dragonbane, and Mörk Borg, just to name a few. The good news is that I found several new TTRPGs I’m looking forward to playing. The bad news is that none of them quite fit what I wanted for my first PbP. So, I thought, what about something different?

And that’s how I ended up with Legend in the Mist (an upcoming TTRPG by Son of Oak), which isn’t even released yet. You know, I wanted to make my life difficult. But its narrative-driven structure and lightweight mechanics make it perfect for the asynchronous rhythm of play-by-post.

Legend in the Mist is produced by Son of Oak Game Studio, the same creators behind City of Mist and :Otherscape. The system is tag-based and uses 2d6. In a tag-based system, you don't have the usual stats like strength and dexterity. Instead, you have small phrases or words that make up what you can do or what you have an affinity for. These descriptive tags tell us both about your character and enhance their abilities in specific ways. You add these tags to your roll to boost your performance. Anything 6 or below results in consequences, 7 to 9 is a success with consequences, and 10 or above is a straight success. Simple, easy, and something I could roleplay pretty heavily with.

Its narrative-driven structure and lightweight mechanics make it perfect for the asynchronous rhythm of play-by-post.

BUT... I was still worried.

This system takes some buy-in, and I would need players willing to learn or already familiar with the Mist system. I knew a few players on our Discord server would be up for it, but I would need to look elsewhere to ensure I had enough people.

Building a Party (Without Leaving Your Chair)

As I said, I had a few players already on the Discord server who I knew would be interested in playing. But that wasn't going to cut it. We were looking at doing a West Marches-style campaign. This would allow players to come and go as they needed to. I would allow players to begin with two characters. That way, if one was in the middle of an adventure, they still had another character that they could roleplay with. I wanted people to play as much or as little as they wanted. So, I had to start looking.

My first stop was the Discord servers I was a member of. And that is a significant number. For the time being, I stuck with the Son of Oak server – City of Mist. I know, it says City of Mist, but they host channels for all their games there. I figured I would get at least one person from the server and it worked out. I believe we currently have three in the campaign, which is awesome. If you have servers that you're a part of, I would highly encourage you to use those as the first stop in recruiting players.

I also tried on Facebook and Bluesky. Since I’m no longer on Twitter, I knew that wouldn’t help. And Instagram doesn't do much for me these days. Could I have made a TikTok and tried to recruit that way? Of course. But I was being lazy. The point is: social media can help you find players. In the end, our players came from Discord or were friends of those that had already joined.

Now, another place I could have tried but didn't is StartPlaying.org. You can post free games up there, but I wasn’t sure if it would work out, so I decided to wait until I felt more confident about PbPs. If things work out, I'll probably post there to see if there is some interest.

Wrapping Up (and What’s Next in the PbP Journey)

This is just the beginning of my PbP journey, but I’m excited to see how it evolves.

Alright, this is a lot of information, so I'm gonna wrap this blog up here. We'll continue next time as I talk about the tools I'm using to host the Play-by-Post campaign. As always, toss a comment below and let me know what you think.