I totally get why people enjoy it. I get that it has benefits like loose scheduling, geographic location irrelevance, and allows for a more literary tone or approach.

But it's that last bit that drives me crazy. There are various reasons. Some of those reasons are probably mildly inflammatory if taken personally by folks that enjoy the format so I won't include all of them here, so I won't go too far into them, but basically it just doesn't do anything for me.

Skype games, chat games in "real time," those are fine for me. But it's when you get a bunch of players with time to craft these paragraphs-long Dickensian pages of prose, it just gets too far into cheesy fanfic territory.

Again, not saying that as an insult; I am well aware that if you're in the game and invested and know what's up and are into your character and story and what not it's just another form of gaming. My perspective is outside looking in, I get that. More power to you. But surely I'm not the only one that can't get into it.

/randomthought

Well, I'm glad you got that off your chest.

I like my cheesy fanfic prose.

I like games. RPGs are games... I don't like the sit around and tell a story stuff, so those types of PbP games aren't my style.

Well, as one of the players in a PbP on this board, I can only tell you that it can work.

I don't have any other opportunity to play with goatunit as a gm.

It is a strange format and it takes some getting used to. It also takes ages to get things done and it can be frustrating waiting for someone else to post (especially when other players are in vastly different timezones)

But the GM gets time to carefully craft descriptions, which is cool.

I'd probably rather we were playing face to face, but having a fun game is definitely better than having no game.

Thanks Gordon.

Grungy, I understand your perspective on it. It's not for everybody. In fact, it's only really for wannabe novelists.

Or people who like gaming, but don't like how gamers smell.

The thing that I've found I don't like about PbP is that it's always on. As a GM, whenever I have a spare moment I have a tingling sense that I should check in and post. When I don't do that, I feel kind of guilty about it.

I find my tabletop game less satisfying, personally - but it's also not hanging over my head all the time.