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alt title(s): Play By Post Game They're Role Playing Games and they're online. How cool is that?
These aren't MMORPGs like World Of Warcraft or EVE Online. They don't have fancy graphics. Instead, they rely on the imaginations of the players.
Quite simply, you're taking an online bulletin board and you're running an RPG on it. Some are free-form, others use systems like D20, or GURPS.
If Dreaded Real Life takes the GM into its dreaded clutches, depending on what manner of game it is, the game may survive. If it's an open-ended world, then the players will just play, with the players enforcing the rules (so long as there isn't a Small Name Big Ego running a massive crime orgaization/cult/paramilitary group amongst the experienced players; he gets his way) and disciplining the newbies who break them. Also, you have the benefit of being able to ignore their posts if they refuse to change.
However, if it's a set story with a predefined goal or you're in combat with the Dragon Guardian of the Lost Treasure of the Order of High Knights of the Crown, and the GM disappears, then you can pretty much decide that the game's done until he comes back.
Postal gaming predates both computers and role-playing games, incidentally — long-duration play-by-mail chess is an old tradition going back at least to the medieval origins of modern chess, if not further, making this Older Than Steam. If you ever see an old movie with a rich guy standing next to a mid-game chessboard with no opponent, he's probably got a postal chess game going with an unseen character.
Examples:
Adult and/or Sexual Roleplaying (possibly NSFW)
- Elliquiy Adult Roleplaying
 for those who don't like fading to black when the action is getting good. Rather high-class and extremely active. It was created when its founders were kicked unceremoniously out of R Po L for being too naughty.
- House Eros Sexual and Adult Roleplaying a new roleplaying site focusing on Adult, Erotic, and Sexual Roleplaying. It was created when the site admin got tired of Adult Websites that lacked the feature sets to revival the more mainstream websites.
- Blue Moon Role Playing a website that was created in 2007 when the website of its birth came down a time too many for some users to handle, it was built with the casual adult roleplayer in mind while at the same time introducing you to a message board unlike any other of its caliber, complete with a steady yet broad user base that have many different styles that many will enjoy.
Regular Roleplaying (e.g. Safe for Work Content)
- The Vast Empire (www.vastempire.com) is a Star Wars based RPG set in the Thrawn Era, and one of the better quality Wars play by post ones. It has a sizable community, a IRC channel, and a video game subgroup.
- Serenity: Leaf on the Wind: As the title suggests, this is a Firefly RPG. It uses a different system from most (called PARS), but operates on much the same principles. It has a good deal of supporting graphics and a large number of players. This editor can be found on there as a mercenary called Sam Arkwright. Part of AJJE Games.
- Nation States is not itself one of these, but many player like to play them using their nations, either on the official forums or on the numerous forums created by players for various regions.
- Steve Jackson Games at one time ran a BBS on which a number of such games were played, including the free-form no-rules roleplaying forum which evolved into GURPS Illuminati University.
- Roleplayer Guild is a forum dedicated to pbp roleplays. Rps are sorted into three categories: Basic, Casual, and Advanced.
- There is an entire site devoted to this known as RolePlay Online, or RPoL. It has a built-in software dice roller, among other features, allowing one to use dice in such a game seamlessly; however, quite a few of the games run there are still freeform.
- One of RPGnet's forums exists for this purpose.
- Pretty much the purpose of GreatestJournal until Boldthrough 2007 on LiveJournal.
- The Giant In The Playground forums, for the D&D-based webcomic Order Of The Stick, feature a fairly large section devoted to PBP games. The board, like RPoL, even has its own dice roller.
- Plothook.NET, another site devoted entirely to this.
- Myth-Weavers, again, is solely for this purpose, and is known for its plethora of useful built-in software and message board mods, including a very popular XML Character Sheet database.
- Hundreds of other forums have threads or subsections dedicated to roleplaying or cooperative storytelling, particularly on Fan Sites where the games deal with the forum's particular subject.
- Survival Of The Fittest is one of these, arguably one of the most successful RPGs in the Battle Royale fandom, though it uses an entirely original plot and characters, where just about every other Battle Royale RPG uses the canon characters in a reenactment of the Shiroiwa game.
- Prodigy is a superhero-based play-by-post, made out of original characters and played in the City Of Adventure of Prodigy, New Jersey. This troper has two supers and one normal.
- Stargate: Aftermath. A Stargate Verse based RPG, creating an alternate universe after Stargate SG 1 season eight. Started with a Earth Shattering Kaboom and has survived one Goa'uld assault and one earthquake.
- Muse Academy. Only readers of Muse Magazine understand half of what happens, but it's the special crazy sort of randomness that comes from having no real GM.
- The Birthright campaign setting for AD&D and D&D has a large number of games running. The P Cs of Bithright campaigns where not adventures but rulers. A given party might consist of The Duke, his Court Wizard, the High Priest, the Master of the local guilds etc. As well as normal adventuring stuff the game system had domain rounds, where P Cs administered various holdings, collected taxes, fought wars etc.. Which translated quite straightforwardly to play by post play in which most if not all of the different kingdoms are take by P Cs. As well as the default campaign settings this troper has seen the 'engine' used to run similar games set in Fantasy feudal Japan, post Arthurian Britain etc.
- This Troper took part in an impromptu one on the Game FA Qs Mega Man Battle Network 5 Team Protoman board, reffed to the Battle of Light and Darkness. A fight broke out and turned into one of these.
- [BZPower] has a Bionicle-themed roleplaying forum, it being a Bionicle fan forum, but don't expect to just walk in and make a new RPG. Go to Wysp's discussion and ask if you want details.
- Mafia is a game seemingly made for this format.
- Indeed, there are quite a few sites dedicated to forum Mafia, which, given the nature of Message Boards, are much longer and involve much more detailed analysis than other formats. MafiaScum is perhaps one of the best known sites devoted to the game.
- Suzumiya Haruhi no Yakuasobi, literally the RP of Suzumiya Haruhi. A relatively new forum that's Exactly What It Says On The Tin.
- Zelda Elements RPis a friendly, Legend Of Zelda based RP. Turned me on to RPing and tropes!
- Dating back to 1995 is the Final Fantasy 3 RPG (3 being the initial English numbering for VI). It was essentially collaborative fanfic: there were no rules save that you couldn't stomp on something that had already been written. There were moderators, but they were pretty lax. The game involved characters from pretty much anything Square made, as well as the home-grown variety. It died after a while, but the archives are still available. The quality is inconsistent (as one would imagine), but give some of them a read. Particularly the ones following Celes and Sascha&Akfek.
- The myth/medieval pbp Adylheim strikes a nice balance between being diceless and yet containing surprisingly little godmodding. This may be because the community places heavy emphasis on being a writing site as well as a game..
- Honorable Hogwarts is a rather Troperrific PBP set in the Harry Potter universe. At least four tropers frequent the site, which like Adylheim tends to emphasize writing as well as roleplaying.
- Simrtk (simrtk.net) is a very large Play by post sim based off of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms video games, with some dashes of Dynasty Warriors thrown in.
- Ruby Quest is a strange variant; it's an old-school adventure game, with the artist-writer drawing scenes in response to the posters. And it's from 4chan. Yes, that 4chan. It is one of the most popular things to come out of that place, and has spawned several parodies/imitators.
- The Third Dawn is a High Fantasy RPG with an original setting, and built-in rules. Unlike most sites, it plays more like an MMO; you level by posting, and you attack and defense values are actually used in rule-driven on-site combat. There's a bit of a learning curve to learn the rules and mechanics, but once you learn them, it's a very rewarding experience.
- Open Blue is a Pirate RP set in a Low Fantasy world (very little magic, usually in the form of artifacts left by precursors) featuring such unusual Fantasy Counterpart Cultures as Those Wacky Nazis IN THE CAVALIER YEARS, Imperial Spain fielding Tykebomb Child Soldiers, and a Mega Corp disguised as a country.
- Resonating Spirits is a game that can best be described as Full Metal Alchemist In Space(literally) with elements of Harry Potter and X Men thrown in. Is rather troperiffic. Used to be full dice but has switched over to a free form playing style.
- Star Army features an original space opera/sci-fi setting created by its members and characterized by sleek, powerful starships, power armor, cute catgirls, and heavily armed men of action. Star Army has run continuously since 2000 and has up to a dozen or so individual games within the universe's main factions at any given time.
- Kiseki, which is a CLAMP-based RP at Insanejournal. There's a mod who tosses events out every six weeks or so, but she doesn't really act as a GM per say and the gaming is very freeform.
- Ninja Academy, a Naruto RPG with an active player base, an elaborate, custom-made game system and a solid pipeline for user-created content. 7 years old, yet still active and developing.
- Retribution Games sprung from forum-based games History of the World and Divided We Stand played on the Something Awful Forums.
- Dept Heaven Apocrypha, in the loosest sense, as it's almost entirely story-based.
- The Lands Of Evelon is an ongoing and active, loosely-Mon-based RP forum online, and is extremely fluid in terms of plot.
- Time To Pretend, an Academy RPG where characters have the spirits of Disney or other fairy tale characters.
- Online-Roleplaying is yet another site, most active with D&D gamers but willing to host anything. It also has its own dice roller.
- Super Hero Rpg is a rpg where you can design your own hero/villain/regendgae. It constantly updates and goes through Chapter Arcs. There have been 4 so far, but it's easy to come in the middle of one too.
- This troper has played many free-form games on Game FA Qs' Sonic Adventure 2 Battle board in its glory days, and Soa H City.
- This fictional commercial advertises a service that allows FPSes to be played this way.
- MSF High has one on it's forums (which gets more attention then the actual webcomic.) http://www.msfhigh.com/forum/index.php
- This troper recalls one from his youth, which is long since defunct, called "Crystal Dreams", created by a friend of his (which was really the only reason early adopters put up with me). A pretty standard high-fantasy setting, right down to roleplayers of the "fantasy is dead fucking serious" variety (I was literally the only one who found the setting to be ripe with comedic potential, which caused more than a few problems). The moderators were also literally the setting's gods, which in retrospect was just plain asking for trouble.
Play By Post Games hosted on the Tv Tropes Fora:
- The TV Tropes Academy.
- The Massive Multi Fandom RPG: A Mega Crossover wherein various characters get trapped in a strange City with no way out. Easily the most popular and active RPG on the Fora, despite it's original creator's disappearance.
- Several Maid RPGs, including:
- Ever Shadow Genesis: A chapter-based collaborative story. A hole in the universe has been ripped open and a Fascist Empire has arisen.
- The Deucalion Delusion: Light-hearted Sci Fi adventure concerning the crew of the spaceship Argo. Incorporate a dice-based system for certain actions and their success (or failure).
- A couple of D&D-based games, including:
- Fate Silence Broken: The story of a Girl who started a Holy Grail War by accident. Basically Exactly What It Says On The Tin. Familiarity with the Nasu Verse, or Fate Stay Night specifically, is recommended but not required. If you want to join, please see this thread first. Uses pre-prepared characters so please be aware of that. Abandoned by the previous GM, but is still ongoing, however slowly, under new management.
- Underworld Sun: Futuristic RPG combining highschool harem romace with Humongous Mecha War Story.
- Seeds of War, a game set in Maikros, hosted by none other than Matrix.
- Multiverse: Rend Apart: A Mega Crossover RPG concerning the breaking of dimensional boundaries and the struggles of various resistance forces. You're allowed to sign up as almost any character from any fandom you wish. Still in the signups stage though.
Play By Post Games with their own pages:
In addition to all the various Table Top RPG tropes, you see a few others especially in Play By Post Games, including:
- Orphaned Series: Online GameMasters seem a lot more prone to dropping their campaigns without warning than people who game in person; or perhaps its simply that records of the dead games persist in forum archives.
- Webcomic Time: after a fashion. Face-to-face RPGs tends to be played for several hours at a shot on a regular basis; Play By Posts usually get much shorter updates whenever their players and GMs are available. A six-second combat round can take weeks if someone doesn't log in regularly.
- God Modders and Munchkins: Since Play By Posts are more likely to have informal or diceless systems, or sometimes no systems at all, the god modders are free to come out and play. Playing on a poorly-regulated forum RP is one of the few times you'll wish for Min Maxing - since on some forums, there's no minning required.
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