I just had this (terrible?) idea of running a Dnd campaign but via lemmy. Im hopped up on cold medicine so maybe this wouldnt really work but i was thinking itd be like those long running chess matches. Just kinda come by and make a move whenever. Thered be a community for it and youd make a post describing your char. Then id make a thread describing the campaign setting an shit and a comment to start it off. People reply with what they wanna do, i tell em to roll or what happens.

Idk if this type of post falls under the support rule just delete if no good.

Id love to hear peoples thoughts on how to make this work or not. What would be the pain points? How to make it easier to follow along chronologically with all the threads/replies of players?

Edit: are there dice rolling bots for lemmy?
It might be prudent to put a d20 roll at the end of saying what youre attempting. Otherwise the turn around from ‘i wanna do x’ ‘ok roll [skill]’ ‘i rolled a 17’ ‘heres what happens’ might be real tedious. Could also see that influencing what people say they wanna do tho…

Edit2: i made a thing LemND

I don't know if there are any on Lemmy, but people have been doing play-by-post on forums for ages. It is, as you say, a much slower experience. But I did one for a few months once, and it was kind of fun as a combination of both D&D and a chance to flex the creative writing muscles. It's a different kind of roleplaying to take your time with your responses, and for even conversations to have more defined "turns".

You might be better off trying to get people to hop on a discord server or using an online dnd campaign service. Unless your goal is to stretch campaigns out as long as possible. Which is fun in its own right

That being said, I would probably take part in a long form dnd run

Howd they handle dice rolling? In regards to my edit situation

I've seen this work in a microblog format. DM would describe the scenario and people would respond with what they think the character should do. DM would choose one move (not sure if it was random or the move they found most interesting) and then explain what happened. So the story had a single character controlled by the group. It was light-hearted, low-stakes fun :)

Hope you start the community and give it a shot. Experiment to find the format that works best.

West of House

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.

There is a small mailbox here.

>

I think i will! Unfortunately cant make new comms from voyager so will have to do it tomorrow when im at the pc

GET YE FLASK

I cautiously approach the gazebo /s

> GET YE FLASK

You can't see any such thing.

> I cautiously approach the gazebo

I only understood you as far as wanting to inventory.

> BUY KERREK A COLD ONE

I study the windows to see if I see anybody staring at me

kill jester

> kill jester

You can't see any such thing.

>

a possible way to do it is to have players list the skill they want to use and have the dm roll.

> I study the windows to see if I see anybody staring at me

I only understood you as far as wanting to inventory.

>

kill jester

> kill jester

You can't see any such thing.

>

I reach in my jacket pocket for the magical map to determine what dimension I ended up in

find jester

> find jester

You can't see any such thing.

>

> I reach in my jacket pocket for the magical map to determine what dimension I ended up in

I only understood you as far as wanting to inventory.

>

10 go west; 20 goto 10

I reach in my jacket pocket

> go west

Forest

This is a forest, with trees in all directions around you.

>

kill trees

> kill trees

You can't see any such thing.

>

yes i can you said so just now, don't gaslight me

> yes i can you said so just now, don’t gaslight me

You seem to want to talk to someone, but I can't see whom.

>

Sounds like play by post. Try searching for that and see if you get some inspiration.

this format reminds me of Twitch plays Pokemon :)

Thats exactly what i was thinking! Was thinking of making a new comm for this called dnlemmy or dnlemmings. Should i do something with pbp in the name instead?

I wanted to make a remindme bot at some point, but haven't gotten around to figuring out how to keep track of all comments an instance receives. Maybe I'll make one in the next few years, and then it would be easy to extend that to dice rolling as well.

oh I remember there being a literal version of this in Hungary ( Túlélők Földje ), a play-by-mail RPG where you would submit your moves on a paper form by mail and they mail you back what happens. According to wiki you could execute a series of actions every 9 days :)

This AI sucks.

It's a forest. There are trees.

LemND for a name suggestion.
Yeah I think if you mention play by post in the name it will more likely attract people who will understand what it is and how to play.
Just my two pence.

You can’t get ye flask.

My only problem with Zork is that people think "xyzzy" comes from it and so when I make Adventure of Colossal Cave references, people will tell me the non-"xyzzy" stuff is wrong, and I'm like, you're just later in a different game. :P

It was pretty good for its day.

LOOK INVENTORY

I wish to play. I've never done DnD before, and want to start.

@remindme@mstdn.social 3 years

It was a long time ago, but I believe they had either a dice rolling bot you'd summon, or just a dice function that would make the roll for you when you committed the post?

This sounds like such a cool idea. Makes it super easy for anyone to participate. I hope it takes off

You walk in to some one's post. It is made of wood. Take 1D4 damage.

I play via discord with a few people throughout Europe and the Americas. But we do VC and some online DnD map/character generator.

Not exactly what you're asking (I guess pretty far away from it), but we've got it to work pretty successfully.

Although if you do make some sort or post-based version, I'd be 100 % down. Feel free to dm me if you have questions/ideas.

judging by the replies I got it seems no one knows what zork is, let alone xyzzy

Fun fact! The setting for the book/TV series The Expanse started with play-by-post D&D campaigns. Early in the first book/season there's a shocking death that is based on how a cleric got written out when they dropped out of a campaign.

awww. I never played Zork, but I'm aware of it, at least <3