PBEM Game Design Challenge and Thoughts on It

[ebartley]

I've been having some thoughts about PBEM and journaling game theory. One of my favorite people to game with has enough times where she can't game that I'm very hesitant to suggest she join games, or suggest that third parties join any two-person games we're playing. And I suspect everyone who has played any sort of asynchronous game has had a

Comments

[mneme]

A game could also be played in a branching reality -- if two scenes turn out to somewhat contradict, they take place in separate branches (and imply similar, but not identical scenes in their own branches). Presumably the game would need characters able to rectify the branches somewhat.

Or a game could be played in a fourth wall busting game, where the characters are aware of and have to rectify contradiction -- perhaps they're in a play or novel (or rpg).

Hmm. Or this could be a pure system artifact. Perhaps one adds a system process after playing out a scene where you merge it with the existing game -- adjusting the events as needed (potentially even swapping out characters or whatnot) to make it match the reality at checkin time, or even split a scene so that some of it takes place before another and some after. So you play scenes (generally with a specific chronology intended), but after they're done you then edit the scene such that it matches the game state it's being merged into; most of the scene as played will generally work, but the details might be a little different.