When in doubt, whip Play-by-Post (PbP) out!

I advertised on a PbP site to see if there was any interest in playing a PbP game of Swords & Wizardry: Whitebox game. I wanted to get my fix and this seemed the best course of action do to limited RL time and limitations on finding a group locally (read rural). Surprised ~ I had quite alot of interest, even to the point of getting Private Messages (PMs) sent to me after I closed the recruitment thread. Why did the interest surprise me? It had nothing to do with the mechanics, but the fact that the site seems to cater more to v3.5 and v4 D&D crowd, than Retrocloners or the 'Old School' mentality.

I advertised as a small (3-5 player) short (4-5 scene) adventure using the Rules as Written (RaW) where I specified that I would making rulings on the rules as we went. I nearly, In My Opinion (IMO), ruined my experience by offering up my homebrew setting instead of just hand waving the ‘Conventional Fantasy Setting and Troupes’ that I planned on. I have rough notes on the setting, “Humanity’s Reign & Ruin”, but they are just hand written notes in a binder at the moment. It, the setting, also required the introduction of an additional Demi-Human race that I had not fully wrote up, fleshed out, or play-tested yet. Glad I decided to revert back to what I originally had planned.

So far we have managed to get through character creation, for the most part (one player I am currently waiting on a description and background for his character), and as we wait, finished characters are interacting with each other and NPCs within the small village of Handover. Character creation took a bit longer than I had anticipated. I suspected it would take a while, considering the medium that I chose to play over, but did not expect it to take as long as it has. I suspect that a day or two was added as players wrote up backgrounds longer (read more detailed) than I had expected and a couple chose to intertwine their backgrounds. In retrospect, it was worth the wait. Roleplay posts have been better than expected, I just hope the lethality of the S&W:WB rules does not make it all for naught.

TB