A Gaming Experiment: World of Darkness Text Game

On Monday, June 13th, the first messages were sent out to 6 of my 7 players for a World of Darkness Mortals campaign ran entirely via text messaging (save for one international player, who plays via IM.)

In mid-May, David B. and I had been discussing various game concepts played via email and various electronic media, and what we wanted to do with the ideas. While his concept seems alot more ambitious (and overall alot more awesome) than mine, I decided to jump on a game ran via texts using the new World of Darkness for the rulesset, since the mechanics are very simple and fluid, and would take the least amount of resolution for actions.

The simplicity of rules systems was a bonus for two reasons: One, I didn't want to bog my players (some of which hadn't played traditional rpgs) with rules and complicated character creation, and two...I wanted to keep the rules out of the game for my players almost completely.

And so, after two or three weeks of character creation and deliberation of systems and syntax for messaging within the game, we began.

At first, everyone responded rapidly and the enthusiasm was there for the game and the characters, and then posting slowed gradually, some players seemingly dropping out altogether.

It's been three weeks since the last game-related text was sent, but I'm not ready to abandon the game just yet, I just think some of the enthusiasm needs to be recaptured, mainly by me, and then we can be back up and running.

Since the players don't really interact with the rules, except to choose xp expenditures, they can focus on what they want their characters to do while I handle all the behind the scenes stuff. This, I think will also aid in getting some momentum back into the game, since it's easy to just pick back up where you left off.

So, this is a call to my players who read this thing: The game will resume as soon as I collect some of my notes and get back on track!

Anyone who wants in on this game, the only book players need access to is the World of Darkness Core, and that's only for character generation. Everything else is done via texts/IM.