The Good and the Bad of PBP

 I've been handling the refereeing of the classic SF module run thru campaign since the founding ref had real world issues and stepped out for awhile.<br /><br />and was thinking about the good points and the bad points of PBP games. Feel free to post your thoughts on whats the good and the bad of PBP style of play<br /><br />Number one monkey on my back is record keeping- i have to actually set myself a date and get to it. Update EXP and items found and stuff that should be tracked. You'd think it would be easy to do this in a PBP game but its a bit of a pain.<br /><br />Number one positive is that you can explore character motivation more in a PBP game vs a table top game.<br />Because the format is written its less of the free flow of just making moves at the table. To be fair there are people in the game who seem to be less inclined to write than I am and thats fine- purpose of the game is to have fun and as long as everyone is having fun then game on but I have revelled in exploring the character motivations of the character I developed. Of course I have to back off from that a bit as referee as its bad form for the star character to also be run by the referee. <br /><br />Just recently a combat wrapped up and I explored the decision making process for my character in choosing a life enemy. He's a yazirian from a clan of doctors and scientist who felt like his life was destined for something more so he became a priest of the Fo1. Due to some back story circumstances he found himself defrocked and expelled from the ranks of the Inquisitors and the priesthood. The leader within the Inquisitors that had an ax to grind with my character leaned on his clan and for the sake of the clan he accepted banishment and being stripped of his honor. <br /><br />Worried that the Inquisitors might not settle for all of that he fled the Yazirian colonies and found himself drunk and destitute on Pale when a certain survey mission was looking for memebers. Being a Doctor with psych training he had a valuable skill set and joined. Plus his &quot;crisis of faith&quot; (he's very devoted to his religion even though his religion has turned on him) was driving him to flee as far as possible from yazirian space and lets face it a survey mission on an uncharted planet pretty much is as far away from Guna Garu as you can get.<br /><br />Upon learning that the pirates that had marrooned him on Volturnus had killed an acquaintence of his, as well as trying to kill him, and it turned out that they were preying on the primitives as well as kidnapping and enslaving citizens of the UPF my character came to a realization that these pirates were worthy of death but also that he was just a doctor, councilor, and some time priest. he wrestled with the implications of the One spirit of yazira bringing him to Volturnus and decided to name these pirates as life enemy and take up the warrior's call of yazira. He had always believed that he would name a disease or social ill as life enemy and quietly spend his life laboring to defeat that but it would seem that Yazira does have a greater purpose for his life and he will embrace being a warrior and right the injustices of the pirates on volturnus. <br /><br />Now that was fun.