We moved some things to the user settings page. As mentioned:

• Font Size
• Dark Mode
• Password Reset

There’s more to come…

This weekend, I’ll be taking some materials to a con. Nothing pushy, just wearing merch and other materials. I hope little things like this get the word out. Word-of-mouth is one of our best tools.

I hope that you can mention PlayByWeb to somebody. It all helps.

There have been some items on the to-do list for a while. After getting feedback, here are the things that are coming up:

• User settings page for font size, dark mode, password reset
• Better D20 character attribute roller
• Cleanup of older stuff like dead game archiving

Let us know on the forums if there’s anything else we should concentrate on.

In this modern era, why still use play by post format for role play?

There are several great reasons to choose this format. Whether it be convenient, cost-effective, or just preference, each person find their own reasons. Here are a few common points that players consider

1. Cost-effective
   • Play-by-post is typically free for users.
   • Most sites are sponsored by ad banners to support operation expenses.
   • Limited sharing of personal data – playbypost sites typically have less agreements on what data they collect and sell to third parties.
   • Playbyweb has traditionally been hosted through donations to keep each page free of add content.
2. Convenience
   • Play on the go.
   • Scheduling conflicts are minimal as each player forms their own interactions throughout the day.
3. Hardware requirements
   • Device and browser agnostic – no special software and limited browser compatibility issues.
   • Low bandwidth – high speed internet not required. Slow internet speeds don’t render your experience problematic or laggy.
4. Personal needs
   • For some, in person events can be socially taxing or worse, anxiety inducing.
   • The anonymity helps provide a safe space to explore a character’s development.
   • Social distancing made popular during the last pandemic gave playbypost a safe way to still play.
5. Skill development
   • Improves on writing skills, literacy, word count, and other aspects.
   • Creative opportunities for those seeking to become novelists.
   • Expand your imagination and share it with others.
6. Relive the moments
   • With play-by-post, you can go back and relive the adventures just like you are reading the story over again.
   • Session recaps are but a paragraph away.

There is no limit to what you can come up with when you’re given a pen and some parchment. Add a good group to play along with and you can create some truly amazing adventures. So if a play-by-post format sounds good to you, the only question left is what adventure will take you there. Epic tales are just a click away.

Happy storytelling!

We’ve been asked about making a PBW mobile app for a while. Will we make one? What would it be like?

Right now, there’s no plan to release one. We had a test version, though. There are a few reasons why this version probably won’t be released publicly:

• The app looked almost exactly like the web site. So, the time and effort put into it wouldn’t result in anything new or more useful.
• Google and Apple make it prohibitive for a company with no real money to put anything on their stores. Emrich Consulting doesn’t have money, so it doesn’t have IRS filings or keep up with the things that Google or Apple require. An individual can release things easily, but PBW is not an individual.
• We don’t think that it would make a big difference to users. If there are more and new voices that want this, and don’t just make inquiries, then we have a different situation.

On the other had, there aren’t any good reasons to make such an app. We’d rather put time into the web site at the moment.

So, feedback is welcome on this or any other topics. Keep gaming!

We’ve gotten this question a lot. Why did PlayByWeb change from the old look a few years ago? It’s a long story…

PlayByWeb was started around 1998. It shortly was organized into a nonprofit organization. That organization, PlayByWeb Inc, lived on donations which mainly went toward hosting costs. The site was written in PHP, a popular web programming language at the time. The site grew a lot in the early 2000s as RPGs grew in general. The site attracted the attention of many people, good and bad.

The bad actors began to attack the site using some methods that stayed pretty constant thought the years. The attacks grew more and more frequent as the PBW admins spent more and more time putting out fires and dealing with these attacks. After a while, the site’s code grew so complex that it was very difficult to defend against these attacks effectively.

On the business side, the nonprofit organization was not renewed, and it wasn’t keeping up with the paperwork. Essentially, Play By Web Inc faded away. This was bad for the admins, donators, users, and those who still paid the hosting costs, since the legal liability protection of the nonprofit organization went away.

Then, the RPG world seemed to go through a renaissance of sorts in the 2010s. More and more people, young and old, played more RPGs. The time was ripe to expand the user base of PBW. The technical world changed quite a bit in the 20+ years of PBW’s life. More and more users were using mobile devices for web access. So a technical rewrite might also be attractive to mobile users.

These three situations led to the refresh of PlayByWeb. The site was taken over in 2021 by Emrich Consulting, LLC. PBW was then redesigned to be both mobile-friendly and significantly more secure. Some took this to be good, and some took it to be a big step backward. I hope that the reasons above shed some light on why it was done.

There are a few things still left to be done. First, the user base isn’t as large as it once was. There is a goal to expand this. I plan to write about that in the future. There are some technical things to accomplish, like web search engine optimization. This goal shows some of the need for more software engineering help. As a free web site, it’s impossible to pay software engineers, so such help would need to come from volunteers. You might see the circle here: It’s hard to recruit help without more users to draw from, and it’s hard to attract more users with some technical needs unfulfilled. The coming months and years will see effort put into these two areas: Attracting Users and Attracting Volunteers.

I hope this sheds a little light on the workings of PlayByWeb through time. I want to write more about these things as time goes on. Thanks, everyone.