One often overlooked technique in play-by-post (PbP) gaming is the use of conditional logic. PbP is already a slow medium, so any little trick you can use to speed up gameplay is a godsend. Conditionals are one such technique.

With conditionals, you simply think ahead to possible courses of actions, perhaps contigent on what other players decide or what you learn from the environment. See a real life example below from a Star Wars (WEG D6 1st edition) online game that I’m in. My character Val is trying to work with a companion Elso to help a wounded Blissex up the stairs and out of a Star Destroyer detention cell block. Here’s the post with conditionals.

OOC:

Val (if no party member objects) will work with Elso to help Blissex up the stairs, headed ‘South’ towards the bottom of the map, thinking of the top of the map as ‘North’).

Val will try to see what is up ahead and alert those behind (using hushed words) as to what he sees.

If there is no signs of life up ahead, Val will continue southward until he gets to the guard station and gesture to others to investigate if there are readouts on the display with more about what is happening to the ship or a clue to the best escape route.

If (as I suspect), there are stormtroopers at the guard station, Val will attempt to con the guards by shouting “Wounded prisoner here! Any of you have medic skills?” as a ruse, and will try to get in melee range and then attack.

I then used the dice roller to preemptively roll for those situations. The GM can always ignore any rolls that aren’t needed or don’t make sense.

Rolls

Perception roll to see what is up ahead – (2d6+1)

(2, 1) + 1 = 4

Con roll to trick guards (if there are guards to deal with) – (3d6+1)

(4, 4, 4) + 1 = 13

Learn more about my other PbP tips here.