What's a PBEM?

PBEM stands for "play by email," and is a particular type of play-by-post game wherein the writing largely takes place over email, or an email-based group. Specifically, we use groups.io.

Groups.io is an email-based, forum-like website where we aggregate the scenes in our game. If you've ever used Yahoo Groups or Google Groups, it's similar to those. Essentially, it acts as a space to collect and organize the posts in-game to each thread. You can post to the Group either via email or on the Group itself. 

A thread is a scene being posted in by specific characters. Different scenes are separated into threads, to make it clear who is interacting with what specific other characters. These scenes are tracked on the Current Gameday page. 

A gameday encompasses the scenes currently being posted into on the Group. It takes place on a single day, at a specific time, usually in one location or a couple of nearby locations.  IRL, a gameday might last anywhere from 3-5 months, or less or longer depending on whether the main beats of the gameday have been covered in that time. 

"Open" gamedays may have a general theme, but allow players to create their own scenes and pursue their own plots or engagement with other characters. These are good opportunities to have your character get to know others in the Circus.

"Plot" gamedays will center around some event or events that further the plot - sometimes action, sometimes investigation, sometimes something else entirely! Sometimes characters will be placed, meaning you'll receive information about the scene your character will be in ahead of time.

A jump is the period of time between gamedays, which can be anywhere from hours to months long. Usually, players are required to detail what their characters did during this time in a "jump summary." If a jump is short enough, no summary may be required, or another requirement (such as a survey) may be asked of you for your character during this time.

JP stands for "joint post" and is essentially a short story written off-board by two or more players. JPs can cover events in the far past, or events that happen over jumps. These are good opportunities to develop personal plots between characters, or cover something that might not fit in a normal gameday. 

BP stands for "back post" and is a short story written off-board by a single player, about an event that occurred in the past. This is a good way to flesh out something that happened in your character's backstory.

There are no dice! In the event of an interaction where, in other formats such as D&D 5e or Pathfinder, one might use dice, in this game we talk it out OOC instead. The results of inter-character conflicts are agreed upon between players, with mod assistance if needed. There is no godmodding or auto-ing allowed, so communication is key.